c. 2008 Religion News Service(UNDATED) The Rev. Walter Fauntroy marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., served as the District of Columbia’s delegate to Congress and preached for decades from his Washington pulpit for greater civil rights.But on Tuesday (Nov. 4), when Sen. Barack Obama became the first African- American to be elected to the White House, it was “the moment I’ve waited for for 40 years.”Forty years after King’s death, and 45 years after King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Fauntroy and other veterans of the civil rights struggle say the black church in America played a key role in leading the country to a day when Obama could be elected president.“I think it’s summed up in the phrase `Keep the faith,”’ said Fauntroy, who gathered about 100 people at his New Bethel Baptist Church in Washington for prayer and celebration on the night of the election. “We kept the faith. Our faith was that God will make a way somehow. So bomb the churches, knock us down with fire hoses, beat us with billy clubs, tell us that we are the last, the lost and the least, but we shall overcome.”The black church was on the front lines of the decades-long fight for civil rights. Churches were bombed and martyrs were killed as the battle-scarred church slowly and patiently laid the groundwork for the history-making moment on Tuesday. Put another way: Without the black church, there would be no civil rights movement. Without the civil rights movement, there would be no Barack Obama. And to a large degree, it was in the black church that Obama found his own purpose.Savoring his victory with tens of thousands of supporters on Tuesday night, Obama cited the example of a 106-year-old woman “born just a generation past slavery” who lived to cast her vote Tuesday in Atlanta.“She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that `We Shall Overcome,”’ Obama said. “Yes we can.”At King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, some 2,000 people erupted in cheers and tears when the race was called for Obama and a prize that was once thought beyond reach was finally won.“The black church, which is the spiritual face of the black community, can really take pride in this new America, in this new day that Barack symbolizes for all of us,” said the Rev. Noel Erskine, an associate professor of theology at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology.Erskine, who once co-taught a class with King’s widow, the late Coretta Scott King, noted that while the black church plays a role in Obama’s success, he also transcended the issue of race in ways previous black presidential candidates could not.“He could transcend it because he embodied it,” said Erskine. “The nice thing about Barack is he never had to make the case for being black like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.”But while black churches may have helped move white Americans to welcome Obama as president, his ties to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the sometimes angry rhetoric of his black church nearly derailed his campaign. Obama was eventually forced to resign his church membership and end the relationship with the man who presided at his wedding and baptized his children. Obama’s rise to power may have started in the pews of the black church, but it didn’t end there. Todd Shaw, professor of African-American studies and political science at the University of South Carolina, said Obama’s campaign went beyond black church sanctuaries to the institutions _ the fraternities and sororities, beauty parlors and barber shops _ that are central to black life.Shaw said Obama even bypassed esteemed black clergy who may not have supported his candidacy _ at least not yet. “He sort of went to the church outside the four walls,” Shaw said.Still, it was the black church _ especially Wright’s _ that also helped shape Obama in his earlier days as a community organizer.“In many respects, I think he probably gained more from the black church than the black church gained from him,” said Mary Patillo, a professor of sociology and African-American studies at Northwestern University.(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)As he became president-elect, the Church of God in Christ, a historically black Pentecostal denomination, gathered in Memphis, Tenn., for its annual Holy Convocation. Its bishops urged delegates to vote absentee beforehand.Bishop George D. McKinney, a San Diego pastor and a member of COGIC’s general board, said get-out-the-vote efforts by black churches surpassed anything he had seen previously and he attributed it to the presence of a black presidential candidate on the ballot.The Rev. T. DeWitt Smith, president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, said African-American congregations like his Atlanta congregation combined voter registration with orientation of new members.`We’d also find out whether they were registered voters and we could register them on the spot,” he said.(END OPTIONAL TRIM)Once Obama is in office, black church leaders say they hope he’ll address the economy, adopt more humane social policies and address health care and education.“If he does those things that he talks about wanting to do, he will meet not only our expectations but the expectations of the world,” said Bishop Carolyn Tyler Guidry, who chairs the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s Social Action Commission. “I don’t think we’re putting any undue expectations on him because he would be a black president. If he does a good job as president and does the best job he can do, that’s our expectation.”KRE/RB END BANKS925 words, with optional trim to 800A photo of Obama surrounded in prayer by black bishops is available via https://religionnews.com