“My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I go out and do the Lord’s work.”

In a speech that intertwined personal testimony, American history and political policy, Illinois senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama once again outlined his beliefs to his fellow members of the United Church of Christ (UCC) who had gathered for their annual Synod in Hartford on Saturday.

According to church officials, over ten thousand UCC members trekked to the Civic Center and heard Obama’s presentation on the first sunny afternoon of summer.

American Hunger and Obama's Spiritual Quest

Speaking about his decision to enter the presidential race, Obama explained that as he talked to people around the nation he came to recognize a “common theme,” he said. “Folks are hungry for change.”

Not only are Americans searching for new solutions to the traditional worries about public education, employment, health care and juggling busy family life, Obama said, but he sensed that Americans are also experiencing “a hunger deeper than that. A hunger that goes beyond any single cause or any single issue.”

The Senator likened America’s hunger for more meaningful existence to his own search for a sense of belonging just before he became a Christian. “Slowly I came to realize that something was missing,” he said.

“Without an anchor to my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular faith at some level, I would always remain an observer. Remain apart. I would also remain in some sense alone.”

It was during this time of working as a community organizer, earning a mere $13,000 a year, that Obama found and joined Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side of Chicago where the prominent Rev. Jeremiah Wright presided over a large predominately African-American congregation.

Since that time the Harvard University Law School graduate and former Civil Rights attorney has served in the Illinois state senate before announcing his candidacy for president, a move which has reinvigorated debates on race, faith and cultural identification in the 2008 presidential campaign. "Call to Renewal,” a keynote speech he made to a religious activist group in Washington, D.C. last June, is credited with catapulting Obama to the top among presidential candidates who effectively talk about their political platform in conjunction with their faith.

The politics of truce between Church and State

In his remarks to UCC delegates on Saturday in Connecticut, Obama took the time to recount the history of the UCC as politically progressive and at the forefront of social activism since the nation’s founding (the early church was significant in the Boston Tea party rebellion) and through the nineteenth century with their involvement in abolition, and later women’s rights, Civil Rights and gay rights.

Obama said that the principle of the separation of church and state is one that he embraces. However, he said, that doesn’t mean “faith should have no role in public life. “I dispute that.” he said.

He then recounted past historic speeches, such as Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, in which he referred to the “judgment of the Lord” in his; the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which references “all of God’s children,” and President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address in which he proclaimed, “Here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own.”

By summoning a higher truth and faith, Obama said, American leaders had inspired “ordinary people to achieve extraordinary things.”

But faith became an instrument to divide the nation, he said, pointing a finger at the Christian right. “Faith started being used to drive us apart. Faith got hijacked.”

A Call to Conscience

Throughout the 45 minute speech Obama invoked the refrain, “Our conscience cannot rest…” to highlight what he believes are crossroads where moral and political values should meet and work towards change.

“Our conscience cannot rest as long as 37 million Americans are poor and forgotten by their leadership in Washington. “We need to heed the biblical call to care for the least of those and lift the poor out of despair. If you work forty hours a week, you should not be living in poverty. “Our conscience cannot rest as long as 45 million Americans do not have health insurance.” He went on to promise, “I will sign a universal health care bill by the end of my first term,” to thunderous applause.

“It’s not a policy,” he continued,” “It’s a moral commitment. We can do this. We can do this,” he intoned looking out over the standing crowd.

Turning to international issues, Obama also said that the genocide in Darfur end. Americans, he said, must close Guantanamo Bay and stop “torturing our enemies.” And of the war in Iraq, once again to strong applause, he asserted his early opposition. “It’s a war I am proud I opposed from the start, a war that should have never been authorized, a war that should have never been waged.”

The full text of Sen. Obama’s speech, "A Politics of Conscience," delivered at the United Church of Christ Synod in Hartford, CT, can be read at the United Church of Christ web site, www.ucc.org.


Susan Monroe is editor of Devotion. Contact her at getsignature@aol.com.