The Forest Rev. Jeremiah Wright Planted Is Still Growing

The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. sat quietly as a screen full of his spiritual children told him what his life had meant to theirs.

There was laughter, teasing, testimony and, more than once, tears. Panelists leaned toward their cameras as memories returned. Some rocked in their seats. Others paused to steady their voices. Wright, approaching his 85th birthday, listened.

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The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference gathered pastors, scholars, educators, an attorney and a consultant for a virtual “Critical Conversation: We Are the Legacy!” This was not a recitation of Wright’s résumé. It was a family conversation about the pastor, teacher, and mentor behind the public figure.

‘You Have Planted a Forest’

The Rev. Iva E. Carruthers, general secretary emerita of the conference, opened the celebration by placing Wright within the continuum of Black prophetic witness. She described him as a living libation whose ministry merged Christian faith, African tradition, and social action.

Carruthers recalled nearly 50 years of shared friendship, work, joy and pain.

“You have planted a forest,” Carruthers told Wright.

That forest filled the screen.

Attorney Natasha Robinson remembered joining Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ with her family in 1981. Wright led the church for 36 years until his retirement in early 2008. She was 7 when she joined, and misunderstood the Free South Africa sign outside the church. She thought joining Trinity might win her a free trip to South Africa.

The room erupted in laughter, but the misunderstanding opened into something deeper. Trinity became the place where Robinson learned who she was in God’s sight and in her own.

When schools miseducated Black children during the week, Robinson said, Trinity recalibrated them on weekends. Scholars, artists and activists introduced children to Africa, Black history, politics and faith.

Consultant Nakia Green saw the same theology embodied in Trinity’s structure. Before diversity, equity and inclusion became corporate language, she said, Wright placed women in executive leadership, created shared leadership between women and men and ensured that people with disabilities could participate.

‘One Final Act of Love’

Then the Rev. Neichelle Guidry, dean of Sisters Chapel at Spelman College, slowed the room down.

Guidry remembered being a young minister assisting Wright at a graveside service. They had been in many rooms together, but this was their first time alone. She was nervous. Wright sensed it and turned the committal service into a teaching moment.

He showed her how to take two roses from the arrangement resting on or near the casket. As the final words were spoken, the roses were placed across one another in the form of a cross.

It was, Guidry recalled, “one final act of love.”

The roses transformed the moment. Wright was teaching more than ritual. He was teaching presence — how a minister remains attentive to a family at the place where language begins to fail.

Guidry said she carries that lesson into her ministry with students at Spelman College. In an era when ministry is often measured by platforms, branding, and visibility, Wright modeled the ministry that matters when people need it most.

Afrocentric Scholar, Faithful Christian

The Rev. Devon Jerome Crawford, senior pastor of Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, first encountered Wright’s preaching as a Morehouse College student. He saw a prophetic giant who held biblical scholarship, Black history, pastoral care, Africa and America together without contradiction.

When Crawford later interned at Trinity, Wright listened to his questions and made him feel seen. Crawford learned that ministry’s power is found not only in what a preacher proclaims but in what that preacher pours into people.

Dr. Greg Carr, former chair of the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University, described Wright as a road map for being an African intellectual in the world — a preacher who refused to choose between African-centered scholarship and Christian faith.

The Rev. Bernard L. Richardson, dean of the Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel at Howard University, focused on Wright’s authenticity and endurance. Ministers, he said, must learn how to keep standing when they are wounded or left alone. Wright modeled that discipline after excerpts from his sermons were used to turn him into a political controversy during Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

The Rev. Jamar A. Boyd II, pastor of Kenwood United Church of Christ in Chicago, brought the conversation back to mentoring. After graduating from seminary during the pandemic, Boyd was uncertain about several ministry opportunities. He called Wright, and they talked for three hours.

‘What is God Telling You to Do?’

Boyd expected the elder preacher to give him an answer. Instead, Wright redirected him toward discernment: “What is God telling you to do?”

Years later, when Boyd was preparing to eulogize his predecessor at the Chicago church, he again went to Wright. They worked through three Scripture passages. Wright helped Boyd understand that the eulogy would also be his first defining sermon as Kenwood’s pastor.

Near the end, the Rev. Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III, pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, who is running for a Texas congressional seat,  joined from the campaign trail. He rejected any attempt to let cable news define Wright and spoke instead of the man who helped fill the void when Haynes’ father died during his adolescence.

“I’ve never missed being fathered,” Haynes said.

Hear Haynes’ testimony.⁠

When Wright finally spoke, he leaned into humor, joking about his unfamiliarity with public speaking. Then he turned toward gratitude.

“Thank you,” he said.

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The words were brief, but the emotion in the room was not. Richardson closed in prayer, entrusting Wright, his family and their future to God.

The evening answered its own title. Wright’s legacy is not confined to recorded sermons, a famous congregation or a painful season in national politics. It lives in ministers who know how to stand at gravesides, mentors who make room for young leaders and Black people who refuse to separate faith from intellect, identity or justice.

The forest was on the screen. And it is still growing.