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Black church services vary in noting Obama victory

With Tuesday's historic presidential election still a fresh and thrilling memory, many African Americans gave thanks at church yesterday - some quietly, some boisterously - for Sen. Barack Obama's victory.

Jackie McDuffie celebrates the election of Barack Obama during morning worship at the Harold O. Davis Memorial Baptist Church. (Ed Hille / Staff Photographer)
Jackie McDuffie celebrates the election of Barack Obama during morning worship at the Harold O. Davis Memorial Baptist Church. (Ed Hille / Staff Photographer)Read more

With Tuesday's historic presidential election still a fresh and thrilling memory, many African Americans gave thanks at church yesterday - some quietly, some boisterously - for Sen. Barack Obama's victory.

The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Obama's controversial former pastor, made only a passing mention of the recent election in his sermon at North Philadelphia's Thankful Baptist Church, as did other black preachers yesterday.

But there was a scene of celebration at the Harold O. Davis Baptist Church in Logan, where Obama's smiling face graced the Sunday bulletin and "History in the Making" was the theme of the service.

"God is up to something!" Bishop Kermit L. Newkirk, pastor of Davis Baptist, cried out at his 8 a.m. service. He used the Deuteronomy story of the Hebrews approaching the Promised Land as his theme.

"What time is it?" Newkirk asked his nearly full church early in the service.

"Obama time!" the crowd replied.

"Stand on your feet and tell me what time it is," Newkirk cried, and the crowd rose as one.

"What time?" Newkirk asked with a smile, cupping his ear as though he could not hear them.

"Obama time!" they shouted.

"Now put your hands together and celebrate with God," he said, and the congregation began clapping in unison.

"Yes we can!" Newkirk called out. "Yes we did!"

Wright, a guest preacher at Thankful Baptist, allowed himself no such public display during the 11 a.m. service.

Wright, who grew up in Germantown, took the pulpit around 12:45 p.m. and greeted many in the congregation.

He then recalled, with some bitterness, how the media had represented him as an anti-American leftist during the presidential primaries, and indicated that was why he would not say much about Obama's victory.

"If I say, 'Hello,' they'll say I said 'Hell,' " Wright told the crowd, to a ripple of laughter. "Then they'll say the 'O' meant Obama, and that I said, 'To hell with Obama.' "

What's more, he said, Thankful Baptist had invited him months ago, on Feb. 21, to preach today for its annual "joint anniversary service." Most media had been barred, he said, because it was a religious service.

His text was the wedding feast at Cana in the Gospel of John, and the "unexpected problem" of a shortage of wine.

Jesus was "already present" when the problem arose, he noted.

"If you've got the Lord in your life," he thundered late in his sermon, "the Lord will be already working on your problems when they happen.

"And you want to know why Barack Obama was elected?" he asked.

"Because a whole lot of you were asking God!" he cried to cheers and clapping.

The scant affirmation of Obama's historic election disappointed some in the congregation, including a woman who had driven from Lansdale with her two young sons for the service.

"I was hoping he'd say more," Trina Cottingham said.

Even so, early in the three-hour service, one of Thankful Baptist's worship leaders, Beverly Scott Reese, recalled how "two years ago we started praying for a miracle, and then on Tuesday God said, 'I hear your prayers.' "

Several other pastors of predominately black churches said last week they would make only passing reference to Obama's victory because they did not want to politicize Sunday worship.

At Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church, the largest predominately black church in Philadelphia, the Rev. Alyn Waller hailed the large African American turnout in Tuesday's election but - as at Thankful - did not make the service into a celebration of Obama's election.

Not so at Davis Baptist.

Newkirk told his congregation that Nov. 4 marked something special for African Americans.

Referring to the Jewish Passover tradition that annually memorializes Israel's exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land, he told his listeners to do more than just celebrate Obama's victory: They should memorialize it "so that your children and grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren remember this day."

In his sermon, Newkirk likened the Exodus story to the struggle of black people in America to emerge from the "dark days of slavery and Jim Crow" into full citizenship.

"God brought us out that he might bring us in," Newkirk cried, then shook his finger at the congregation.

"He gave us the promise," he went on. "It might be delayed, but it cannot be denied."

Later, speaking quietly, he said Obama's victory "opens the door for black folk to think differently . . . and act differently."

"We were sometimes the worst enemy of our own people," Newkirk said, with too many having babies outside marriage and disdaining education. He said he hoped Obama's election marked a "new, new time" for African Americans.

"The best is yet to come," he said.