Grizzly Groundswell

DENVER - The request
befuddled Leah Daughtry. The experienced political hand in charge of
planning next month’s Democratic National Convention - a
self-described “black chick from Brooklyn” and ordained
Pentecostal minister who keeps a Bible in her purse - didn’t know
what to tell the atheists.

Daughtry, 44, was
preparing for an Aug. 24 interfaith service that will open the
Democrats’ gathering here - a first for a party that hasn’t always
gotten God. Before her was an angry letter from a secularist group
that wanted to know whether atheists would be on the podium.

“Atheists speaking at
an interfaith service … does that work?” Daughtry asked this
week. “I don’t quite know. But they’re part of the party, you
treat them with respect. I’ll give them an answer.”

On a larger scale, it’s
what Daughtry and a growing number of Democrats of faith are setting
out to do: hold together and grow their party by claiming ground on
religion and values that Republicans have successfully mined for
years.

The presumptive Democratic
nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, has incorporated faith themes and
outreach into his campaign since the primaries began. A new political
action committee, Matthew 25, is running pro-Obama ads on Christian
radio. “People of faith” will have a caucus of their own at
the convention, just as blacks, Hispanics and military veterans do.

Such efforts come with
challenges, including answering nonbelievers, Democrats uncomfortable
with any mingling of church and state, and religious Americans at
odds with Democratic positions on social issues.

“All Americans, all
people, have values,” said Daughtry, a fifth-generation
minister. “For some of us, values come from faith. For others it
comes from what your parents taught you, what your grandmother taught
you on the porch in the summertime. These are values that make us
Democrats. We all have them.”

Daughtry, Howard Dean’s
chief of staff at the Democratic National Committee, was tapped last
year as chief executive officer of the Democratic National Convention
Committee. More accustomed to working behind the scenes, she has
adopted a more public role that has taken her from speaking at a
Denver synagogue to witnessing the installation of a Mormon church
president in Salt Lake City.

“When Leah Daughtry
walks in a room, nobody needs to underestimate her,” said Burns
Strider, who led religious outreach for Hillary Clinton’s
presidential campaign and is now an independent consultant. “At
once she’s a tough-minded political pro and at once she is a
God-centered believer and follower of Christ. She marries those two
personally very well and she understands how they interplay in the
public square.”

Growing up the oldest of
four children, Daughtry was a “quiet organizer” who spent
her time reading books or developing a seating chart for rides in the
family car, said her father, the Rev. Herbert Daughtry.

Herbert Daughtry’s father
had converted the family to Pentecostalism, a fast-growing growing
branch of evangelical Christianity that emphasizes the supernatural,
including healing, prophesy and speaking in tongues. His House of the
Lord Church, which grew into a small denomination, was at once strict
about things like the length of women’s skirts yet open, even in the
1930s, to ordaining women and biracial worship.

From his Brooklyn church,
Herbert Daughtry immersed his family in the civil rights struggle.
Responding to police violence, he helped start the National Black
United Front, bringing together parties as varied as the Black
Panthers and the Urban League. He espoused black liberation theology,
presenting the Gospel as deliverance for the oppressed. It’s the same
belief system held by Obama’s controversial former pastor, the Rev.
Jeremiah Wright.

At the same time, Herbert
Daughtry weathered criticism in the black community for not sending
his children to all-black colleges and for urging them to explore
Europe instead of Africa. Heeding her father’s words, Leah Daughtry
earned a government degree at Dartmouth and studied for a semester in
France.

“My argument was, ‘I
can and will teach them African history,’” Herbert Daughtry
said. “They will never have to worry about being comfortable in
their own skin. I wanted to broaden their scope of knowledge.”

Leah Daughtry has married
faith and politics, holding positions in the Clinton-era Labor
Department, working on the 1992 Democratic National Convention and
heading her party’s outreach to faith groups, Faith In Action. And
she continues to lead her own House of the Lord Church of 20 or 30
people in Washington, D.C.

