"God is up to something!" Bishop Kermit L. Newkirk, pastor of Davis Baptist, cried out at his 8 a.m. service. He used the Deuteronomy story of the Hebrews approaching the Promised Land as his theme.
"What time is it?" Newkirk asked his nearly full church early in the service.
"Obama time!" the crowd replied.
"Stand on your feet and tell me what time it is," Newkirk cried, and the crowd rose as one.
"What time?" Newkirk asked with a smile, cupping his ear as though he could not hear them.
"Obama time!" they shouted.
"Now put your hands together and celebrate with God," he said, and the congregation began clapping in unison.
"Yes we can!" Newkirk called out. "Yes we did!"
Wright, a guest preacher at Thankful Baptist, allowed himself no such public display during the 11 a.m. service.
Wright, who grew up in Germantown, took the pulpit around 12:45 p.m. and greeted many in the congregation.
He then recalled, with some bitterness, how the media had represented him as an anti-American leftist during the presidential primaries, and indicated that was why he would not say much about Obama's victory.
"If I say, 'Hello,' they'll say I said 'Hell,' " Wright told the crowd, to a ripple of laughter. "Then they'll say the 'O' meant Obama, and that I said, 'To hell with Obama.' "
What's more, he said, Thankful Baptist had invited him months ago, on Feb. 21, to preach today for its annual "joint anniversary service." Most media had been barred, he said, because it was a religious service.
His text was the wedding feast at Cana in the Gospel of John, and the "unexpected problem" of a shortage of wine.
Jesus was "already present" when the problem arose, he noted.
"If you've got the Lord in your life," he thundered late in his sermon, "the Lord will be already working on your problems when they happen.
"And you want to know why Barack Obama was elected?" he asked.
