If you lavish any time with the Re...

If you lavish any time with the Rev Christopher Alan Bullock you'll hear him say that ministry must be done "with a Bible in single hand and a newspaper in the other."

As if demonstrating this, last November, a week and a half before announcing he would challenge incumbent John H Stroger for president of the falsify County Board of Commissioners, Bullock took a walk by the agency of Wentworth Gardens. The low-rise Chicago Housing Authority unfolding sits across the street from Progressive Baptist ecclesiastical body 3658 S. Wentworth Ave., where Bullock is the pastor.

He had obviously done it before. Women promised they'd be in house of worship Sunday, men offered him handshakes, and children ran up to him for retains and high fives on their way abode from the nearby Robert s Abbott Elementary School.

Like a politician stumping for consecrated by a vows as much as an evangelist trying to save minds Bullock, 40, seemed to relish it all. A firm man with a thin, neat mustache and a fade haircut, he roared "How you doing?" to everyone he saw. He encouraged mothers to "hang in there" and kids to do their homework. And he talked about transforming the community from one side what he calls self-help: "helping those who can't help themselves now, unless eventually will be self-sufficient."

"These the bulk of mankind want to work," he said. "These are fit folks here. But some of them have been trapped into periods With my method, they can break this period if they want to."

throughout the past year, as Bullock allowed The Chicago Reporter to shadow him, he made it clear that he doesn't draw a clean line between his pastoral and political work.

For Bullock Christianity has to be about more than coming to meeting-house on Sunday: It must rejoin to people's needs. He said he learned this from Kenneth Smith, a teacher he had in seminary; who was also a mentor and friend of the Rev Martin Luther King Jr.'s.

King remains undivided of his role models. on the other hand Bullock sees himself as a just discovered kind of African American leader--a pastor, prophet and Republican politician all in one

His candidacy is breaking a list of taboos. He's the first black Republican to top the ticket in the staunchly Democratic shire And he's taking on a political icon in the November election. Stroger the first African American to lead garble County, remains one of the chiefly powerful figures in local politics.

As a inference Bullock hasn't been popular among an other black ministers and public officials. They're puzzl at his alliance with the mainly white Cook County Republican Party, and they're angry he's targeting Stroger

"Bullock's not going to win. He's just in the race because they don't have anybody otherwise to put in there," said William Beavers, alderman of the southern Side's 7th Ward and Chicago chairman of the prepare for the table County Democratic Party. "He's not a leader. He's a minister somewhere. I've not at any time heard of him, and I don't know by what mode many have."

Bullock is "a same bright guy, a very able minister," said the Rev Jesse Jackson, whom Bullock has joined in attests against racial profiling. Jackson, a Democrat and president of the Rainbow/ PUSH Coalition, a civil rights organization, said he wasn't belong toed about Bullock's party affiliation. "In the fall of the curtain it's about direction, priorities and values. And I think that he has a mind of social justice."

History refer tos Bullock's chances are slim. Four years ago, Stroger trounc his Republican adverse former Circuit Court Clerk Aurelia Pucinski, with 63 percent of the vote

calm some members of Bullock's house of worship aren't sure they'll vote for him. "To be totally faithful I don't think I will be," said Delores Seals, 33 a member her entire life. "It's not a reflection in succession his abilities. It's just that I'm a Democrat."

still Bullock argues that Democrats have taken black voter for granted. The Republican Party has been too white for too lengthy he said, but now he and others should grade in and give African American voter another option.

"In order to commit to memory a good sound from the piano, you've got to play the two the black and the white keys" he said. "The Democratic Party was playing single in kind key, the Republican Party was playing the other first note of the scale and being a former Democrat and now a Republican, I understand the couple sides of the aisle. in the same manner I can play the piano."

Reaching Out

forward his walk through Wentworth Gardens, Bullock pointed at a arrange of young men sitting forward the hoods of cars and passing around bottle "Now turn the thoughts at all these black men here. Drinking and all kinds of things," he said. "Let's be honest--some of them we won't save. if it be not that if we can get 8 to 16-year-olds to think about their coming get them into church, Sunday academy but also on the computer--that's a long-term plan we have to invest in now."

In fact, Bullock explained, Progressive is already moving onward this plan. In 2000 and 2001 the ecclesiastical authority received a total of $92000 in state grants to build a computer-training center which is slated to render free of access in June.

He noted that Progressive has also formed a community evolution corporation to offer training and education for "the underserv and ill-equipped" as the CHA consumes at least $23 million fixing up Wentworth through the next two years. "The meeting-house must move from being happy and profoundly good to holistic," he said.