Civil Rights Leader & Baptist Pastor Otis Moss Retires

After 33 years as pastor of Mt. Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, Otis Moss Jr. has retired. Moss preached his final sermon at Mt. Olivet this past Sunday. Here’s a snippet from a Cleveland newspaper:

He began in a resonant, comforting voice, like a father telling bedtime stories to ease his children to sleep.

But the Rev. Otis Moss Jr.’s message of faith in God and hope for the future grew to a soulful crescendo — concluding his final Sunday sermon at Olivet Institutional Baptist Church before the congregation he has led for 33 years.

More than 3,000 people packed the church on Quincy Avenue in Cleveland to hear the farewell homily of a preacher who many count among the most influential in American history. After more than 50 years of leadership and activism — some alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — Moss will wrap up his career at Olivet at the end of one more worship service at noon New Year’s Eve.

Moss was a respected young activist during the Civil Rights Movement. Moss grew up in LaGrange, Georgia and earned his B.A. from Morehouse College in 1956 and his M.Div from the Morehouse School of Religion/Interdenominational Theological Center in 1959. He pastored Baptist churches in Georgia and Ohio before serving as co-pastor alongside Daddy King Sr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. In 1975, Moss was called to pastor Mt. Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland. For more biographical information, read here.

Moss’s son, Otis Moss III, is now the senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Click here watch Moss Jr. and Moss III tag-team preach an incredible sermon entitled “Can Moses Generation Meet The Joshua Generation.”

Moss was a speaker at the 2008 Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant in Atlanta where he delivered a sermon on Prophetic Preaching, Conscience and Courage. Here is a snippet from that sermon which I thoroughly enjoyed:

One of the great tragedies of our nation today is found in both in Democratic and Republican parties. The Republican Party has lost its conscience. The Democratic Party has lots its courage. And there is a cry, a cry for the Church to bring back conscience and courage into our public policy and political life. But we cannot bring back conscience and courage if we are waiting for a faith based grant from those who we have followed with a certain kind of strange expectation, not an expectation for justice, but an expectation for charity and a handout and our great teacher both from Yale and Riverside who now rests in eternity said that we should never accept charity as a substitute for justice. Sometimes there is a temptation and not struggle for justice.