{"id":90,"date":"2007-08-07T17:35:44","date_gmt":"2007-08-07T17:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2007\/08\/obamas-church-has-a-new-pastor.php"},"modified":"2007-08-07T17:35:44","modified_gmt":"2007-08-07T17:35:44","slug":"obamas-church-has-a-new-pastor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/08\/obamas-church-has-a-new-pastor","title":{"rendered":"Obama’s Church Has a New Pastor for a New Generation"},"content":{"rendered":"

RNS
\nBy Diana Keough
\nChicago — Otis Moss III is striking in a raw way. Broad-faced,
\nboyish and slender, the 36-year-old preacher looks more like a man who
\nis consumed with fashion than the fate of sinners.
\nBut when he steps into the large pulpit of Trinity United Church of
\nChrist — the South Side church that presidential candidate Barack Obama
\ncalls home — and begins to preach, all eyes are drawn to him.
\n“JE-sus is the one who puts the devil in his p-la-ce,” Moss says,
\nstretching “place” into three syllables. The choir standing behind him,
\nmore than 100 strong, seems to fade away. Moss holds a microphone in one
\nhand and moves his free hand to the beat of his sermon. He seems
\nincapable of uttering a dead sentence.
\nFor the next hour, Moss rolls Scripture and hip-hop lyrics around in
\nthe same thoughts as he criticizes the mindset of young black males
\nwho’d rather play basketball than learn physics. He goes after Bush
\nadministration policies, the war in Iraq and the United States’
\nfree-market economy.
\nSuch talk in any of the white churches across town would make the
\ncongregation squirm. Not so at Trinity, where the words are met with
\nexuberant clapping, standing ovations and loud exclamations of “Yes,
\npastor!”
\nNamed one of “The Twenty to Watch” ministers under 40 by The African
\nAmerican Pulpit magazine and one of the most influential
\nAfrican-American religious leaders by the Web site Beliefnet.com, Moss
\nwas handpicked by Trinity’s senior pastor, Jeremiah Wright, to succeed
\nhim in 2008 because of Moss’ growing reputation in reaching inner-city
\nyouth.
\nIn the 2007 book, “Gospel Remix: Reaching the Hip Hop Generation,”
\nMoss wrote that the church is a place where young people should be able
\nto see themselves in a positive light. “Most don’t,” he said, speaking
\nby phone from his church office.
\nThat’s why Trinity’s stained-glass windows depict biblical
\ncharacters with black faces, and why he says the Bible study curriculum
\nand every sermon should affirm black youngsters’ race, heritage and that
\nGod loves them.
\nThe predominantly black Trinity boasts more than 10,000 members and
\nis the largest church within the traditionally white United Church of
\nChrist denomination.
\nSome critics accuse Trinity’s motto — “Unashamedly Black and
\nUnapologetically Christian” — reflects a racially exclusive theology.
\nThe church’s “Black Value System” asks members to affirm their
\ncommitment to God, the “black community,” the “black family” and the
\n“black work ethic.”
\nMoss said Greek Orthodox, Irish Catholics and German Lutherans can
\nconnect their faith to their culture without being criticized. “Blacks
\nare the only group of people denied the ability to reach back to their
\nroots, to connect to our culture to define who we are,” he said.
\nMoss’ path to the high-profile Chicago pulpit completes a circle of
\nsorts. He’s the youngest son of Edwina and Otis Moss Jr., considered
\nCleveland’s “First Family of Faith.”
\nHis father, pastor of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in
\nCleveland, remains known for mixing God and politics in a way that made
\nmany white people uneasy. Like his father, Moss embraces “black
\nliberation theology,” which interprets the Bible thru the lens of the
\nstruggles and oppression of black people.
\n“The pre-eminent ethic of Jesus Christ, his inaugural sermon, is the
\nSpirit of the Lord is upon you to preach the good news to the poor, to
\nset up liberty, to set the captives free, to allow the mind to see,'”
\nthe younger Moss said. “I believe that is the mission of the church.”
\nIt’s one of many things the father and son have in common.
\n“The church has to be the conscience, the voice for the hopeless,
\nthe marginalized, the disinherited,” the elder Moss said. “Dr. King used
\nto say that the church has to be the headlight, not the taillight.”
\nWhile father and son’s theological, social and political views
\nmirror each other, their mannerisms and preaching styles do not. The
\nelder Moss speaks methodically, his diction formal. The younger Moss is
\nstretched tight, like the membrane of a drum, exuding a tense energy.
\nListening to him preach is like hearing a recording of his father, the
\ntape stuck on fast-forward.
\nFresh out of Yale Divinity School, he took a job working with a
\ngroup of former gang members and drug dealers in Connecticut. When Moss
\ntalked about “Amazing Grace” and one man asked, “Who is she?”, he
\nrealized that trying to use “Christian-speak” to reach the disconnected
\nand unchurched was a waste of time. Moss found using hip-hop lyrics was
\nthe perfect middle ground, and a ministry was born.
\nHe moved to a church in Georgia, which grew from 125 to 2,100
\nmembers during his nine-year tenure. He planned to stay in Georgia, and
\nthought the only thing that might pull him away was stepping into his
\nfather’s pulpit in Cleveland.
\nIn 2005, Wright invited Moss to come to Chicago to guest preach at
\nTrinity. During the visit, Wright asked him to consider taking over.
\nMoss thought he was kidding. After a year of prayer in Georgia, Moss and
\nhis wife packed their bags for Chicago.
\n“The more I began to reflect on it, the more I realized that I would
\nbe going to Cleveland to support my father because I am his son, not
\nbecause God was saying, `Go to Cleveland,'” Moss said.
\nMoss said the biggest problem within the black church is the chasm
\nbetween the “civil rights generation and the hip-hop generation,” he
\nsaid.
\n“It’s a gap of language, values. It’s a gap in the best tactics on
\nhow to transform the black community. It’s an intellectual gap in many
\nways,” he said. “There has to be a dialogue between those generations
\n(so) that you don’t cast aside one generation or the other, or one
\ngeneration doesn’t demonize the other.”
\nFather and son liken the differences between them — age,
\ngeneration, style — to the differences between the Old Testament
\ncharacters Moses and Joshua. Moses came to the threshold of the Promised
\nLand but had to pass the baton to Joshua because Moses died before he
\ncould cross over.
\n“There’s a point (when) the Joshua generation has to stand on its
\nown two feet,” the younger Moss said, “but never disregard what the
\ngeneration before it did for them.”
\n
\nCopyright 2007 Religion News Service<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RNS By Diana Keough Chicago — Otis Moss III is striking in a raw way. Broad-faced, boyish and slender, the 36-year-old preacher looks more like a man who is consumed with fashion than the fate of sinners. 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