On the evening of November 4, 2008, African American churches all over the country sponsored election-return-watching parties; these churches, large and small, erupted into celebration when the election was called for Barack Obama. This image is particularly powerful if you know that it was in the black church, within the walls of some of these very sanctuaries, that African Americans first began to realize their political and human agency. And it is the power of the black church tradition that Barack Obama, a twenty-first-century politician, continues to draw on for inspiration and guidance.

The black church historically provided a gathering place in which African Americans could dream big dreams, and these big dreams gave rise to property ownership and educational institutions. The very first black schools, colleges, and universities were church-affiliated, and the very ground on which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century black churches were built often represented the first step to home ownership and property rights (and thus, voting rights). The pulpit of the black church historically birthed some of our country’s greatest speakers and statesmen, who drew on biblical imagery and wielded it with the cadences and rhythms unique to the black experience. The rituals and freedom of the black church gave black women power and authority as they negotiated the politics of both race and gender. The black church, for more than 300 years, was the center of religious, social, and cultural life for African Americans.

So as I watched the celebrations on election night at these churches, my soul reflected on the 300 years of political power and religious witness that the black church represents. These Christian churches celebrating an Obama victory believe in the eschatological hope of a better world that is to come; but they also believe in an ever-present God of peace and justice in this earthly world. In 1787, Absalom Jones, Richard Allen, and others left the white St. George’s Methodist Church because of the racism they experienced there, and they went on to found the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, the oldest black denomination. These men were drawing on their belief in a God who could establish a just kingdom on this earth, as it is in heaven. So on election night in 2008, I witnessed men and women throughout the nation celebrating the notion that they were just one step closer to that vision. And they were responding to a man who evoked the black church tradition in his speech.

When Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president in Denver, his rhetoric was as lively as any minister. He quoted Baptist preacher Martin Luther King Jr. when he said, “We cannot walk alone…and as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.” In his campaign speeches, Obama referenced Frederick Douglass, an AME preacher, when he said, “Don’t think for a minute that power will concede anything.” As Douglass reminds us in his 1845 slave memoir, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” It is no accident that Obama chose to pay homage to two of the greatest ministers that the black church tradition has produced.

Barack Obama is international and cosmopolitan; he is biracial and multiethnic; he is highly intelligent and sophisticated. And yet, the strength of the people, the words, and the rhythms of the black church are also a part of what has made him who he is. It is a part of what has made America what America is. We, as a nation, are a people of many faiths, religious traditions, creeds, and doctrines. And that diversity is our strength. The black church remains a forceful institution, alongside many other organizations and institutions, devoted to the cause of peace and justice for all people. But we cannot forget that the black church is also a living witness, a historical reminder that the Christian church can, and must, produce men and women committed to being visionaries, servant-leaders, and active agents for social change.

Barack Obama is just one man. As president for the next four years, he will be faced with some of the toughest economic and social conditions that this nation has ever known. He will make many mistakes and missteps. We, as a nation, will make a judgment in a few short years as to the effectiveness of Obama’s political leadership. But my prayer is that the hope and the energy and the change that fueled his campaign, stirred the skeptics, and inspired the disenfranchised will be the same hope, energy, and change that Obama brings to bear on his decisions for our nation. He is the product of an enduring political and religious legacy that extends from David Walker to Anna Julia Cooper to Martin Luther King Jr. to Barbara Jordan. President Barack Obama is standing on the shoulders of giants.

Yolanda Pierce, Ph.D., is Princeton Seminary’s Elmer G. Homrighausen Associate Professor of African American Religion and Literature, and Liaison with the Princeton University Center for African American Studies.

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