Quote

I was raised in a very religious home with two parents who were deeply involved in the black church. When I was young, I went to a small black AME church in New Jersey.

Jeremiah Wright is one of the greatest prophetic preachers that black America has produced. What I find striking is that many white brothers and sisters miss the fact that there would be no black church if the white church wasn't political and racist in refusing to worship with us.

I was born into a family of preachers.

Preachers at black churches are the last people left in the English-speaking world who know the schemes and tropes of classical rhetoric: parallelism, antithesis, epistrophe, synecdoche, metonymy, periphrasis, litotes - the whole bag of tricks.

I grew up in Synagogue in the boys' choir. We didn't listen to music in the house; only at temple. Then I went to a mostly African American high school on the South Side of Chicago and joined a gospel choir.

I don't like to consider myself a normal preacher. When you look at religious people, they're the ones who hung Christ from the cross. I look at myself as a man carrying a message of hope.

Both my parents are Methodist preachers, I grew up in a church.

My grandpa was a preacher.

My uncle was a preacher, and I used to go watch him preach. He was also funny, so I'm very 'preacher-ish' on stage, not by intent but because that's where I learned to talk in front of people.

I love the fact that we, as black people, carry our faith with us. We share it and embrace it and love it and talk about it because we talk about everything else and why not that and that was the first impression that I had that really touched me.