A Hope in the Unseen

by Ron Suskind

  The air suddenly seems heavy, and they both turn and watch a few moments of TV. When Cedric starts up again, it’s with a diversion: “You know, I’m never gonna fall in love.”

  “What you saying, fool?”

  “I just want to be by myself,” he says, clearly playing. “Maybe I’ll just adopt some kids.”

  She can play, too, though she’s not as clever as he is at coy asides and misdirection. “All right, then,” she retorts, “how would you take care of kids while you work? Think about that.”

  “I don’t know. I’d hire a nanny.”

  She laughs. “No, Lavar, you’d send them off on a train to D.C. for me to take care of, a long train ride, ’cause you won’t be here. You ain’t coming back here.”

  She’s not sure how she ended up here, but the light banter somehow brought her to the central issue of her future: will he leave forever? But he dodges it. There seems to be something else on his mind.

  “All right then, Ms. Jennings,” Cedric says, theatrically. “I must have forgotten to ask you something in our discussion of a few minutes ago …. Have you ever been in love?”

  She stops, startled. He’s been drafting her on the curve and just blew by on the home stretch. She stares at him a moment, as a thousand scenes run through her head, racing backward until she sees herself sitting in a hunter green Cordoba, sunk deep in Corinthian leather. She looks down.

  “I thought I was,” Barbara Jennings says, barely audible. “I thought I was, once.”

  In summer, walking any street in the Shaw neighborhood, on the impoverished fringe of Northwest Washington, is to weave by kitchen chairs tucked into the narrow shadow of buildings. People sit in clusters and talk and swelter. Around here, the inside of almost every home is unbearable, the outside just a bit better. Except at Scripture Cathedral, a dark, cool cave—the only air-conditioned refuge in sight.

  All of which helps make for a very healthy crowd this Sunday August morning, Bishop Long thinks, as he gazes out from his comfy wing on the stage.

  As the choir finishes up a haunting rendition of “I’m Gonna Make It,” Long scans the transfixed crowd—close to five hundred today—and muses that he already has “made it.” Then he shakes his head, cutting it off. He considers such feelings a dangerous strain of self-satisfaction, something God would want him to resist. He is only God’s vessel, after all. But the splendor all around is sometimes hard to overlook.

  By the summer of 1995, Bishop Long has built a small empire, stretching from the newly refurbished cathedral to his loyal, protective staff, his daily radio show, his TV choir on local cable, and a growing operation that produces pamphlets, tapes, and related religious product lines. Still, there’s plenty left for good works, charity, and outreach, with programs for feeding the poor, drug treatment, literacy and adult education classes, day care, and shelters for the homeless.

  Not that he’s avoided controversy. Bishop Long’s comfortable house in Mitchellville, Maryland; his Cadillacs; his finely cut suits; some nearly destitute members of his flock giving their last dime—these drew a few nasty TV broadcasts a few years back, full of unholy cliches. He said it would blow over—and it did—though his competitor clergymen, out of jealousy mostly, sometimes bring it up.

  Let them, he thinks, as his foot taps to the music. Why should he be denied a comfortable existence? He works long and hard, and he’s saving lives—literally. Judges remand young defendants to his authority. Principals beg him to walk the halls of their schools. He provides a fully formed, self-supporting alternative to the streets, a place a kid can retreat to after school each day and practically all weekend.

  “Pop, Pop with Jesus! Pop, Pop with Jesus!” the choir belts out, swaying and stomping, as Long picks up the rhythm and absently claps along. He’ll be preaching in a few minutes, so he begins his preparations: looking across the faces in the pews—a thousand life stories he knows by heart—trying to connect, to feel their energy.

  The time has come to preach the gospel. He rises, slowly and dramatically, from the chair. Rather than his usual dark suit, today he is resplendent in one of his bishop outfits, a pearl-white robe with blue and yellow tassels and a small, cardinal-style cap.

  He greets the flock with a casual smile and makes a few announcements about upcoming events, which is easier to do now than after he’s been yelling and sweating for a few hours. Today is Women’s Day, a special day of appreciation for the church’s bulwark. While Long and his phalanx of dark-suited men are clearly in charge, this is mostly a place for young children and their single mothers—the fierce churchwomen, who do most of the work around here.

