Joey Kurtzman wears jeans and sunglasses. Last night at a party, he chatted up novelist Salmon Rushdie.
Jeff* drives up in a sportscar to pick us up.
Joey climbs in. I try to sit on his lap. There’s no room.
Joey takes his hybrid and arrives ten minutes behind us.
My driver is crazy. Heavy on the accelerator and heavy on the brake all the while checking his email on his cell phone with the windows down and the air rushing in and my fears rising up.
We hit the Church of God in Christ. Bishop Charles E. Blake is in charge of the church and the denomination.
According to Wikipedia: "The Church of God in Christ, Incorporated is the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States. The membership is predominantly black with more than six million members in the United States alone. The church has congregations in nearly 60 countries around the world."
We squeeze into our pew at 11:05 a.m.
There are a lot of fine looking black women in this church. Everyone’s dressed nice. Everyone smells nice. Everyone’s friendly.
If you need a hug, this is the place to come.
I feel my jungle fever raging.
There comes a time in every Jew’s life when he needs to hear some good gospel singing.
The Church of God in Christ is 100 years old.
A lady up front hawks some fine $25 throw rugs featuring the mug of founder Charles Harrison Mason.
Prayer cushions are just $3. All Bibles in the bookstore are 20% off and with the discount coupon on page five of the bulletin, you can snag an extra 10% off.
There are about 700 people in the house, about 90% black.
Once the singing starts and crowd rises to their feet and sways back and forth with the beat, I get chills up and down my spine.
This is Unity Sunday with a special emphasis on outreach to the deaf, dumb and blind.
Joey’s on his feet, singing all the words to "Blessed Assurance."
The guest speaker is the former congressman and honorable reverend Floyd H. Flake.
He encourages the audience to make something of their lives. To get educated and to work hard and to start their own businesses and to buy homes and build equity.
He repeatedly whips the crowd into a frenzy and then eases off and then rebuilds the frenzy.
Compared to going to shul, going to this church is like snorting spiritual cocaine. It is a staggering series of highs. It’s like the Happy Minyan times twelve.
Listen here (sound file starts halfway through the sermon).
Former U.S. Congressman, the Reverend Dr. Floyd H. Flake is the senior pastor of the more than 17,000 member Greater Allen A. M. E. Cathedral of New York in Jamaica, Queens, and President of Wilberforce University in Ohio. During his 28-year pastorate, Allen has become one of the nation’s foremost Christian churches and development corporations. The church and its subsidiary corporations operate with an annual budget of over $34 million. The church also owns expansive commercial and residential developments; a 500-student private school founded by Flake and his wife Elaine, and various commercial and social service enterprises, which has placed it among the nation’s most productive religious and urban development institutions. The corporations, church administrative offices, school, and ministries comprise one of the Borough of Queens’ largest private sector employers.
From 1986-97 Flake served in the U.S. Congress, and was a member of the Banking and Finance, and The Small Business Committees. He established a reputation for bipartisan, innovative legislative initiatives to revitalize urban commercial and residential communities. Most notably, the Community Development Financial Institutions Act of 1993 contained provisions named the Bank Enterprise Act (BEA), authored by Representative Floyd Flake, which provided incentives for financial institutions to make market-oriented investments in destabilized urban and rural economies. These BEA provisions along with the Community Development Fund Initiative (CDFI) continue to yield millions of dollars worth of direct and secondary investment for residential and commercial growth. It also increased private sector capital flow in communities with declining economic fortunes. The BEA has directly impacted the volume of residential mortgage and commercial lending in grossly under-invested locales.
In Congress Flake also concentrated on garnering Federal resources and projects for his community. He won two regional facilities: The Federal Drug Administration (F.D.A.) and the Federal Aviation Administration (F.A.A.), which generated more than two thousand jobs while also upgrading the stability and the aesthetics of the District. He prevailed upon the Clinton Administration to fund the Nation’s first One Stop Small Business Capital Center (Jamaica Business Resource Center J.B.R.C.) which is the model for additional centers that are now operating in the Federal Empowerment Zones. He also authored legislation to fund the expansion of JFK Airport and build the rail link from the plane to the train, which connects JFK to Jamaica and Penn Stations. This has helped to further development of the Downtown Jamaica area.
The Greater Allen Cathedral’s operations are a national paradigm of church-centered, faith based, public/private community educational and economic development. Further, Allen’s administrative structure, efficiency, and development efforts have increasingly attracted international and national recognition in print and electronic media. He and the church have been profiled on CNN, CBS, BET, C-Span, PBS, and in Time, Black Enterprise, Ebony, the New York Times, Readers Digest and Los Angeles Times, and many other publications, lectures and speeches. He is a proponent of quality education and market-oriented community and economic development through speeches and lectures in corporate settings, policy forums, seminaries and divinity schools and countless other forums. He is a lecturer at the Harvard Divinity School’s Annual Summer Leadership Institute. Under the Reverend Flake’s leadership, and true to its Christian doctrine of self-help and communal responsibility, Allen Church has provided resources and guidance for innumerable faith-based and secular institutions. Its net assets are valued at over $100 million.
Dr. Flake earned a Doctor of Ministry Degree (D.Min.) from the United Theological Seminary in Dayton, OH and holds a B.A. from Wilberforce University with additional studies at Payne Theological Seminary and Northeastern University School of Business. He also has numerous honorary degrees including: Boston University, Fisk University, Lincoln University (PA), and Cheney University of Pennsylvania.
Before assuming the pastorate of Allen Church, Reverend Flake served in various capacities at Boston University: Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center, Interim Dean of the Chapel, and Dean of Students. This followed successful stints as Associate Dean of Students at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and Marketing Analyst for the Xerox Corporation.
Flake serves as a member of the following boards: The President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education; The Fannie Mae Foundation; Edison Schools (where he formerly served as President); The Princeton Review; The New York City Investment Fund Civic Capital Corporation; The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City; and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Advisory Committee on Banking Policy. Flake is also a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Social and Economic Policy, an Adjunct Fellow on the Advisory Board of The Brookings Institute Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, and a member of The NYC 2012 Olympic Committee. He is also a former columnist for the New York Post.
Rev. Flake authored a best-selling book, "The Way of the Bootstrapper: Nine Action Steps for Achieving Your Dreams." He and his wife, Elaine co-authored the book, "Practical Virtues: Everyday Values and Devotions for African American Families", published by Harper Collins.
The Flakes are the parents of four children.