OT: Ministers shake-up inauguration

In delivering Tuesday’s Presidential Inauguration benediction, Rev. Joseph Lowery, a former lieutenant of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement, electrified the event’s global audience with his powerful message on faith and freedom.

Beginning with the words of the National Negro Anthem, written by James Weldon Johnson, he paid homage to the long struggle that set the foundation for Barack Obama’s historic election as the first black U.S. president.

And, angering pundits who prefer to believe that the days of racial injustice against America’s minority groups are long-gone (check here and here), he reminded his listeners that the fight for equality is not over.

“Help us work for that day,” Lowery prayed, “When black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around ... when yellow will be mellow ... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right.”

At Coretta Scott King’s funeral in 2006, Lowery also attracted scorn from many critics when he said, standing only a few feet away from then-U.S. President George W. Bush, that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. When Obama kicked off his presidential campaign just a few months later, he promoted his early opposition to the War in Iraq as important proof that he had the judgment to be America’s commander-in-chief.

The Sunday before Inauguration Day, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, received a warm reception from his alma mater: Howard University. Thousands of excited spectators packed the university’s auditorium and overflow rooms to capacity in order to hear his sermon.

The relationship between Wright and Obama, a former member of his church, strained and broke during the campaign. After newscasts aired out-of-context, inflammatory statements Wright had made from his pulpit and Obama accused him of having “a profoundly distorted view of this country,” the minister went on the offensive.

In trying to explain the cultural differences between the forms of preaching in black and white churches, Wright compared band performances at predominantly white universities versus those at HBCUs such as FAMU and Grambling State (two of the bands that were later invited to perform in the Inaugural Parade along with Howard's).

Obama was not happy with Wright’s response to the media-generated controversy and eventually cut his ties with the minister. Nonetheless, Wright continued to publicly support Obama’s candidacy.

Members of Wright’s Howard University family believe that it all happened for a reason.

“I don’t think that this was an accident, this is the way it was supposed to be” said Vera Sims, a New York resident who attended Wright’s sermon. “There was controversy that arose with Obama and Dr. Wright, and a lot of great things come out of conflict. Without conflict, we wouldn’t have growth.”