DALLAS — The Black Church Summit kicked off without Barak Obama's outspoken pastor, and without an apology from preachers who share much of his world view.

“It’s inappropriate not to be outraged in the face of America having a prison industrial complex with two million of its citizens behind bars, one million African Americans,” said Rapahel Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church.

They are scholars and preachers, invited by Fort Worth's Brite Divinty School to discuss the state of the black church. It is a church that is different in both its music and preaching styles, because of its history. When it started, some white churches believed blacks had no souls.

No one knows that history better than 88-year-old Henry Mitchell and his wife Ella, 90. When they met at New York's Union Seminary in the 1940s, the black church was either ignored or ridiculed.

“No one had written anything about us,” said Mitchell.

So Henry wrote the history to get his Ph.D. It’s a history entwined with politics, but folks here say it did not start with them.

“There is, in fact, a politics of Jesus. It’s found in the beatitudes, it’s found in Luke 4:18, of setting at liberty those who are oppressed,” said Brite Divinity School professor Stacey Floyd Thomas.

Politics has put the spotlight on the black church. Folks at the summit believe that is a good thing.

E-mail greaves@wfaa.com