One of the many events I stopped in on this weekend was a college fair that Ezion Fair Baptist church in Wilmington put on for its members and their high school age children.  It was great to see the church putting on a program like this for its members.  And so my sermon today will be on the subject of churches and synagogues.

As you know if you have plowed through my self-congratulatory biography, I got my start in Delaware doing free legal work out of the basements of churches, homeless shelters, and senior centers in Delaware.  I have seen firsthand how many of our churches and synagogues serve as an anchor for their communities and their members, and when I am elected I hope to work closely with them in my campaign to help Delaware’s children.  There is a lot more that government can and should do to help kids in our state, but government is not the entire solution, and our churches can be a big part of the rest.

One example: I have already said that as Lieutenant Governor, I would embark on a campaign to recruit more foster parents for our state.  The foster parents we have are doing a great job, but we just don’t have enough of them, and we are burdening foster parents with more kids than they can handle and foster kids with placements that are less than ideal because we don’t have enough choices.   When I am elected, the first place I will be going to ask more people to step up for our foster kids will be the churches and synagogues of our state.

One of the recruiters at the Ezion Fair Baptist event mentioned that Langston Hughes was an alum of his university.  It reminded me of a Langston Hughes poem called “The Dream Keeper” that I have used in speeches from time to time:

Bring me all of your dreams/You dreamers/Bring me all of your/Heart melodies/That I may wrap them/In a blue cloud-cloth/Away from the too-rough fingers/Of the world.

Not a bad way to start a new week.