Newsmaker

Every Friday, we choose an alum who has been making headlines—for better or for worse.
Ico print Print | Ico email Email | Facebook | | RSS

Rev. Otis Moss III ’95MDiv

By the staff | 2:15pm March 21 2008

At 37, the Rev. Otis Moss III ’95MDiv is a rising star: a minister with a degree from Yale Divinity, a noted youth pastor named one of “God’s foot soldiers” by Newsweek, and one of Beliefnet’s “most influential black spiritual leaders.” So after two years as associate pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Moss was ready to step into the shoes of the church’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, on March 9.

But thanks to an unusually prominent parishioner—one Barack Obama—and the controversy over Wright’s statements from the pulpit, Moss’s first weeks as pastor have been “a baptism by fire,” as he told All Things Considered on March 19. He feels, Moss said quite cheerfully, like “Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego thrown into the fiery furnace.”

Filed under religion, Divinity School
The comment period has expired.