Dear President-Elect Obama

November 4, 2008

The Honorable Senator And
President-Elect Barack Obama
713 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington D.C., 20510

Dear President-Elect Obama:

We have no reason to think this letter will ever it make it before your own eyes, other than perhaps because of the message it contains.  We have no prescriptive policy advice for you or legislation we deem essential.  Our only hope is to encourage what we already believe resides in your heart.

This election has seen stark shifts in traditional voting blocks, many of our friends and family believe that our vote for you is an endorsement of the worst evils and a desire to see the end of American freedom – whatever that may mean.

Though political rhetoric, fear, racism, lies and half-truths were likely present in the contests of the past, our generation has never lived through one marked by such ever-present fear and tension.  Over the past few months we have come to understand that the seemingly incipient racism we have witnessed was in fact always there – somewhere beneath the surface, but always there.  With each passing day the deluge of unrelenting emails would appear — castigating you as a Muslim, a Demagogue or even the anti-christ.  We believe that God is asking something different of us all.  He is asking us to forgive, to love our enemies and to go forward in our wealth, helping the broken and poor.

On behalf of ourselves and for friends who have unwittingly bought into this ideology of hate and fear we offer our deepest apologies and ask your forgiveness.

Now we ask, how can we encourage you?  Perhaps one of the most telling stories of the nature of God contained within the Bible or any other religious tradition is the narrative of Samuel seeking to anoint the second King of Israel.  Here is Samuel, God’s prophet and the most revered man in all of Israel, trying to determine which son of Jesse is to be anointed King.  Despite being trained by God to hear his voice and having been granted wisdom beyond compare – Samuel still stumbles.  Instead of seeing these potential candidates as God sees them, he looks to their outward appearance, focusing on their physical stature and charisma.  In one of the most powerful, yet kind rebukes in all of scripture God tells Samuel that he sees not as man sees, but that God looks at the heart of a man.

As our President you will face greater challenges of conscience than most men or women could possibly conceive in their wildest imaginations.  Your decisions will affect billions of people, sometimes for good and sometimes not.  Like Samuel you will stumble.  What we ask of you and what we hope tens-of-thousands will ask of you by endorsing this letter is that you let your heart be your guide.

While many of us believe that abortion is evil, we also believe that war, torture and the poverty of body and soul are equally evil.  Our hope is that we can work together, stepping across partisan, religious and doctrinal lines to address the pressing issues of our age – not with laws, but with human action. We expect this to be a costly endeavor, one which will require us to change dramatically how we live our lives.  In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus of Nazareth gave us a glimpse into the very character of God.  Through his birth, his life, his teachings and his death he offered us an alternative to the hate, fear and destruction contained within each of us.  In response, let us go forward and rebuild the places we have bombed.  Let us go forward and provide education and hope in the places that poverty and hopelessness continue to reign.  Let us go forward not with our own understanding, but with the hope that God has deposited in all our hearts.

We believe that God has deposited this hope within you.  We look to you and ask once again that you let your heart be your guide.  Our hope is not in the governments of our day, nor is our hope in you – our hope is in God alone.  It is with this hope that we offer our hearts to you in friendship and we affirm the words of John F. Kennedy, Jr. spoken to his fellow citizens of the world: “ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

Our prayers are with you.