Looking through "Dreams From My Father" for pertinent passages, found these:
Barack Obama wrote:Both Marty and Smalls understood that in politics, like religion, power lay in certainty -- and that one man's certainty always threatened another's.
I realized then, standing in an empty McDonald's parking lot in the South Side of Chicago, that I was a heretic. Or worse-- for even a heretic must believe in something, if nothing more than the truth of his own doubt.)
p. 163
Barack Obama wrote:Reverend Phillips nodded and said, "You may be right, Mr. Obama. You have some interesting ideas. But you see, the churches around here are used to doing things their own way. Sometimes, the congregations even more than the pastors." He opened the door for me, then paused. "By the way, what church do you belong to?"
"I... I attend different services."
"But you're not a member anywhere?"
"Still searching, I guess."
"Well, I can understand that. It might help your mission if you had a church home, though. IT doesn't matter where, really. What you're asking from pastors requires us to set aside some of our more priestly concerns in favor of prophecy. That requires a good deal of faith on our part. It makes us want to know just where you're getting yours from. Faith, that is."
p. 274
Really good section about first meeting Rev. Wright, in the course of community organizing work. Won't transcribe all of it. A ways in:
Barack Obama wrote:"We got a lot of different personalities here," [Wright] told me. "Got the Africanist over here. The traditionalist over here. Once in a while, I have to stick my hand in the pot -- smooth things over before stuff gets ugly. But that's rare. Usually, if somebody's got an idea for a new ministry, I just tell 'em to run with it and get outta their way."
His approach had obviously worked; the church had grown from two hundred to four thousand members during his tenure; there were organizations for every taste, from yoga classes to Caribbean clubs. He was especially pleased with the church's progress in getting more men involved, though he admitted that they still had a way to go.
"Nothing's harder than reaching young brothers like yourself," he said. They worry about looking soft. They worry about what their buddies are gonna say about 'em. They tell themselves church is a woman's thing -- that it's a sign of weakness for a man to admit that he's got spiritual needs."
The reverend looked up at me then, a look that made me nervous. I decided to shift the conversation to more familiar ground, [and launched into the community organizing spiel].
More stuff about Trinity, and what he thought about it (mixed feelings). He talked to people about it in passing, members of the church.
Barack Obama wrote:Many confessed to a long absence from any religious practice -- a conscious choice for some, part of a political or intellectual awakening, but more often because church had seemed irrelevant to them as they'd pursued their careers in largely white institutions.
At some point, though, they all told me of having reached a spiritual dead end; a feeling, at once inchoate and oppressive, that they'd been cut off from themselves. Intermittently, and then more regularly, they had returned to the church, finding in Trinity some of the same things every religion hopes to offer its converts: a spiritual harbor and the chance to see one's gifts appreciated and acknowledged in a way a paycheck never can: an assurance, as bones stiffened and hair began to gray, that they belonged to something that would outlast their own lives -- and that, when their time finally came, a community would be there to remember.
But not all of what these people sought was strictly religious, I thought: it wasn't just Jesus they were coming home to. It occurred to me that Trinity, with its African themes, its emphasis on black history [...much more, excised...] a church like Trinity assured all its members that their fates remained inseparably bound, that an intelligible "us" still remained.
[...Obama has questions about effectiveness and utility of the church within the community...]
Sometimes I would put such questions to the people I met with. They would respond with the same bemused look Reverend Phillips and Reverend Wright had given me. [...] You have some good ideas, they would tell me. Maybe if you joined the church you could start a community program. Why don't you come by Sunday?
And I would shrug and play the question off, unable to confess that I could no longer distinguish between faith and mere folly, between faith and simple endurance; that while I believed in the sincerity I heard in their voices, I remained a reluctant skeptic, doubtful of my own motives, wary of expedient conversion, having too many quarrels with God to accept a salvation too easily won.
p.287
(This guy is really-truly our president!!!)
Then Harold Washington dies (big deal). Stuff happens. Obama plans to leave Chicago. His staff are upset. He promises to be back after law school (that's where he's going.) He's started going to Trinity occasionally. Just before he leaves, he goes to Trinity, where Rev. Wright gives the now-famous "Audacity of Hope" sermon.
Barack Obama wrote:And in that single note -- hope! -- I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and the Pharoah, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories -- of survival, freedom, and hope -- became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shamed about, memories more accessible than those of ancient Egypt, memories that all people might study and cherish -- and with which we could start to rebuild. And if a part of me continued to feel that this Sunday communion sometimes simplified our condition, that it could sometimes disguise or suppress the very real conflicts among us and would fulfill its promise only through action, I also felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams.
[....more of the sermon, "The Audacity of Hope"...]
As the choir lifted back up into song, as the congregation began to applaud those who were walking to the altar to accept Reverend Wright's call, I felt a light touch on the top of my hand. I looked down to see the older of the two boys sitting beside me, his face slightly apprehensive as he handed me a pocket tissue. Beside him, his mother glanced at me with a faint smile before turning back toward the altar. It was only as I thanked the boy that I felt the tears running down my cheeks.
"Oh Jesus" I heard the older woman beside me whisper softly, "Thank you for carrying us this far."
p. 295
[that closes the "Chicago" section.]
Religion/ Trinity is not mentioned again until the epilogue, when Obama says that Wright performed the wedding service for him and Michelle. It's implied that the end of the above quote is when he became a real member of a church.
