WASHINGTON — Inauguration- week sermons would be videotaped to highlight President-elect Barack Obama’s rise to power in an unprecedented quest by the Library of Congress to capture this transfer of power for future generations.
The folks at the library’s American Folklife Center are soliciting churches, synagogues, mosques and others for copies of sermons or passionate speeches that focus on the significance of the Jan. 20 inauguration of Obama as the country’s first black president.
The Folklife Center is looking for both video and audio clips, all to be preserved in a public collection that includes interviews after Pearl Harbor and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“If a historian asks ‘How did Americans react to Obama’s inauguration?’ we’ll have immediate responses to this powerful event,” said Dr. David Taylor, head of research and programs at the American Folklife Center.
The “Inauguration 2009 Sermons and Orations Project” marks the first time the library has gathered this sort of material from a U.S. presidential inauguration. Taylor said the project is especially timely, with the inauguration coming a day after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and as it ties into King’s reputation as a great orator.
Nearly 70 percent of the 4,000 collections at the center involve the spoken word, whether it’s on paper, audio or video.
Michael Taft, head archivist at the Folklife Center, said it was decided to collect inauguration-themed sermons because that speech form is poetic, dramatic — and at some churches, “an important art form.”
One Washington church is already planning to answer the library’s call.
Foundry United Methodist Church, where former President Bill Clinton and his family attended services, said that it plans to invite the Obamas to attend and will contribute to the project by providing tapes and a manuscript of the inauguration-centered sermon to be delivered by guest Illinois preacher Bishop Gregory A. Palmer, president of the United Methodist Council of Bishops.
“It’s a moment of great adulation, joy and accomplishment for all persons in this nation, whether they voted for the president-elect or not,” Palmer said. “But this nation will not be better if every citizen isn’t engaged on a daily basis in making their communities the places they want them to be.”
