Obama 'poured out his soul,' clergyman says

BARACK OBAMA "poured out his soul," and that of the black church, as one local clergyman put it, in a speech here yesterday responding to the airing of racially charged remarks by his Chicago pastor.

Obama "allowed us to see him as a person and where he stood," said Dr. G. Daniel Jones, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Germantown, the boyhood church of Obama's minister and spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

Wright drew national criticism when snippets from past sermons by Wright were aired on Internet sites - including that America brought the 9/11 attacks upon itself for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki and for its policy toward Palestine, and caused AIDS and the crack-cocaine epidemic to keep the black community down.

In his speech, Obama disowned the statements but not Wright, the recently retired pastor who married him and baptized his children.

Jones said Obama showed himself to be a reasoned and independent thinker and "alleviated the fears in some people that he was a black nationalist and that he was a separatist and he was incapable of being the president of a pluralistic society."

"It showed courage to be so honest about the issues of race," said the Rev. Ellis Washington, the new leader of the United Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity.

"There are a number of racial feelings that are maybe angry or potentially explosive, and we just don't talk about them."

The Rev. Robert Shine, pastor of Berachah Baptist Church and former president of the black clergy group, said Obama showed by his response - through the speech given under extreme pressure - that "he's worthy to lead this country against insurmountable odds."

Shine said he was struck by Obama's talk of his biracial heritage and the fact that Obama's white grandmother, despite her love, had told him she was afraid of black men.

Obama was expressive in the speech about the celebration, pain, and sometimes bitterness, expressed in the black church by the congregation and pastor, whose job Shine said it is to "speak truth to power."

"The black church in America is mostly misunderstood by the white community," he said.

The black church has been "our sanctuary of refuge, a place where we could vent." *