Shaw residents who have long wished for more cafes and restaurants in their up-and-coming neighborhood have some reason to hope: Shiloh Baptist Church, notorious for owning numerous fallow properties in the neighborhood, has undergone a changing of the guard.

Shiloh’s board of trustees is comprised of 10 members who serve no more than two three-year terms, and according to Shiloh trustee Ralph Lee, four tenured members’ terms expired in January, including the chairperson’s, and more progressive members have been appointed to the board to replace them. Lee says there are now enough board members who favor developing the church’s unoccupied properties, mostly along 9th Street NW, to get plans off the ground.

Lee says the neighborhood can expect changes soon. “We’re still in the planning stages with our architects developing our master plan,” he says. “It’s long overdue.”

Alex Padro, advisory neighborhood commissioner for the neighborhood and a longtime critic of the church, met with Lee and says he feels “encouraged” by the changes. Padro says the board hasn’t presented him with an official timeline or plan of action, but he says he’s hopeful.

“The difference is that the folks that have now been put into office have a clear mandate to move forward with the development rather than just continue to sit around on their hands and not make any decisions,” he says.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

AdamsMorgan
Ward 1 Council candidate and Listserv troll Chad Williams writes an open letter to his community in which he touts his ability to…chat with gang members. “We need a councilmember who truly understands how to reduce the criminal activities of gangs in Ward 1. We need a councilmember who is comfortable speaking to members of 640 (Park Morton Apartments), 35 Double O (3500 block of 14th Street), MS-13, Pussy Pound and others. That Councilmember must have the resolve to persuade gangs and enlighten these adolescents to ways of better economic opportunities than a life in crime.” One resident calls bullshit. “Okay, so you have ‘spoken with’ the various gangs,” she writes. “When? How many times? How did your speaking with them reduce crime in our neighborhood?…Do you have any empirical evidence to support your assumptions? Did you come to these conclusions after ‘speaking with’ the various gangs? Please tell us how you have persuaded the gangs in the past; and why you think the gang members will opt for a different lifestyle once they are enlightened about ‘better economic opportunities than a life in crime.’”

LDSAbstractSingles
This week, local Mormons tackle illegal immigration. Xenophobic rants ensue: “Really, its becoming more and more clear that the U.S. is getting lost in the cultures of all the other countries out there,” JC writes. “Nobody even knows what the United States stands for anymore unless they are talking about high divorce rate, lots of fat people, and increasingly less morals (Pres. Clinton).…I can’t walk down the street without being bombarded by some other language on a sign or billboard.” Blake responds: “Yes we should be in better control of immigration, but the fear of losing ‘our culture’ is silly. And try not to forget that these 10 million illegals are not sitting around asking for a handout.” JC, however, is not to be talked down to—and he also remains oblivious to the fact that his command of written English would barely pass TOEFL requirements. “I’m really somewhat surprised to see how liberal some people in the church have become,” he grumbles.

TakomaDC
The battle over the Piney Branch Road Safeway’s alcohol license continues. “I am a fan of being able to do one-stop-shopping at Safeway for a meal snd beverage (including alcohol),” writes Evelyn. “I also understand the concerns of not wanting to be a 24 hour liquor store. What I am concerned about is that we don’t make alcohol purchase an option of only the wealthy and well-to-do.” But Judy finds the discussion tangential. “I don’t think I care if the Safeway sells alcohol,” writes Judy, “but I wish they would care more about the shoppers’ experience in the store.” Hence her calls for Safeway to “stop selling farm-raised fish” and “stop their Sunday hot dog grilling, which can only be wasting more $ than it is raising”

Every Tuesday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

colonial
Who says Mormons are square? While boozing is a well-known no-no, and some Mormons won’t even set foot in a bar, a group of Colonial ward singles organizing a Family Home Evening (a Monday night gathering to talk gospel shop) are willing to ignore the debauchery at Whitlow’s on Wilson for the sake of cheap eats. “For those unfamiliar with the delights of WoW, it is a ‘college-esque’ beer and burger joint in Clarendon, and on Monday nights they offer half price hamburgers,” writes the organizer. “So dust off your ID…and come join us for lots of fun conversation and great burgers.” In a separate post, a single Mormon dude is—gasp—looking for fly honeys as roommates, another big no-no. “Hi, i’m looking for cool coed’s.…females down with living with a fun guy!” he writes. “I know there must be tons of cool girls okay with living with a guy(s)…as there seemed to be endless numbers of girls living with guys down at duck beach for a week(end). Cool girls need only respond. Thanks.”

