(The Rev.) Mr. Obama

Barack Obama and family went to church in Chicago on Sunday, Father's Day, not Trinity United Church of Christ from which he and his wife recently resigned, but another black mega-church on Chicago's south side, the Apostolic Church of God. Mr. Obama addressed the audience: "Too many fathers are MIA, too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes." He spoke to his experience as a son, abandoned by his father; and he spoke to his own imperfections as a father of two young daughters. His larger audience was a black community not in the pews: its young men who conceive children but do not father them, particularly in a functioning family.

As Rev. Al Sharpton quickly pointed out, some in the black community see this as airing dirty laundry and also a beating up on the victims. So Mr. Obama's remarks in the black community are somewhat controversial.

In my estimation Mr. Obama spoke on a topic and to an audience no white politician would/could address, using his stature to speak from a proverbial "bully pulpit." He has a preacher's rhetorical skills (reminiscent of Dr. King). He also has a preacher's inclinations to moralize, as in this Father's Day address that preached the virtue of personal responsibility in the context of self-confession. ("I trangress, too.") Even his motif of hope, as in his memoir The Audacity of Hope, has a profound theological dimension.

I'm beginning to think that Mr. Obama might be the most integrally religious presidential candidate we've had since Woodrow Wilson.