  Since the beginning of the year, the women have organized countless activities to build unity and, as always, raise money. Later today, he tells them, the top woman fund-raiser will be honored with a queen-for-a-day ceremony, where she’ll get a plastic crown and bouquet of roses, toiletries and perfumes, and a free, four-day, round trip excursion to Powerfest, a convention of Pentecostal ministries that will be held a few weeks from now in Virginia.

  “All of you women do so much for us here,” he says, grinning coyly, telegraphing some levity, “that I’d take you all out for dinner if I could. But it’d bankrupt me—looks like some of you ladies can really eat.”

  He gets hearty, self-aware laughs from the female infantry—always a nice way to start things off—and then Long cracks his white-leather monogrammed Bible at the bookmark: “Thus the Lord says unto you, ‘Be not afraid or dismayed by reason of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God’s.’”

  And he starts spinning it.

  “You may not have a battle with ships of war—like the ancient folks had in this passage from the Bible—but YOU have a combat, YOU have a struggle. Some of you have battles at your home! With your children! With your husband! Battles on your job, with your boss!

  “But the battle is not yours, the battle is God’s … HALLELUJAH! But before the battle can become that of God, you’ve got to give it to Him—as long as you’re fighting the battle, He won’t fight. The Lord has learned how to stay out of battles, unless you give it to Him. Unless you step aside and say, ‘It’s in God’s hands.’

  “Don’t look at the problem and try to figure it out! Look up, look up to God! That’s where the answers are ….”

  Long stops, mops his brow, and looks out. It’s important that today’s sermon offer pointed lessons to certain people in the room. He needs to know where those people are sitting, so—at the right moment—he can seem to yell right in their ear. He browses the rows of faces until he spots Cedric Jennings: tenth row, right side.

  Cedric is one of Long’s favorites, along with his mother—been that way since early on. And Bishop knows that today is one of Cedric’s last days in church before he leaves for college—for Brown University. The Ivy League is a rarity for a young person from Scripture, and Long hopes it will be seen as a blazing testimony to faith.

  He takes a deep breath, launches forward for another half-hour, piling one rhythmic line on the next, ending each with a “HAH,” as much punctuation as respiration. “Some of us have battles going on in our mind, because Satan shoots for the mind. HAH! That’s why Jesus said, ‘I will keep them in perfect peace if they keep their mind stayed on Me.’ HAH!”

  Then he stops so abruptly that his voice seems to echo. The choir comes up again, on Long’s cue, and begins singing, “Give Your Problems to God,” giving him a precious few minutes to think about his finale. This is one of the most challenging finishes of any sermon of the year: the tricky, off-to-college speech, one moment when a crack in the church’s foundation gets revealed.

  The problem stems from a conundrum he’s thought through a thousand times. Worldly success—the kind of genuine, respect-in-the-community, house-in-the-suburbs achievement that he finds among his neighbors in middle-class Mitchellville—has never fit well inside the doors of Scripture. And going to college is a first step on that path away from here.


  The natural recruits for his brand of fiery Pentecostalism are not those who have gone to college or are expecting to. Rather, they are people at the bottom, who don’t know where the path to status, credential, and material gain even begins. In his heart, Long knows he mostly gives them a starting point, a place of retreat where they can figure out who they are. Here, at least, they can hand over their already cheapened lives to faith. It helps plenty of them get on the right track and eventually get a little something for themselves—a steady job, maybe even a house. And they remain faithful members, contributors, and true believers as long as they attribute any forward motion—completely and utterly!—to the mysteries of faith.

  Yet, it is Long’s fate, and that of his church, that the greatest transformations occur among those who usually end up leaving. They’re the special few who distill their unquestioned faith in God’s power into a faith in themselves and their own power, a faith in their own ability to figure things out, improve themselves, and find their way in the world. And when they get it, there’s a subtle, though defining, change of perspective.