shepherdpark
The weekend’s crime reports are in. For some, robbery appears to be just another errand: “C1(H,M,21) AND C2(H,F,25) RPT S1 APPROACHED C1-2 AS S1 TALKED ON A CELL PHONE. S1 THEN TOLD THE PERSON ON THE PHONE, ‘HOLD ON.’ IN SPANISH. S1 THEN PULLED OUT A KNIFE AND IN SPANISH STATED, ‘GIVE ME ALL YOU GOT.’ C1-2 COMPLIED. S1 FLED WEST ON TAYLOR ST NW.”

TakomaDC
While the city celebrated the Fourth of July, some Takoma Park residents were inside just waiting for it to end. “I’m writing to find out if anyone knows about a time limit for setting off fireworks in DC,” one woman writes. “Right now, it sounds like a war is going on outside our windows, and my three year old has his pillow wrapped around his head…and is scared stiff.” But some think folks need to loosen up a little. “It’s a festival,” writes another resident. “A celebration. Enjoy it. God knows, it should happen more often!” “Unfortunately this is really hard to do when you have a screaming child,” says another, who then offers a bit of advice: “My only suggestion with noise is to desensitize the child someway—allowing him or her to make sudden loud noises or to see them made so they become understandable. They seem to go on for weeks around here.”

Yesterday, Mayor Anthony A. Williams asked Bishop Alfred A. Owens Jr. to apologize for recent toxic remarks disparaging gay men. He said a mea culpa was the only way he could allow Owens to remain an honorary member of the mayor’s interfaith council.

Today, the bishop delivered. Sort of.

In a letter in today’s Washington Post, Owens employs the classic I’m-sorry-if-I-offended-anyone apology. The bishop writes that, “During my Palm Sunday sermon, I used words that the D.C. Coalition of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Men and Women has denounced as offensive. It was not my purpose to wound anyone or discriminate against any group, and I apologize for any offense.”

After outlining efforts by his Greater Mount Calvary Holy Church to address HIV-AIDS prevention and his support for those who wanted help in pursuing a heterosexual orientation, Owens went on to write: “I will not submit my sermons through political filters for fear of recrimination by political or social groups. On any given Sunday, I preach about love, faith and holiness, and, yes, about hell and sin. For that, I offer no apology.”

The way the mayor sees things, Owens hasn’t quite delivered enough. “It was a good first step,” Williams says. “I am very heartened to see that he’s taken the step.” But the mayor stopped short of saying the Bishop is now an honorary Interfaith Council member in good standing. He characterized the letter as, “a little bit ambiguous.”

Williams says that’s why he wants to sit down for a chat with the bishop and repeated his public request for a meeting. The mayor says he has not heard from the bishop about any kind of get-together.

LISTEN
Excerpt from Owens’ April 9 sermon (MP3 format, 3 MB)
(Photo by Darrow Montgomery)

Bishop Alfred A. Owens Jr.—pastor of the Greater Mount Calvary Holy Church, one of the city’s largest congregations—had a clever theme for his April 9 service. His sermon was titled “Fan or Follower!” Owens, who is an honorary member of Mayor Anthony A. Williams’ Interfaith Council, delivered a message urging congregants to be move beyond being fans of the church to becoming followers of the righteous path.

He also made clear that one segment of his congregation is not welcome on that path: gay men.

During a dramatic presentation on how strong men follow the teachings of the church, he pointed out that “real men” for the Lord are straight. “It takes a real man to confess Jesus as Lord and Savior. I’m not talking about no faggot or no sissy,” said Owens on a church tape recording. “Wait a minute! Let all the real men come on down here and take a bow,” he said, inviting them to the front of the church. “All the real men—I’m talking about the straight men,” he preached. “You ain’t funny and you ain’t cranky, but you’re straight. Come on down here and walk around and praise God that you are straight. Thank him that you’re straight. All the straight men that’s proud to be a Christian, that’s proud to be a man of God.”

Owens did not return calls seeking comment.

One attendee of the service, who describes himself as a gay, says the house was packed for the Palm Sunday service. He and “about 20” other closeted gay men in the crowd, he says, felt they had no choice but to join Owens’ spontaneous celebration of straightness.

