Churches Reach Out To Mayoral Candidates

"There was a heavy concentration of influence in the faith community. Pastors were the main leaders," said Sterling Tucker, former head of the city's Urban League and a city council member in the 1970s.

Without elected leadership until the 1970s, Washington had a unique political narrative, Tucker said; civil rights activists -- many from churches -- segued directly from being community leaders to political leaders.

Clergy openly endorsed candidates, and a reciprocal relationship developed, particularly when it came to city grant money, faith leaders say.

"I think under the [Marion] Barry administrations, the clergy were so tied into the administration and had received so many favors from it, that when it came time for the religious community to speak prophetically against Barry's antics, it could not," said A. Knighton Stanley, retiring senior minister at Peoples Congregational United Church of Christ.

Some faith leaders were courted because they had large congregations whose votes they could deliver. Then, the culture changed. Churchgoing voters fled the city in search of cheaper real estate. Advocacy groups -- including those for gays and lesbians and for developers -- grew in influence, and the city's racial and religious mix became more diverse. And the role of the black church changed.

"African American churches were the one institution that was fully owned by the African American community. But that has been changing; there are many other places where there is leadership, not just the church," said the Rev. Clark Lobenstine, executive director of the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington.

Since the 1950s, federal tax code has barred nonprofit organizations from participating in political campaigns. IRS literature says clergy members may publicly support candidates, as long as they make clear they are not speaking on behalf of their institution and don't use institutional assets -- such as a church publication or a church function.

In the meantime, however, congregants became less likely to want political advice from the pulpit, ministers say.

"I don't think there are many churches left where people would follow the clergy," said Stanley, who has led Peoples Congregational since 1968. "Most of those people who might have done what I told them to do, they are citizens of heaven now."

Today, some say that, through advocacy work, the faith community is more involved than it used to be but that it has removed itself from politics. To some, this is a sign of progress. Others think the city's poor have lost out because faith leaders were silent in development battles.

Certainly, candidates still visit churches, mosques and synagogues. And influential church leaders remain, including the Rev. H. Beecher Hicks Jr., of the 6,000-member Metropolitan Baptist Church, and the Rev. Wallace Charles Smith, of the 4,000-member Shiloh Baptist Church. The Washington Interfaith Network, a group focused on political organizing, says its volunteers have visited 4,000 homes this summer to register voters.

On a recent Sunday, D.C. Council member Adrian M. Fenty (D-Ward 4) took his mayoral campaign to the Holy Christian Missionary Baptist Church for All People, where he received an unusually public display of support from the pulpit. The Rev. Stephen E. Young Sr., in a booming voice, told about 100 congregants that he wanted to see Fenty win in "a landslide!" Fenty received a few "amens," and Young, shouting into the microphone, said, "Let's pray that once [Fenty] gets in that office, he doesn't forget us."