After the relatively bland Senator Obama Goes to Africa (2007), Chicago documentary maker Bob Hercules gets his hands on a more dramatic subject: Michael Pfleger, the Catholic priest whose mockery of Hillary Clinton during a guest sermon at Trinity United Church of Christ finally moved Obama to quit the congregation. That sound bite may have defined Pfleger nationally, but Hercules digs into the priest’s long and storied history in Chicago, from his shocked witness of the boiling white hatred toward Martin Luther King in Marquette Park in 1966 through his long career as the crusading white pastor of the mostly black Saint Sabina Church in Auburn-Gresham. Footage of his apoplectic sermons lends credence to those who call Pfleger a demagogue and his pastorship a personality cult, but his relentless social activism against drugs, violence, and prostitution in the troubled community speaks for itself.
Radical Disciple: The Story of Father Pfleger
0 hour 58 min