Barack Obama: Praises from the pulpits

[jefferson_dem]

Barack Obama: Praises from the pulpits
Posted November 9, 2008 6:30 PM

Members of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church's dance troupe perform during a service to celebrate President-elect Barack Obama in Los Angeles. (AP Photo by Ric Francis)
The Swamp

by Mark Silva

In an election campaign that cast a harsh spotlight on the most "incendiary'' words of President-elect Barack Obama's longtime and former pastor, the first Sunday after the election of the first African-American president brought another focus to the pulpits of black churches from coast to coast.

"At Apostolic Church of God on Chicago's South Side, less than two miles from Obama's home, jubilant Sunday services were peppered with references to the election and calls to be grateful for his victory,'' the Associated Press reports in a survey of Sunday singings of praise for a historic election.
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"We thank the Lord for this second Sunday (in November) after the first Tuesday," Apostolic's Dr. Byron Brazier said to resounding applause and cheers from the mostly black congregation. "This is a wonderful time to be alive."

Obama, who parted ways with the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and its former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, after Wright's divisive words from the pulpit forced the presidential candidate to sever ties with a longtime mentor, had spoken at Apostolic on Father's Day, in his first address to a congregation after leaving Trinity.

See what other pastors across the country had to say to today on this, the first Sunday since a landmark election:

By ALLEN G. BREED
AP National Writer

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- Jubilation, pride and relief permeated pews and pulpits at predominantly black churches across the country on the first Sunday after Barack Obama's election, with congregrants blowing horns, waving American flags and raising their hands to the heavens.

"God has vindicated the black folk," the Rev. Shirley Caesar-Williams said as a member of her Raleigh congregation, Mount Calvary Word of Faith Church, brandished a flag and another marched among the pews blowing a ram's horn.

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At a white church in Mississippi, where roughly nine in 10 whites voted for Republican John McCain, the scene was more muted.

The neighborhood around the Alta Woods United Methodist Church in Jackson has seen its demographics shift from white to black in recent decades, and most of the parishioners have moved to the suburbs. While the Rev. David W. Carroll recognized Obama's election as a "historic shift," he spent just as much time praising McCain's patriotism in
defeat.

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http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/11/barack_obama_praises_from_the.html