The Independent Weekly / Aug. 25, 2008
The first words I heard when I walked into the theater at the Colorado Convention Center came from the University of Denver's Spirituals Project Choir. Two thousand people had gathered for the first official event of the Democratic National Convention and were greeted with an uptempo promise of Christian salvation: "I'm gonna shout 'til the spirit moves in my heart / I'm gonna shout 'til Jesus comes."
The Sunday afternoon interfaith service was the first of its kind at a Democratic convention. For two hours, delegates and their friends listened to a procession of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist leaders who preached, sang and read from their holy books. "Politics, at the deepest place, is about us as spiritual beings understanding there is a God; this is a created world," said Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, who welcomed the guests. "We need to remind the rest of the country that there is absolutely, in our party, a tremendous intersection of faith and politics."
Sharing the podium with Ritter was convention CEO Leah Daughtry, herself a Pentecostal minister from Washington, D.C. "With all due respect to the commentators and my friends in the media," Daughtry proclaimed, "we didn't need to bring faith to the party. Faith is already here." Cheers and amens filled the hall.
For those who believe in the separation of church and state, this might seem like a jarring way to kick off the Democrats' quadrennial assembly. But party leaders have been deliberately trying to snag the religious high ground from the GOP.
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