The leader of a large church on Buffalo’s East Side is calling for the Lewiston-Porter School Board president to either apologize for forwarding offensive e-mails to fellow board members or resign from the board.

The Rev. Darius G. Pridgen, pastor of True Bethel Baptist Church, urged his congregation Sunday to contact the board members to express their concern about e-mails that Pridgen and others consider racist and sexist.

Pridgen also said he will bring a sizable contingent with him to this month’s School Board meeting if he can’t talk with President Robert J. Weller beforehand.

“I was very surprised that in 2009 a person would believe that racist and sexist e-mails are acceptable for a public official,” said Pridgen, who is black and who represents a largely black congregation. “Everybody does not do it, and it’s not acceptable even if they do.”

Pridgen was responding to an article in Sunday’s Buffalo News detailing Weller’s habit of forwarding what he considers amusing e-mails to friends and fellow board members.

Critics say that the e-mails are sexist and racist and that it’s inappropriate for the School Board president to pass along the messages to other school officials.

Weller, who could not be reached to comment Sunday, previously told The News that he doesn’t think the e-mails are offensive and he hasn’t done anything wrong.

“They can accuse all they want to, but I didn’t do anything other than what everybody else in the world does,” Weller said.

The e-mails, which were provided to The News, include jokes playing on racial and gender stereotypes and featuring Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, among others.

Several current and former board members complained about the e-mails in the article, and Pridgen said he received a number of phone calls from members of his church after the report was published Sunday.

Pridgen said he tried to reach Weller on Sunday morning but wasn’t able to do so.

The pastor said Weller’s lack of contrition upset him almost as much as the e-mails themselves.

Pridgen went to the Lew- Port School District’s Web site and found e-mail addresses for the board members.

Church officials then distributed the addresses to the several thousand people who attended True Bethel’s three services.

Pridgen said he is asking church members to e-mail Weller, while sending copies to the other board members, with their concerns in a polite and restrained manner.

The congregation was asked to thank Weller for his service, to ask him to apologize for the pain he has caused and, if he refuses, to ask him to step down from the board.

“He seems very desensitized to” the needs of the district’s minority students, Pridgen said.

Pridgen said members of the church would attend the next Lew-Port School Board meeting, on June 16, “en masse” if he cannot reach Weller beforehand.

Weller on Saturday told The News that he would be out of town this weekend, and he did not immediately respond to an e-mail Sunday seeking comment.

Another board member, Keith M. Fox, said that he had received 12 e-mails referring to this situation as of Sunday evening and that he welcomes a comment from any member of the public.

Fox, who is 76, said he is old enough to have seen true racial discrimination, in school and in the military and while working for the YMCA in Dayton, Ohio, and Detroit. Weller’s practice of forwarding such e-mails is not rooted in racial animosity and has been sensationalized by Weller’s critics, Fox said.

“I feel much of this is an internal matter for the School Board to deal with, and we are, and we will,” Fox said. “But for this to become a matter for Rev. Pridgen in Buffalo is, I think, a little outrageous.”

That said, Fox noted that Weller’s term as board president ends June 30 and that it’s quite likely that Weller will not be re-elected to the post.