Obama Delievers a Strong Message, Preacher Style

[illinoisprogressive]

For about 2,000 believers, church came early this weekend.

On Saturday night, in a high school gym, a guest preacher who isn't a preacher at all, but talks and walks like one, came to Rock Hill and ended his sermon with these words: "Now let's go change the world."
Nobody knows if Barack Obama, the senator from Illinois, will change the world and be the first black nominee and maybe first black president of the United States. But it sure seemed like he found a congregation to try and help him.

"A black man just like me, running for president, in Rock Hill on a Saturday night," said a guy named Jim Brown, who was born in this city and left 40 years ago to find a better life in Connecticut. He came back after retirement and he found someone who looked like him and knows his life -- and you betcha he was going to hear every word Obama said.
Because Obama tried to reach people not through a politics lesson, but through their hearts and souls, like a preacher would. The crowd, mainly black but some whites, too, were rapt by the sermon.

Three ladies, whose job it is five days a week to clean that school, volunteered to work to clean it Saturday night. Ella Baccus, Rosa Ann Lytle, Daisy Mobley. These three wonderful hard-working black ladies have lived in Rock Hill all their lives, 50-plus years for each, and all said they wouldn't have missed Obama. That's what Obama was Saturday: An event, not to be missed.

"Amen" hailed down from the audience several times, just like when a preacher gets going real good and the spirit is in people. He excoriated the war in Iraq, and the audience went wild. He spoke to people about their families, how the economy and the war and the widening gap between rich and poor was about them.

And like in church, there was one person who had her own personal conversation with the preacher, like she was the only person there. That lady was Shirnetha Belk. Belk had no microphone. She didn't need one. She was on the third row of the bleachers. Her voice sounded like a foghorn.
Obama railed against George W. Bush and Belk called out, "That's right! We need a new coach!"
Obama said he was impatient with the way things were going in the country and Belk called out, "I got it too, impatience!"
Obama told the crowd that parents had to do their part. Turn off the TV, make sure the homework gets done, and Belk called out, "Parents get after it!"
The loudest applause came for kicking at Bush. The problems with injustice. The shame of Katrina response.

But near the end of about an hour's worth of speech, when Obama was almost done talking about hope and so much else, Belk screamed out the only words that matter: "We must vote!"

http://www.heraldonline.com/109/story/137563.html

[Trajan]

1. Aw shucks .....

But I don't like preachers so much .....

Too bad, eh ?

[durrrty libby]

2. Preacher like? That will absolutely take him to the "finish"line

GoBama:nuke:

[Ethelk2044]

3. Preach on!

[Colobo]

4. Obamatize them!

[LWolf]

5. I guess he thinks tha it's time to breach that wall of separation.

Perhaps the current Supreme Court would back him in that.

Me, I'm with Madison on this one:

<snip>

Ye States Of America!

"Ye States of America, which retain in your Constitution or Codes, any aberration from the sacred principle of religious liberty, by giving to Caesar what belongs to God, or joining together what God has put asunder, hasten to revise & purify your systems, and make the example of your Country as pure & compleat, in what relates to the freedom of the mind and its allegiance to its maker, as in what belongs to the legitimate objects of political & civil institutions. Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt. in the Constitution of the United States
the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history."

Keep politics out of religion, and religion out of politics. That includes political stumping at church.