Daughtry considers it all
“ministry _ a way to give of yourself.” Several of her
party’s positions, though, put her at odds with most evangelical
Christians. That includes her support for abortion rights.

“Theologically, we
believe that in the greatest decision of our entire lives - whether
to follow God or not - God allows us to choose,” she said. “If
God is big enough to allow that choice, then who are we to dictate
choices to other people? Your choices have consequences, but you
should be allowed to make those choices.”

Daughtry credited the
party for changing the way it talks about abortion - “not just
in terms of a woman’s right to make her own health-care choices, but
also in terms of our society’s responsibility to make sure women have
the resources that they need to make appropriate decisions.”

Tony Campolo, a liberal
evangelical author and pastor and member of the Democratic platform
committee, said he and others hope to move the party toward stronger
advocacy for reducing the number of abortions.

He declined to discuss
specific proposals, but he mentioned ensuring that pregnant women are
able to go on maternity leave without fear of losing their jobs, and
making day care more accessible.

“If we are going to
win over evangelicals, language that speaks to abortion reduction
will be very necessary,” Campolo said.

Daughtry believes the
party already is making inroads with evangelical voters, particularly
young ones sympathetic to Democratic positions on poverty and the
environment.

But a survey released last
week called that into question. Despite Obama’s robust religious
outreach, only about one-quarter of white evangelicals support him,
according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life - about the
same number that supported Democrat John Kerry at this juncture four
years ago.

As for those worried that
Democrats are acting like Republicans when it comes to religion,
Daughtry said: “The difference between us and the Republicans
is, one, we don’t claim a monopoly on God. We don’t try to be
dogmatic about this or make it a litmus test. For us, values come
from different places.”

That will be reflected in
the interfaith service - which may or may not include an address from
an atheist but will be open to anyone regardless of belief or
political party, Daughtry said.

“For me as person of
faith who has made God first in her life,” Daughtry said, “it
is symbolically important that the first thing we’re doing is coming
together as people of faith to celebrate our faith traditions and to
ask the blessings of God on us as we undertake this great civic
responsibility.”

IT
IS MY PERSONAL OPINION THAT “PREACHERS” LIKE THIS ARE
NOTHING MORE THEN WOLVES IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING. SHE IS LEADING HER
PEOPLE AND MANY OTHERS ASTRAY AND ONE DAY SHE WILL MOST CERTAINLY BE
JUDGE BY A HOLY GOD. NO TRUE CHRISTIAN CAN SUPPORT ABORTION AND GAY
RIGHTS NO MATTER WHAT THE EXCUSES USED ARE. NO MATTER HOW THEY TWIST
THE GOSPEL TO MAKE IT SOUND LIKE “GOD GIVES US A CHOICE SO WE
SHOULD GIVE THE MOM A CHOICE,” MUMBO JUMBO. THEY HAD THEIR
CHOICE BEFORE THEY LAID DOWN WITH THAT MAN, IT’S A WORD “NO!”
NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY I HAVE PROOF IT NEVER WORKS OUT VERY WELL FOR
THE ABORTED BABY! OF COURSE WE CANNOT SUPPORT GAY RIGHTS EITHER AND
SHE TOTALLY FAILED TO TALK ABOUT THAT. DO WE JUST PRETEND THAT ISN’T
AN ISSUE? IT IS AN ABOMINATION UNTO GOD AND LIKEWISE IT SHOULD BE TO
US AS WELL. I CAN PERSONALLY SAY THAT BECASUE I HAVE BEEN IN THAT
TRASH MYSELF SO ONE CANNOT CALL ME A HOMOSEXUAL BASHER, I WAS
BI-SEXUAL! IT IS HIGH TIME THE CHURCH GOT SOME GUTS AND CALLED IT
LIKE IT IS AND STOP LISTENING TO AND ALLOWING PEOPLE LIKE THIS WOMAN
TO CLOUD AND CONVUSE YOUR MIND. THE WORD OF GOD IS THE WORD OF GOD
AND NOTHING CAN CHANGE THAT. NOT EVEN A SILVER TOUNGED WOLF LIKE
THIS!!!

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