My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. That’s the promise we need to keep. It is about preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that could lead this region and the world down a hugely dangerous path.

Tonight is a particular honor for me because – let’s face it – my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. We need to heed the biblical call to care for “the least of these” and lift the poor out of despair. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned. The fourth issue that I will address is democracy.

But somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. That is why we welcome efforts like Saudi Arabian King Abdullah’s Interfaith dialogue and Turkey’s leadership in the Alliance of Civilizations.