He calls the bishop’s message “offensive” because it suggests “it is impossible to be gay and serve God.” He also objects to Owens’ use of “faggot” and “sissy” to describe gay men. “If I wasn’t delivered,” he says, “I wouldn’t have been delivered on that day.”

The Bishop’s anti-gay rhetoric is no surprise coming from the No. 2 man in the conservative Mount Calvary Holy Church of America Inc. Gay activists say Owens has a history of homophobic sermons, but add that his congregation include numerous gay members.

Sermons less than welcoming to the gay community are nothing new in D.C. The Rev. Willie Wilson of Anacostia’s Union Temple Baptist Church delivered a strident anti-gay sermon last summer, warning that lesbianism was about to “take over our community.” His comments stoked a outrage in the gay community and prompted many city leaders to denounce the politically powerful minister.

Owens doesn’t share Wilson’s loaded political history, but his sermon celebrating straight men adds fuel to the simmering battle between the city’s conservative churches and the politically powerful gay community.

Owens’ 7,000-member Northeast congregation has long been a regular election-season campaign stop for city politicians, even though most members of the church live in Prince George’s County, Md. Last month, Owens offered up his church as the venue for Ward 5 Councilmember and mayoral candidate Vincent Orange’s “State of Ward 5” address. The D.C. Council also passed the “Bishop Alfred A. Owens Jr. Recognition Resolution” in 2004, for his church’s work in the community on drug treatment and HIV/AIDS prevention.

Ward 8 activist Philip Pannell says the bishop “has a longstanding record of homophobia. I literally will not step in his church,” says Pannell, who is gay.

The mayor’s religious advisor, Dr. Susan Newman, says Owens is a non-voting “honorary member” of the council, based on his leadership post in the national Mount Calvary church. Owens, she says, has not attended a meeting of the council for more than a year. “He’s not one of the high-profile, politically active pastors that you might see on the news,” she says. Newman says the sermons of any Interfaith Council member do not reflect the views of the mayor’s council.

Mayoral candidate Marie Johns has snagged some prime Ward 8 real estate for one of her huge banner campaign signs. Motorists passing through the intersection of Good Hope Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in Anacostia can’t miss her “different. real. better!” slogan or the giant image of a smiling Johns.

The banner is tacked up on a wooden facade underneath a small “Welcome to Historic Anacostia” sign. The display wall also includes a placard advertising the owner of the corner lot: “UNION TEMPLE BAPTIST CHURCH: ‘WORKING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE.’”

The Johns campaign isn’t paying anything for the space–it’s chalking it up as an in-kind donation from the church, according to campaign manager Leslie Pinkston.

But that free advertising might end up costing Johns some valuable political capital.

Union Temple is led by the Rev. Willie Wilson, who last summer angered D.C.’s gay community with a sermon outlining his rather intolerant take on homosexuality. The July 3 sermon, which was recorded and sold as a CD, ended up in the hands of the Washington Blade, sparking protests from gay leaders and prompting denunciations from a wide range of elected officials.

Some highlights from the now-famous sermon make it pretty clear why the gay community has issues with the charismatic minister:

• “Lesbianism” is about “to take over our community.”
• “[W]hen you get down to this thing, women falling down on another woman, strapping your up with something, it ain’t real….It ain’t natural”
• “Any time somebody got to slap some grease on your behind, and stick something in you, it’s something wrong with that. Your butt ain’t made for that.”

Not that anyone was that surprised at Wilson’s fiery outburst. He had already staked out a firm reputation for race baiting among D.C. politicos.

Wilson led an 1986 boycott of an Asian-owned takeout near his church after he said a member of his flock had been “disrespected” by a store owner. When asked by the press whether his demands that an African-American be allowed to run the business inflamed racial tensions, Wilson replied that if Anacostia residents had been less forgiving of the store owner, “we would have cut his head off and rolled it down the street.”

But Wilson can be valuable political ally for a newcomer like Johns. He commands the attention of legions of east-of-the-river voters and mounted a strong mayoral run in 2002. Since the sermon, though, gay activists and Wilson have remained bitter enemies. And some activists say Johns’ willingness to accept free space from his church constitutes a tacit Wilson endorsement.

“I would think if [Johns] was sufficiently plugged in she would be well aware of [Wilson's] record of hate-mongering,” says Rick Rosendall of the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance, an advocacy group that does not endorse candidates. “She should stop pretending to be committed to tolerance if she’s not prepared to prove it.”

