If you've listened to John Edwards, you know that he has a vision for what our nation will look like within 30 years and there's no mistake about what that vision encompasses. On the CNN Forum on Faith and Politics tonight at George Washington University, we learned how his political vision is informed by his personal faith. Edwards is the 2008 Presidential candidate whose political vision most closely conforms, in spirit, to the Sojourners' mission of fighting poverty.
John Edwards was raised in a Christian home and was baptized in the Southern Baptist church. As a young man, he admits to drifting away from his faith, but says that he returned to it in his adulthood. When his 16 year old son Wade died in 1996 as a result of a car accident, it was a time when he felt as if he was struggling just to survive. It was then that he says that his faith came roaring back and has stayed with him since that time.
"It was the Lord that got me through that," Edwards said
His faith helped him to deal with the personal challenges that he and his family have faced with Elizabeth's breast cancer.
During his 15-minute interview, Edwards reconciled his belief in evolution with his faith in God by expressing his belief that the hand of God is present in every step of his own life and to every human being that exists on this planet.
Although he is a strongly in favor of civil unions for gays and the substantive rights that go with their partnerships, he is not personally a proponent of gay marriage. He articulated the difference between his own belief system and what the responsibilities of the president of the United States should be, stressing that the president of the United States should never use his belief system in imposing that belief system on the rest of the country. "I think it is not the role of the federal government to tell either faith-based institutions, churches, synagogues, what they should or should not recognize," said Edwards. "Nor should the federal government be telling states what they should recognize."
He impressed upon the audience that respect was the key to embracing many different faith traditions as well as embracing those who are not believers in this country. He rejected the triumphalist view that this is a "Christian nation" because respect for the citizen's freedom to worship (or not) was one of the foundations for which our democracy was founded.
Poverty is one of the issue where John Edwards shines. When it comes to Edwards' plan to end poverty in our lifetime, Reverend Jim Wallis, author of the book "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It" seems to be a perfect faith partner. His question to Senator Edwarda at the CNN forum was:
Senator, you often speak of the 39 million Americans who wake up in poverty every day. Many of us in churches and faith-based organizations, for us this is a gospel issue, as you know. Changing this is a biblical priority, so we are wanting to make a specific commitment to cut poverty in half in the next 10 years as a beginning. As president, how would you mobilize the nation and take concrete steps to accomplish that goal?
To which Senator Edwards responded:
Well, let me first say thank you to you, Jim, and to Sojourners for its great leadership on this, what I think is a great moral issue facing this country today and I would add to that, this the is the cause of my life. It is the reason after the last election that I went back to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, started a poverty center. It is the reason I've traveled around the world doing humanitarian work.
It is the reason I help lead minimum wage campaigns in six states. It's the reason I've helped organize thousands of workers in the unions. And before we ever got in politic, it's the reason that I was involved with urban ministries, faith-based groups, doing work to help the poor and one of the reasons that Elizabeth and I did a lot of other things, starting after school centers for kids who need playgrounds, libraries, etc.
So I think there's a very long and consistent pattern of this being the cause of my life. And I might add everything I can do, everything in my power that I'm able to do, I will do to drive the issue of poverty in this presidential campaign so that everyone is required to talk about it. Because I think it is the great moral issue of our time. I've committed, actually, to an agenda of eliminating poverty over the next 30 years.
I think it's a completely achievable agenda. There are lots of components to that agenda. Making work pay, having a living wage, making sure that workers can organize themselves into unions, having decent housing for families that don't have it, having true universal health care, helping kids be able to go to college, which is why I started a college for everyone program for kids in a very poor section of eastern North Carolina. And I believe this is an agenda that should be the agenda -- one of the agendas -- part of the agenda of the president of the United States, so there's not much doubt about where I am on this issue.
I have respect for my colleagues who are running for the presidency, but I will say this is not an issue -- and I say this to everyone in the audience. This is not an issue that I just talk about when I come to you. This is an issue I talk about all over America in front of all kinds of audiences because it's part of who I am. It's who I am as a human being. And I will say this. This is such a part of my life that whatever happens in this presidential campaign, as long as I am alive and breathing, I will be out there fighting with everything I have to help the poor in this country. I can promise you that.
Edwards promised that he'd make the restoration of New Orleans a priority.
The single biggest thing to be done is the president of the United States needs to put one person, a very high-level competent person in the White House, in charge of New Orleans. And that person -- the president should say to that person, "I want you in my office every morning telling me what you did in New Orleans yesterday." And the next day say, "I want you in my office telling me what you did yesterday. I'm not interested in what you're going to do six months from now; I want to know what you did yesterday. And I want to know what's happening on the ground," the president, "what's happening on the ground every single day." What has happened in New Orleans is a national embarrassment. All of us should be embarrassed by it.
There were some refreshing and lighthearted moments during the interview.
I remembered a certain President who thought he'd heard God telling him to invade Iraq when I think he was actually experiencing a case of ear wax build-up when Reverend Sharon Watkins asked Senator Edwards, "When you pray, how do you know if the voice that you are hearing is the voice of God or your own voice in disguise?"
Senator Edwards made Soledad O'Brien laugh and the nods of many in the audience showed that they identified with him when he said he couldn't identify just one sin he could name as his most regretable.
"We are all sinners. We all fall short, which is why we have to ask for forgiveness from the Lord. I can't -- to try to identify one particular sin that was worse or more extreme than the others, the list is too long."
- Link to John and Elizabeth Edwards podcast with Rev. Jim Wallis in December 2005 and January 2006 Part One, Part Two