ABSTRACT
How far was Obama willing to go in distancing himself from Reverend Wright? Was he, as president, going to abandon the minister who was so influential in his life? Was that a metaphor for abandoning the sixties? Obama drew considerable outrage by asking the conservative Reverend Rick Warren, an opponent of gay marriage, to offer the inaugural invocation. Reverend Warren appeared to be the pastoral and polar opposite of Reverend Wright. But Obama performed a balancing act that might characterize his presidency, choosing Reverend Joseph Lowery to offer the benediction. Lowery, an original associate of Martin Luther King, a leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a supporter of gay marriage, offered more than balance. He tipped the scales, calling on the Lord: “Deliver us from the exploitation of the poor and least of these, and from favoritism to the rich, the elite of these,” and “We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right.”
