Rev. Charles G. Adams gave a passionate delivery of the William Belden Noble Lecture at Memorial Church last night, but he said he can't "whoop."

"Whooping," a kind of delivery that characterizes the southern Black preaching tradition, blends sermon with song. Typically, the sermon begins slowly and builds toward a climax as the preacher finds the right "key."

Finally, Adams said, "Talk about God is transformed into an encounter with God."

"If you have to try, you really can't do it," he said ruefully.

Adams, the senior pastor of the Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit, gave the lecture as part of a series of three talks titled "Preaching and the University: Speaking the Lord's Song in a Strange Land."

"How can we, like Peter Gomes, succeed where so many others have failed?" Adams asked, in a nod to Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes, who is celebrating his 25th anniversary as minister of Memorial Church this weekend. "How in our existential ambiguity can we sing the Lord's song today?"

Adams reflected on the role of worship in the university community. Worship, as "symphony invading cacophony," creates a unifying principle within the a diverse community.

"By creating inclusive space, we work to woo the University from self-absorption, self-delusion and self- destruction," Adams said.

Adams brought the ideal of inclusion to the balance between scholarship and worship, between Memorial Church and Widener Memorial Library.

The two buildings face each other for an important reason, Adams said. Quoting Socrates, he said, "Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher and philosophy begins in wonder."

Using familiar models, Adams likened a university without worship--or the "land without the Lord"--to "science without soul," "scholarship without wisdom," "facts without truth" and "corporation without conscience."

On a more personal level, Adams said it is important to make room in life for "God's freedom."

In our busy lives, he said, we fail to make enough space for ourselves; we fill up our engagement calendars simply to fill the empty slots. "Our relationships are often too tiny and petty to contain the eternal vastnesses of our beings," he said.

Jonathan R. Murrow, a junior in Winthrop House, said, "It was very substantial." Murrow left a movie early to see the lecture with a friend.

Young Soo Jo '96 of Eliot House served as an usher. "I thought it was very powerful and it made me revalue what I thought about culture and Christianity," he said. "He was able to fill the audience with his enthusiasm."

An equally enthusiastic Divinity School contingent contributed additional praise.

Sarah E. Birmingham, a second-year student, said, "Ooh, the power, the power. We're delighted to have Charles Adams here. He has a real command of the pulpit and it's great to have one of our own back Clarence W. Davis, also a second-year student at the Divinity School, said, "It was as challenging and comforting as I anticipated."

Davis was a member of Adams' Detroit congregation. "He's not my father, but definitely my papa," he said