Where Faith and Politics Come Together

We live in a northwest suburb of Des Moines, Iowa. Just ten miles from downtown which was "center stage" for all the candidate speeches on Thursday evening, January 3. Our precinct is one of eleven in our suburban city, a neighborhood of apartments, condominiums and smaller single-family homes, nestled against much larger "McMansions" a little further west.

Our city is served by a Republican in our state legislature, so I assumed that we Democrats might have one of the smaller caucuses. In 2004, we had about 200, which was my point of reference. Maybe we would have 250 if it was a very good night, I thought. So imagine my surprise, shock and ultimate pride and joy as my neighbors just came pouring in to the elementary school gymnasium that the Democratic Party had assigned to us for the evening. When the registrations were complete, at 6:56, the precinct chair announced that 374 had registered to caucus.

After the required preliminaries, we had our first count. Each interest group, for Biden, Richardson, Clinton, Edwards, and Obama, plus a group that were still undecided, counted the number of people who were standing up for their choice. At that moment, my candidate, Barack Obama, had 39 per cent of the caucusers support, with 20% for Edwards, 18% for Clinton, 13% for Richardson, 7% for Biden and 3% undecided. A hush fell over the room as the percentages were announced. We Obama supporters could see that we had a big group, but packed together like that, it was hard to tell where one group ended and another began without reading the campaign sticker on people's clothing. What many people who have not been to an Iowa Caucus do not understand is that the party has set up the process to "winnow" out those candidates that will not be "viable." In our case, we were going to send nine delegates to the county convention, and 15% was the cut off. That's why some candidates (such as Biden and Dodd) appeared to receive almost no support in Iowa, because all the Biden people and the undecided's had to go find another group, and the Richardson people welcomed 18 of them to join their group, making Bill Richardson "viable" for the second and final round that would be reported to the party headquarters. I smiled to myself, since Bill, whom I met in an Iowa State University bookstore some weeks earlier, was my second choice. But Barack also picked up eight and the rest scattered among the other two candidates' groups.

Senator Obama actually had almost twice as many delegates as his closest competitors: Barack had 147, Edwards 83 and Clinton 77 and Richardson 66 after the caucusers whose candidates who were not "viable" shifted their positions. So if the caucus in my precinct had been an actual election, Senator Obama would have been even further in front of the rest of the pack. By the rules of the caucus, a delegate can only support one candidate, so there was some more complicated math that ended up giving Obama three delegates and the other three candidates two each. This tends to level the playing field somewhat, at least in our case we would have needed one or two more people to come over to our side to get the fourth delegate. When all is done and the results are called in, the Associated Press reports the percentage of delegates each candidate received, and the number of people present.

I was never prouder to be an American than I was that night in that elementary school gym, for all of us, hot, uncomfortable and crowded together, were exercising our right as citizens to choose our President! And as a Christian, I took particular delight in sharing what I knew to be true: that Barack Obama is an active participating member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. I had heard him speak to a statewide denominational gathering, so I also shared what I remembered from that day last June: that his faith and his politics belonged together because what he had learned from Dr. Jeremiah Wright, the esteemed pastor of that very large congregation, was the "audacity to hope" and the importance of service in acting out one's Christian commitment. In Barack's case, he gave his time and legal expertise to helping people organize in Chicago's south side. His life's work was then, and is now, a living out of the meaning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, even though an evangelical Christian might not hear him say the familiar "buzzwords" that would convince them in the way I am convinced. For me, and for a growing number of Americans, together with millions of onlookers around the globe, people are impressed that Senator Obama can integrate his faith and his politics in such a way that he paints a picture of an inclusive nation, a nation in need of being healed, in which all people are welcome at the table.