Feb. 26, 2008
To: Colleagues and Friends in the Connecticut Conference
Today we received word that the Internal Revenue Service has sent the United Church of Christ a letter with 23 questions about Senator Barack Obama’s speaking to the General Synod as a part of Synod in the City in Hartford on June 23, 2007. While we have every confidence that the result of this inquiry will be to find that the General Synod and the UCC obeyed both the letter and the spirit of the law, still we find this disturbing, to say the least.
As your Conference Minister, I served on the planning team for the General Synod and I know the care with which our national officers made this decision in early 2006. I also know how careful we were to ensure that this was genuinely a Senator speaking to his church about the connection between his UCC-taught faith and his daily life in the public sphere of government. Senator Obama accepted our requests graciously and made sure that he addressed precisely those matters. I find it disturbing that the IRS would question his addressing the Synod when we had also invited people of so many other walks of life to speak as well that day and throughout those days.
Theologically, we are a church that from our very beginning in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, has borne a particular care for the public sphere. Service and leadership in government have always been exalted among us. We have historically encouraged our members to run for office in order to exert an influence on the character of the nation. A part of our faith practice over the centuries has long been dialogue with members of our Church who are in office about the nature of their leadership and their commitments. For us that faith practice is intrinsic to our identity as a church.
I write tonight to alert you to this breaking news because it is likely that it will appear in newspapers and in other media beginning this evening. Here is the link to the page on the UCC website where we released this information today:
http://www.ucc.org/news/obama-speech-in-2007-prompts-1.html
I know that some of you may be disconcerted at our decision as a denomination to release this information ourselves. We have chosen to do so because we are not the kind of Church that hides from public view. We are instead a Church that believes that open and civil dialogue in the full light of God’s shining countenance is the best contribution we can make to a civil democracy.
Again, I have full and complete confidence that the outcome of this inquiry will be resolved in our favor. Meanwhile, I do ask that you hold our national officers and our national attorneys in prayer as they work diligently to respond to the twenty-three questions within the fifteen day deadline.
