Thomas Breen photos
Varick Pastor Kelcy Steele at Sabbath services Sunday.
With sweat pouring down his face and the jubilant sound of drums, keyboards, and a hundred pairs of clapping hands before him, Pastor Kelcy Steele revved up one of New Haven’s most influential African-American congregations to make their presence known at the polls this Tuesday.
He used his Sunday sermon to urge everyone to vote: Not just to satisfy one’s civic duty, he said, but to embrace their God-given status as “giant slayers” capable of felling the social Goliaths of racism and economic inequality. Not with stones, but with the ballot.
Steele delivered that spiritual-political message to around 100 congregants who showed up at Varick Memorial AME Zion Church on Dixwell Avenue for Sunday’s 9:30 a.m. service. Steele also conducted services at 7:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.
“We all have giants,” he called out to the sanctuary. “But every giant can be defeated.”
Speaking just two days before Connecticut’s Aug. 14 primaries, Steele welcomed to his church three Democratic candidates for statewide office, gubernatorial hopeful Ned Lamont, attorney general hopeful Chris Mattei, and lieutenant governor hopeful Eva Bermudez Zimmerman, as well as Wendy Tyson-Wood, a regular attendee at Varick who is also the Democratic candidate for the 74th District General Assembly seat in Waterbury.
The pastor did not explicitly endorse any particular candidates in his sermon (which would violate federal nonprofit rules). He did introduce the visiting politicians as his friends and as people he admires, and called on all of his parishioners to go out and vote on Tuesday.
Varick’s praise team: Open your mouth for victory!
He even offered a closing prayer for Lamont, Mattei, and Tyson-Wood. (Bermudez Zimmerman left before the end of the service to make it to the next campaign event in this whirlwind final weekend before the primary.) He asked God to touch the minds, hands, and feet of these candidates so that they always think, act, and walk on behalf of the neediest residents of Connecticut.
Steele filled Sunday’s nearly two-hour service with breathless sermonizing, ecstatic musical celebration, and pointed calls for personal betterment and social improvement through courage, honesty, and altruism inspired by the Christian Bible.
Following up on a union-led jobs march and endorsement ceremony on Wednesday, where he walked alongside Lamont and Mattei through the streets of Newhallville and Dixwell, and following up on another union-led get-out-the-vote rally on Saturday where he issued a prayer for Lamont’s campaign and for economic justice in Connecticut, Steele inserted into Sunday’s sermon frequent references to the upcoming primary and general election. He identified the act of voting as a civic, spiritual, and moral imperative.
Outvote Neo-Nazis And The KKK
Steele blesses Wendy Tyson-Wood, Mattei and Lamont.
“His name is Jesus,” the church’s praise team sang over the three-man gospel band’s musical accompaniment before Steele took to the pulpit. “Open your mouth for victory!”
Men and women took to the aisles to throw their hands in the air and dance, shouting praise for God. The piano player fingered his way up and down two parallel keyboards, while the drummer propelled the choir ever forward with a ceaseless beat of snare hits and cymbal crashes.
When Steele took to the pulpit, he delivered his sermon in the breathless preaching style known as “whooping,” constantly accelerating his delivery with frequent sharp intakes of breath serving as the only breaks in a speech that drove the audience ever upward and upward.
The biblical passage at the center of the day’s service was 1 Samuel, Chapter 17, verses 16 to 37: an excerpt from the well-known story of David and Goliath. Steele read about how David, a young Israelite shepherd presumed to take on the Philistine giant Goliath with nothing more than five smooth stones, boundless courage, and a faith in God.
Steele whoops for civic engagement.
As Connecticut prepares for Tuesday’s Democratic and Republican Party primaries for a slew of statewide offices, Steele said the story of David and Goliath offers an explicitly political inspiration to conquer giant injustices, both personal and social, through the power of voting.
“This story is about one man’s courage against a giant,” he said. “It’s about not being a coward. It’s about facing your problems.”
He said it’s also about sending a message to the neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and white supremacists gathering in Washington D.C. for this weekend’s Unite the Right II rally that black residents in Connecticut have political power too, that they will be showing through the ballot their opposition to racism and their commitment to racial, economic, and social justice.
“Whether you have problems with eviction, discrimination, segregation,” Steele called out, “the giants will die.”
He urged congregants to go to the polls on Tuesday and perform their civic duty, or else “shame on you, because Goliath must die.”
“Don’t allow fear to paralyze you,” Steele said. Referencing his participation in Wednesday’s jobs rally, he acknowledged that marching and demonstrating in the streets may not be for everybody. Those who don’t march can still make their voices heard through other means, such as providing water and emotional support for those who do march, or by talking with their neighbors about the importance of good jobs and affordable housing in New Haven, he said.
“Everybody can play a supporting role,” he said. “Do something.”
Slaying Giants
Mattei: Pray for my courage and strength if elected AG.
Steele then offered Mattei and Lamont a few minutes to pitch their candidates to the crowd. Both identified the giants they hope to slay if elected to office in November.
“I’ve been thinking about my grandmother,” said Mattei, a former federal prosecutor who is running for the Democratic nomination for attorney general against Stamford State Rep. William Tong and Wethersfield State Sen. Paul Doyle. Mattei said his grandmother grew up in New Haven on St. John Street, had only an eighth-grade education, and worked as a hairdresser her whole life.
“But she was a giant slayer, pastor,” he said. He remembered asking his grandmother to pray for him as a child whenever he had a baseball game or an important test at school.
His grandmother said she wouldn’t pray for him to win the game or ace the test, because God doesn’t care about winning. “God just cares if you try you’re best, if you’re brave,” he remembered her saying.
He asked the congregants not just to help him win the Democratic primary on Tuesday and the general election in November, but also to pray for him to act with courage and strength if he is elected as the state’s next attorney general.
Lamont: Slaying pessimism.
“I love the energy,” Lamont said as he addressed the crowd. “I love the passion. I love the spirit of this church. You can come on down and wake up my sleepy little church in Greenwich any time you want to.”
Lamont, a self-financing Greenwich businessman who has earned endorsements from the state Democratic Party, leading Democratic politicians, and influential local and statewide unions, said the giant he hopes to slay if elected governor is the “cloud of pessimism that is hanging over this state.” He said if elected he plans to invest in all levels of public education, from pre-kindergarten through community college, to demonstrate to the state’s youth and adults alike that Connecticut’s best days are in the future, not the past.
“I need you standing up,” he said, before he and New Haven Rising pastor Scott Marks embarked on what has recently become Lamont’s signature rallying song, Bob Marley’s “Get up, Stand Up”: “You got to get up, stand up/ Stand up for your rights/ Get up, stand up/ Don’t give up the fight!”
Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch Mattei and Lamont address Varick on Sunday.