Merced Olive East - Wintley Phipps

Wintley Phipps

In a singing career spanning nearly 30 years, Wintley Phipps, an ordained minister of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, has seen his influence grow exponentially. Like a rainbow whose arc can link disparate territories, Phipps found common cause with both Democrats and Republicans at the highest levels of the political food chain.

He has done this without violating the fundamental beliefs of his faith. In the early 1980s Phipps turned down an invitation to audition for the Temptations. He also turned down an invitation to tour with Diana Ross because he had promised God, at the age of 16, that he would sing only to His glory.

In 1998 Phipps founded the U.S. Dream Academy, a nonprofit group that provides children of prisoners and those failing in schools with values-centered mentoring, academic and computer tutoring. The academy opened its first site in March 2000 at the Ferebee Hope Community Center in Washington, D.C. A second site has since been opened, also in Washington, for the academy that now caters to more than 200 children.¹

Please feel free to visit his website or one of the websites above for more information.