  It’s something Long can detect. When a congregant, probably living paycheck to paycheck, gives $500, winning a trip to the stage for Bishop’s own Holy Spirit “touch” to the forehead, it’s because that contributor truly believes the Bible’s assurance that each such gift will return a blessing to them tenfold. But, as the true believer dances on the stage, infused with the Spirit and sure that tenfold—or a hundredfold—rewards are coming, Long might spot some lady in her new dress wince or a newly confident man, fresh from a big promotion, snicker. There are a few congregants who’ve discovered another way to get ahead, to get that house, and a bigger one after it—the secular way, by studying hard, going to a top college and maybe graduate school, by networking, strategizing, and matching preparation with opportunity. Sure, they still believe in God, but He’s got competition now—a belief in the sovereignty of self—and the spell of absolute, unquestioning faith, upon which Long has built his cathedral, is broken.

  Despite all he’s built, Long knows he can rise only so high as a pastor to the downtrodden. It binds him to the bottom. Even when he profits modestly for himself, his wife, and his kids, the disparities between his life and those of his constituents grow so wide that fingers point at him. The accomplished people, the city’s black professionals and leaders of its public life—they don’t come to this church. Sure, a few visit—Jesse Jackson and a handful of well-known ministers and black politicians—but they’re like him, people whose success is, paradoxically, owed to the needy and the threadbare.

  It can all get so bitter. After Long detects the telltale snicker or wince—that sidelong look of doubt—it’s just a matter of time. He wants to scream at them, “I remember when you were down and out, when you were sure that no one could love you—with all your betrayals and bankruptcies and sinning—and I showed you how Jesus can cleanse you and God can love you, even when the whole world seems to hate you. Isn’t that worth something, if nothing more than loyalty?” But, they just slip out anyway, usually without a word, and later he hears that they’re bad-mouthing him, saying he’s just about stealing, squeezing money from poor people who just don’t have it to give. And, Lord, he tries not to get angry. Those prosperity-bound defectors just don’t want to remember their debt to faith, he tells himself.

  As the choir finishes its last chorus of “Give Your Problems to God,” he wonders if he should lash out, right now.

  But why? Doesn’t do any good. They still leave, his favorites—the most capable among them—the ones who discover enough faith in themselves that the world suddenly seems hopeful, so hopeful that they feel they don’t need a sanctuary. It breaks his heart. He closes his Bible as the choir sits, and he turns his glare on Cedric Jennings—the one he’s worried about.

  “I know a few of our children will be leaving soon for college. And we’re all very proud of them. And we want them to study hard,” he says quietly, choosing his words with care.

  He sees Cedric look around, like he’s worried that everyone is watching him.

  Long grabs the pulpit’s edges and begins again, speaking softly and deliberately. “I’ll tell you something that I don’t want any of you children to forget. God is sometimes hard to find on the college campus. Don’t you forget that Satan loves a mind that strays far from the Holy Word. And, where some of you are going, you’ll be taught to trust your mind, to trust man’s theories about history and literature and how the world works. Yes, all you fine students must ask your questions and get your good grades ….” He stops and puts a hard eye on Cedric, who is looking back now, frozen in place. “But, never forget—never—that the only real answers lie with God.”

  The room is silent. Long exhales and looks at his watch. It’s 2:30. This service that began at 10:45 is almost over. He, like everyone, can smell the fried chicken’s sweet greasy scent wafting up from the basement and causing stomachs to growl.

  But no one leaves the room—no one eats!—until they’ve made their sacrifice to faith.

  “Have you given the last $10 in your checking account?!” Long screams. “Have you!? If you haven’t, now is the time—see what it feels like to put your trust in the Almighty. I want a line down the middle, a long one, with everyone giving $20 each. And I want all the givers to come up front for a special blessing. Let’s Goooo!”

  The line starts to snake up the aisle as the pews empty. “It’s so sweet,” Long exults. He glances over at Cedric, standing in a row that’s now mostly empty, looking confused, and he knows that there are demons up ahead for this boy, his prize child … who’s not budging. Long decides that he’d better crank it up a notch, and he starts wind-milling his thick arms, jumping and yelling, “Jesus is coming! Jesus is coming!” his robes billowing as he whips the faithful to frenzy, uncoupling hope from reason with the swinging ax of faith, and watches the line stretch toward the chapel’s rear doors.

