Yesterday felt in some ways like my career had come full circle.  Back in the summer of 1989, when I was working in Delaware between my first and second years of law school, I decided that I wanted to do something to provide legal help to the economically disadvantaged communities in our state.  I asked the late Christine McDermott of Delaware Volunteer Legal Services if she would supervise me, and I decided that the best place to locate my efforts was through one of the churches that already ministered to that community.  A mutual friend led me to Bishop Thomas W. Weeks of what was then known as Greater Bethel Apostolic Temple, and I spent part of the summer volunteering out of an office in the basement of the church.

Almost twenty years later, I found myself on the phone yesterday with Bishop Weeks and another friend in the clergy, Reverend Christopher Bullock,  talking to the press about my plan to have state government in Delaware assist faith-based organizations compete with their counterparts in the other 49 states for federal and private funds that are available to them.  Delaware has not received its fair share in this area—of over $289 million allocated from one of the largest federal programs targeted at faith-based groups, Delaware received only $100,000.  We need to help our faith-based organizations do better, so they in turn can help Delawareans in need.

My work in the summer of 1989 resulted in my working full-time out of churches and other community centers for my first two years out of law school, and a relationship with many of our state’s religious leaders that has endured to this day.  It is a relationship that I value immensely—we must be mindful of the line between church and state, but many of these religious leaders are working to help the same people that I am, and can be good partners in our effort to make this state a better place for kids. 

My opponent’s reaction to my plan in today’s newspaper was to complain that I was just playing politics to try to lure his own party’s voters away from him.   Well, I certainly do intend to win a majority of his party’s voters as well as mine.  But I think the religious leaders who have worked with me for over a decade probably had a good chuckle when they read his outburst.  Those leaders and I were working together on faith-based initiatives before the politicians gave them a fancy name.  Partnerships with the religious community don’t belong to a single political party, and people who claim that they do unwittingly reveal how they themselves view them.