Speech to United Theological Seminary's Progressive Faith Members Orientation

Thank you, and thank you to everybody who's gathered today for a conversation about the intersection between faith and politics and to reflect on how our faith traditions and our values and our public service intersect or should intersect.

You asked me to talk about something that would surprise you--I've been reflecting on something a lot recently. You know this has been a really hard year for criminal justice in our country, and for a sense that our justice system is a just system. And whether it's in Ferguson or in Staten Island or in my hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, or places elsewhere in the country, there is a real sense of disconnect and a renewed focus on how mass incarceration is impacting communities and how our criminal justice system has some profound failings.

When I was a young man--and I mean, in middle school--my father, my parents were sort of dutiful suburban Republican Presbyterians. Everything was done decently and in order, no worship exceeded an hour. Fellowship hour was fellowship hour. Enthusiasms were for the Baptists.

So looking back on it, it is stunning to me that my father, a small businessman and Republican with no particular engagement in or history of civic activism, decided one Sunday because there was a guest preacher who was citing Matthew 25 and said really very pointedly "'When have you, to the least of these, clothed the naked, fed the hungry, visited those in prison?' And if we're not doing this then why are we here? We oughtta be at the country club. The food's better and the music's better."

And a group of volunteers decided to begin going to our state prison and visiting with prisoners. And my father found it compelling, and developed a real relationship with a man who was a convicted murderer. What I find striking looking back on it, I was eleven at the time, this man had killed his own father.

His father was a violent, abusive alcoholic. Paul had killed him when he was 17 and had spent 18 years in prison. His family wanted nothing to do with him. And he was eligible for parole. And we started having him come spend weekends with us visiting.

Now, as a father myself of teenagers--teenage boys and a teenage daughter--when my own kids have seen homeless folks on the street in our town and said, "Dad, we have an extra bedroom, why can't she come live with us?" My wife and I do this sort of safe, "Oh, well, you know, we support the Friendship house, and we volunteer there, and there's other people who do that sort of thing, honey."

My father and my mother took what was the radical step of welcoming into our home, weekend after weekend, year after year, someone who they did not see as a convict but who they saw as a neighbor and a fellow Christian. When my father later in life, asked me how I became a Democrat (I'm the first Democrat in the known history of my family) I cited to him that simple powerful radical witness of taking seriously Matthew 25. I hope at some point to earn His respect by doing some small thing in this Congress to make some real difference in criminal justice reform.

In my own life I spent time living in homeless shelters and visiting with the homeless and working with the homeless, trying to honor that tradition--trying to make some difference, and to understand what the housing needs in our country are. But to me today, criminal justice strikes me as a pressing and basic human rights need, justice need, and where the voice of the progressive faith community is badly needed, important, and vital.

Thank you.

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