  Finally, he sees him, his boy, a baby of this church, run up the aisle to drop a crumpled bill in the basket and join a swarm of uplifted arms at the foot of the stage, each hand groping for the Holy Spirit “touch,” hoping to feel the surge of God’s power. And Bishop C. L. Long, gripping the pulpit, reaches over the crowd—way out—toward Cedric Jennings, who lifts his long fingers for a final blessing.

  Washington’s Northwest corner of wide, tree-lined streets and brick center-hall colonials has emptied out. The beltway around the city was jammed last night and this morning as the army of lawyers, lobbyists, journalists, and assorted bureaucrats escaped to cooler locales in the mountains of Virginia, the Maryland shore, or favored spots up the coastline to Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. The typical itinerary is to begin vacationing this weekend and stretch it through the following Labor Day weekend.

  As dusk arrives on Saturday night, August 24, it seems like everyone remaining in Washington is out on the stoop. Despite the heat, there is a festiveness everywhere, with those who remain behind having now won the city by default.

  Over at Scripture Cathedral, lights blaze through the stained-glass windows, like there’s a bonfire inside, as fifteen hundred black men stand shoulder to shoulder in the pews and the crowded balcony. It is the first official organizing meeting for next month’s Million Man March. Bishop Long, proud that Scripture was selected by Minister Louis Farrakhan to be march headquarters, reaches for the hand of a Nation of Islam official—an aide Farrakhan sent down just for this meeting—so they can raise their clasped fists in triumph. And as they do, the throng of black men in dashikis and business suits and worn jeans lets out a roar that so many of them clearly hope will be the start of something … anything.

  On the northeast fringe of the city, Cedric Gilliam pecks Sherene, his new girlfriend, on the cheek as he slips through the door of the Chateau—a raucous black nightclub—where she works as a hostess. He breathes in the smoke and the smell of beer, not wanting either to leave his nostrils. A month ago, one of the regular parole depar
tment urine tests found his urine dirty with heroin—a violation of his probation—and since then a half-dozen federal marshals have been by his mother’s house. It’s just a matter of time before they overtake him. He had hoped that the intoxicating buzz of this favorite joint—as familiar to him as his own voice—would help drone out the ticking clock he hears in his head. Instead, being here makes him feel like the air is slipping from his lungs.

  Across town, on a quiet street of row houses in Southeast, Cedric Jennings is also trying to breathe deeply. Tomorrow he will begin packing for Tuesday’s journey to Providence. Tonight is his last big night in town. He exults, slapping tree branches with his up-stretched hand as he walks. It’s a night for feeling good.

  He spots a few of his relatives sitting on the stoop of his aunt Chris’s house, half a block ahead, where a going-away party for him has just started. He breaks into a trot.

  “Va, Uncle Va,” his nephew Lawrence shouts as he enters the house, and Cedric sees that most of the guests have arrived.

  “Hi everybody!” Cedric shouts, looking neat and casual in his long white T-shirt and black jeans.

  Aunt Chris pokes her head out of the kitchen and yells, “I hope you’re ready to eat tonight, Lavar,” and waits until he assures her, “Oh, yes, I’m ready,” before she disappears back to her ministrations. Everyone returns to the couch or chair where they were a moment ago, and the room’s hive of conversation resumes.

  Everyone comes over to greet him, and Cedric looks around the bustling room, lips together in a wet smile. He feels a wash of sentimentality, a nostalgia for the present, and lets his eyes wander back and forth across the room like he might a poem he needs to memorize for an English class—wanting to remember it, every line. Then he settles into a living room chair near the front door.

  The only man present is a cousin of Barbara’s named Douglas, a computer specialist in his mid-thirties who has had solid jobs but some problems with drugs. He says to one of Barbara’s sisters that he’s not out running tonight with the other men because “I’m trying to get my life together.”