Pinkston, who says Johns was “in the field” and unavailable for comment, argues that the high-visibility donation has nothing to do with Wilson or any tacit backing of Johns’ effort. “It is not an endorsement. We haven’t even discussed an endorsement,” says Pinkston, who says she personally approached a Union Temple staffer about hanging the banner.

The campaign was looking for some high-profile exposure on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade route, she says. “[Johns] had no conversation with Mr. Wilson, or with the church directly….Bottom line, the location was ideal. The parade went right passed it.”

Pinkston declined to comment on how voters might react to even an arms-length political association with Wilson. “This campaign is really about building bridges and I would rather not get into the other sensitive issues at this time,” she says. “This is just about the banner.”

Every Tuesday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

LDSAbstractSingles
When a guitar player performing a special musical number during a Mormon church service stops mid-strum, instructs the A/V guy to “plug me in,” and proceeds to rock out the hymn (think Marty McFly at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance), local Mormons wonder if you’re allowed to jam at sacrament meetings. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” one man writes. “The most I’ve ever seen is the spontaneous gospel choir jam. I think it was a testimony meeting, a family got up and, as a sign or appreciation to the ward, started to vocally rock out. We were cool with them after, but tried not to be too encouraging.” Another man wonders if the guitar was acoustic or electric. “I think [an acoustic guitar] would have a completly different effect than a solid body electric,” he writes. “THe Solid body is usually seen as the embodiment of evil by some people.” Says another, “Personally, I thought electric instruments weren’t allowed because people were trying to sleep during [church] and it would wake them up .” Later, a poster claims that according to a church handbook, guitars and brass instruments aren’t approved for chapel. And sometimes God decides to enforce the rule himself. “We had a french horn player in the Colonial Ward…[who] joked that it wasn’t really something you’d normally hear in an LDS chapel,” recalled another woman. “Then, while she was playing, lightning struck and our power went out. It was hilarious.”

cleveland-park
Cleveland Park residents finally notice the outrageous housing market. “Recently I have seen some postings on the list for Houses for Sale in our area,” a renter rants. “The list prices $900K+ for 3 bedroom houses are simply absurd….Do people living in the neighborhood really want to see it turn into an area where only millionaires can afford to live?” This prompts lessons in Introductory Economics (The prices are “not absurd—they are simply (unfortunately?) what the market will bear,” one man writes. “An object’s value is what someone is willing to pay for it.”) and History (“It’s important to realize that Cleveland Park was never an inexpensive place to live,” a woman writes). This is lost on a college student who works herself into a tizzy in a post titled, “Cleveland Park Realistate.” “I am a young person, who is just about to graduate from college, and my dream is to own a one bedroom condo in Cleveland Park sometime in the future,” she wails. “Right now I am renting a studio, and I believe that this is all that I will be able to afford in the neighborhood for the rest of my life! I refuse to move out to the Suburbs, let alone leave DC for some place like Texas!”

tenleytown
Residents of Tenleytown, also dealing with skyrocketing housing prices, are more concerned with the absence of a neighborhood library. “Where is the storefront library that was promised long ago as a temporary solution to the lack of a library in Tenleytown?” one resident wants to know. “Back on December 10th, a meeting was held on the Tenleytown library issue and Kathy Patterson and DC library officials indicated that an announcement about the storefront library was to be made very soon thereafter,” responds one man. “Every time I inquire about the storefront library, the answer is always ‘a lease is close to being signed,’” writes a woman. “I heard a rumor recently that a site at AU is a strong possibility, and yes, that a lease is close to being signed.” One resident isn’t holding his breath. “I suspect that the Baseball Stadium will be build and probably a year old before they even start on the Library,” he grumbles.

Many D.C. churches observe a tradition of allowing candidates for city office to seize the pulpit for a few precious moments. It works out well for the office-seekers, who get to speak of their religious devotion before an audience teeming with registered voters—and they don’t have to respond to sniping from opponents, a constant annoyance at candidate forums.

So why didn’t mayoral hopeful Linda Cropp stand up on Sunday and preach her gospel of fiscal savvy and experienced leadership to the congregation at Dupont Circle’s Foundry United Methodist Church?

“It’s our general policy for that not to happen,” said a church official. Although Cropp was introduced at the beginning of the 70-minute service, she had to wait until coffee hour to get her message across. The Catholic chairman of the D.C. Council was last seen telling Senior Minister Dean J. Snyder, “It was so nice worshipping with you.”