c. 2008 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ The flavor and fervor of the civil rights movement hung heavy in the air on a chilly Sunday morning.

Inside Olivet Institutional Baptist Church, a child played “We Shall Overcome” plaintively on her flute. From his pulpit, the Rev. Otis Moss Jr. liberally quoted from the well-known words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., his friend and mentor.

He asked all the registered voters to stand, and nearly every member of his congregation did.

“Now do you realize that you are standing, witnessing what people died for, bled for, went to jail for?” he asked. “We will not flag or fail. Hallelujah!

“I can’t tell you how to vote,” the pastor told his flock. “But as for me,” he added, chuckling while drawing out his words dramatically, “it’s Obama time.”

A black candidate is within striking distance of the White House. It is a moment of wonderment and unsurpassed joy for Moss and other longtime activists who worship in Olivet’s red-carpeted sanctuary.

Cleveland’s black ministers have long been major players on the political scene. They’re adept at dancing on the narrow line that prohibits churches from officially endorsing candidates; as long as pastors make it clear that they are only sharing personal opinions, their tax-exempt status is safe.

And in the final week leading up to Ohio’s crucial Democratic primary on March 4, they are being courted heavily by the Democratic presidential campaigns. U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones spoke on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s behalf to a local group of black ministers several weeks ago. Close on her heels came U.S. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, who tried to woo local religious leaders to support Sen. Barack Obama.

But no hard sell is needed at Olivet, the historic black church that served as a base of operations for King’s civil rights agenda in the 1960s.

For Moss, who served under King as a regional director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference before becoming Olivet’s pastor in 1974, his “cup is running over” these days as he watches Obama glide to victory after victory.

No latecomer to the campaign, Moss has written several articles during the past year that refer to Obama as the fruit of answered prayers and the spiritual child of the civil rights movement. Moss has repeatedly praised Obama as a talented young leader devoted to social justice who follows in the footsteps of Medgar Evers, Thurgood Marshall and other black icons.

Olivet members know their well-connected pastor is closely linked to the Obama campaign.

Moss, 73, co-chairs Obama’s advisory committee of black religious leaders, and has led ministers around the nation in prayer for the candidate, via a weekly conference call.

His son, the Rev. Otis Moss III, has even closer ties to Obama. He is the incoming pastor of the church that Obama attends, Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s South Side.

Olivet members say they pride themselves on being a politically active church, with a high rate of voter participation. For decades, the major Democratic presidential hopefuls have made a point of stopping by Olivet, starting with Hubert Humphrey in 1972.

Many in the congregation remember the excitement of 1984, when Olivet leaders played a big role in persuading the Rev. Jesse Jackson to run for president. Jackson selected political strategist Arnold Pinkney, an Olivet member and veteran of Cleveland politics, to be his national campaign manager. Jackson broke important barriers that year, speaking out on issues affecting the poor and disenfranchised, Pinkney said.

And now, with Obama’s chances of winning the Democratic presidential nomination growing greater every day, excitement is sweeping through the church again.

At a recent black history talk at the church, Pinkney declared Obama’s run one of the most important events in his life. Obama’s campaign, he said, promises “hope for a better and more humane world.”

“Let us march on ’til victory is won,” he told the cheering audience, stirring their emotions with the familiar words of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” commonly known as the black national anthem.

Several Olivet members have signed up to volunteer with Obama’s campaign, including Lora Thompson, 48, who owns a local public relations firm. Now that Thompson has recruited 30 of her friends as volunteers, she’s trying to pull together a fund-raiser with Obama and singer John Legend.

Thompson said she admires Obama’s political platform. “We’re on the same page,” she said. “Because he was a community organizer in Chicago, he has a real sensitivity to issues that are impacting middle-class people right now, including the economy, student loans, foreclosures.”

“I’m not for him just because of Pastor Moss. I’ve been for Obama since Day 1,” said member Carolyn Campbell. “It’s the first time in a long time that I haven’t felt like I’m voting for the lesser of two evils.”

(Margaret Bernstein writes for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.)

KRE/RB END BERNSTEIN850 words

Photos of Moss are available via https://religionnews.com.