For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.- Barack Obama on 3-18-08

You people know a lot. So what I share here may not be news to you. But I had some experiences in the great city of Nashville that illuminate the words above for me, so in case it helps, I'll share them here.

My wife and I lived there for four years. It was for me an exposure to the black community that I had never had before. I was brought up in a family where race was a non-issue. I had friends of different races growing up, and it was never an issue for me. But then...the bubble got shattered.

I moved to San Antonio, Texas in the 9th grade. And there weren't very many black people at my school. So they all ate at the same table. Together. As a small community. And not one white person ate with them. I hated that. "Why are they seperate?" I wondered.

I also noticed that many of the Mexicans who went to our school (this is not a racial aspersion, they were citizens of Mexico) all sat together. I managed to breach that bubble. I don't know how, but they let me sit with them. They became my friends, where I otherwise didn't have any. I'm still grateful to them for that. (That's how I learned dirty words in Spanish, but that story will never be told. :)

After graduation, I moved to Waco, TX to go to Baylor University. Talk about segregated. There was a part of Waco that was poor, and populated mostly by blacks. It made me sad. It made me start to wonder about the sorts of things that Obama talked about in his speech. Why with segregation gone, did poverty and segregation in practice still seem to exist?

After graduating from Baylor I moved to Nashville, TN. I had the priviledge of working in downtown Nashville at the Baptist Book Store. Oh, man was that awesome. I got to meet and build relationships with members, deacons and pastors of black churches. They were probably 50% of my customers. From some relationships that developed I grew to have a deep love and respect for the black church and the black community.

One thing I learned is that it's different. And I'm not talking about worship style. We all know that. The differences are far more profound. In the black church, there is a sense of community that I'm not sure that white folks can ever fully understand. There is a great deal of power and authority given to the officers of the church. The ushers, deacons, Pastor's aids, and associate pastors were so important to their churches. It was interesting to me that people with these offices often came to me looking for guidebooks. They wanted handbooks on "how to be an usher" or "pastor's aid" or whatever. These kind of questions never came from white churches.

There was a certain seriousness and formality that went along with these positions. So much that people wanted us to use their title when we entered their names into the computer. "Usher Jones" or "Deacon Smith" or the like. For a long time I didn't understand it.

I also didn't understand the pastor's aid. These are folks in the church who serve the pastor. Oh, man do I wish white churches had these folks. :) Sometimes they would pick up his dry cleaning, pick up his kids from school, and assist him in any and every way. Black preachers hardly ever came into the store alone. They almost always had an aid or an assistant with them. And it was a big deal.

I still didn't understand all this until I spent some time in a preaching class taught by a black professor who had the kindness to explain the black church to us ignorant white preacher boys.

You see, going all the way back to slavery, and even up through the 1960's blacks were kept out of society, the white man's world. The only place they had that was their own was church. And there safe within the walls of the black church, they could be honest. They could express anger about racism. They could support one another. They could ascend to some level of social recognition. This is part of the reason "church officers" are so important. For a long time this was all many blacks had, their positions in church.

I also came to learn that in the black community the pastor was important, real important. He was much more than the guy who preached on Sunday. He had a role that is far beyond that of the typical white pastor. He was community leader. Social advocate. I remember one of my black preacher friends saying to me that he had just come from an apartment complex where one of his church members was about to be thrown out for not paying rent. He told the landlord to give the member more time. He didn't ask, he told. Why? "Because I'm the pastor," he said to me. "Now when do you white preachers do things like that?" I'm not able to remember his exact words after that, but he explained that a black pastor has an authority in the community that extends far beyond the walls of the church.