Obama Speech Injects Race Into Easter Sermons

Barack Obama altered the agenda for many Easter sermons with his risky speech last week on racial acrimony, the New York Times reports. Ministers of a variety of faiths say they will use Obama’s words—framed to explain the incendiary statements of his former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright—when speaking to congregations on Christianity’s most holy day.

As congregants swarm to services today, the most-attended day of the year, some ministers say they believe church “should be a community within which the pain can be shared,” and so will talk about the furor. Others say they’ll wait to preach on the issue because, as one evangelical minister said, “Easter is about Easter and the resurrection of Jesus.”