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That together, our dreams can be one. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation.
I understand you switched venues at considerable expense and inconvenience because of unfair labor practices at the place you were going to be having this synod. But we cannot walk away this time. Many bring up a specific issue.
If you're working forty hours a week, you shouldn't be living in poverty. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer.
For alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga. In the end, that's what this election is about. I'm not talking about blind optimism here - the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. And fault lines must be closed among Muslims as well, as the divisions between Sunni and Shia have led to tragic violence, particularly in Iraq.
These are some of the challenges that test our conscience - as Americans and people of faith. It comes from Deuteronomy 30 when Moses talks to his followers about the challenges they'll find when they reach the Promised Land without him. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us.
Thank you.