By BEN BLANKENSHIP
For the Stafford County Sun
Published: April 10, 2008

He hit a home run. That was my first reaction to that memorable speech by Barack Obama. That was before all the pundits hailed its greatness, its deficiencies and his gall.

How dumb could he have been to put race front and center in his campaign?

And as we now know, his congregation isn’t one of those quiet, sedate, mainline churches.

Outbursts from the pulpit, like those of Obama’s pastor, do make a lasting impression, don’t they, at least on the congregation?

Well, let me think a minute. Obama must have sat through many of those sermons. I recall at an early stage in my life no resounding impact of any I heard either.

Fact is, the sermon would typically come after the singing, which I enjoyed. The preacher’s words would then let me shift into neutral and, often as not, doze off.

But wait a moment. Now I remember one time back in my old West Texas church where a sermon made a big impact. Maybe you recall a similar occasion.

After all, it was PLEDGE Sunday. I’m not talking about money here, but a far graver concern, abstinence.

All the adult congregants were asked to stand up and sign a pledge not to drink booze, my locality being reputedly bone dry, both for beer and stronger spirits — except of course for the bootleggers and private clubs. So it was great sport to see some of the town fathers standing tall on those PLEDGE Sunday mornings, having been observed bellying up to the bar the night before.

Yes, ours was one of those mainline, teetotaling Protestant churches of which there were several others in my town, but oh so different.

We Methodists sniffed at the Baptists down the block, and some of us even made sure to visit their church when baptism services were slated, to watch the new converts get dunked in elaborate baptismal bathtubs. In contrast, we merely sprinkled for our baptisms in a prim token gesture of identical meaning.

It was also fun to take communion at the nearby Episcopal Church where they served real wine instead of juice. And across town, the Church of Christ folks were a sight. They wouldn’t let pianos or organs accompany their singing, which incidentally was excellent. Further, we were surely not going to Heaven like they were unless we took up their particular crosses.

There were only a few Catholics around. They worshiped the Pope and they had Nuns herding their school kids in uniforms. Really peculiar.
A lot of difference it all made when it came to town morals. No beer ads, no liquor stores, but at one time, my good old Abilene ranked near the top nationally in per capita alcoholism, according to Alcoholics Anonymous data.

But me, I never touched the stuff, most of the time. Instead, late on Sunday nights I’d tune my bedside radio to the Old Fashioned Gospel Hour with Rev. Fuller from Long Beach, Calif.

The good singing came first, and by the time he started preaching, I was already asleep, as usual.

Then during one vacation to California, my parents took me to see one of the wonders of the time, a genuine mega-church. Yes, we had them back then, too. It
was Amy Semple McPherson’s Four Square Gospel Church. Its Sunday night service was a doozy. Three or four huge choirs sang, accompanied by a big uniformed brass band that raised the rafters for that crowd of some 5,000, I’d guess.

However, nobody I’d ever heard sounded so loud or as out of control as that pastor of our young Barack (no politically correct middle name) Obama. Maybe it’s just par for the course for such services to venture beyond anything most of us would want to embrace.

But who are we to say? They probably don’t dunk their baptism candidates or stand up and swear to never drink that stuff again or handle rattlesnakes or praise polygamy. As the true believers proclaim that Jesus once said: In my Father’s house are many mansions. I’d add, a whole bunch of them.

I guess that’s OK, even including that inflammatory Chicago minister of possibly our next president.

Ben Blankenship is an Aquia Harbour resident and career journalist. Reach him at .