Wednesday, April 30, 2008

New Obama Pastor a Devotee of Tupac Shakur and Spike Lee

While it's unclear whether Barack Obama will be setting foot in his church again, if he does, his new pastor will be Otis Moss III.
"He's an outstanding preacher," said Presbyterian's president, John Griffith. "The way he exegetes scripture, it's done extremely well. His diction, his presentation, it's dignified, yet powerful."

In his Easter sermon at Trinity, Moss stood in front of the choir and talked of "ghetto prophets."

He recited lyrics from Shakur's "Thugz Mansion," calling the late rapper "neither a saint nor demon, but all human."

He mocked those who dismiss rap music, saying it isn't "neatly packaged for our middle-class digestion" and rappers shouldn't be overlooked because of "coarse language and ragged subject-verb agreement" or a "proclivity for ghetto-istic conduct."

Over the next hour, he weaved in the Gospel of Luke and current events, his smooth, deep voice erupting twice with shouting in the stadium-like church.

Despite his ease at the pulpit, Moss didn't always want to be a pastor.

His childhood ambition, influenced by Spike Lee, was to become a filmmaker, said his father, pastor at Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland.
Great. Obama now goes from the insane Jeremiah Wright to a guy who's preaches gangsta rap.

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