“It’s ushered in a new generation of leadership,” said [the Rev.] Mr. [David] Brawley, 40, the incoming pastor of Saint Paul Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn. “It symbolizes the Moses generation passing the baton to the Joshua generation. So the Obama presidency presents us with both an opportunity and a challenge.”
The shift is more than simply chronological. The generational dividing line during the Democratic primaries found many of the established leaders of black Christianity ”” Calvin O. Butts III, Floyd H. Flake, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Suzan Johnson Cook ”” either supporting Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton or staying conspicuously neutral. Mr. Obama’s director of religious affairs, meanwhile, was a 25-year-old Pentecostal minister, Joshua Dubois.
By their life experiences alone, the younger echelon of black clergy sees America differently than the elders whom it learned from and indeed reveres.
Mr. Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia last March made this exact point, as he tried to distinguish his moderate stance from the sharp, prophetic rhetoric of his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
Black politicians with a “Rev.” before their name.
Obama’s election is certainly likely to undercut Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.