I consider my faith a personal matter, a gift of God's abundant grace.  It is bestowed by God and therefore can never be imposed by or upon others.  Since faith stands between us and the one in whom we believe, God alone can judge a person's faith. 

This is what I believe, and there was a time when I might have simply stopped there.  But this is not all I believe, and I am no longer willing to stop there.  I believe in religious humility.  I believe we'd do well to listen to Abraham Lincoln's advice and seek not so much to convince others that God is on our side as to work to ensure that we are on His.  But Lincoln's council does not require that we be silent about our faith.  Indeed it calls us to reflect on our behavior and ask, "Am I truly on His side?"

Like many of you, the roots of my faith are found in a faithful family.  My dad is an elder in his church.  My brother is an ordained minister who is now serving as a military chaplain.  My husband and best friend Dan, considered becoming a Catholic priest . . . until he met me.  My faith and family make me who I am. Long before I was governor and long after I am done, it will be my faith that makes me who I am and Whose I am. 

As a public servant, I am called to fill a role that is vastly greater than I am.  This means that, difficult as it may be, it is my duty to be a governor who is a Christian, without being a governor who disregards the law or alienates those citizens whose beliefs differ from my own.   If I came here today and told you this is easy to do, I'd be lying.  Our founding fathers intentionally wrote the Constitution to keep us in balance on this issue.   

Our First Amendment requires that our nation's leaders ensure the free exercise of religion - and that includes the exercise of my own religious faith - yet it also strictly prohibits the state from establishing one religion over another.  It can be difficult to hold the balance called for in our Constitution.  Yet, we find the same tension in Scripture too.  Consider Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.  At one point in the sermon, Jesus commands us not hide our light under a bushel.  A few short verses later, we are reminded not to pray on the street corners and parade our faith.   

As individual Christians we have a responsibility to spread the good news of God's love for us and God's desire that we manifest this love to others.  As citizens of this great country we have the extraordinary ability to respect all God's people.   

I think it's time for a resurgence of a new sense of morality.  The yardstick for our success should be the health of our inner-cities.  It should be the dignity and opportunity of average workers and the promise that they will receive a fair share of the fruits of their labor.  It should be the way we care for our children, our seniors, our poor, and our sick and all of those whom Jesus called "the least of these, our brothers and sisters." 

The realization of this vision will not be the result solely of political action, nor result from the work of a single political Party. But I am pleased that Michigan's Democratic Party Platform explicitly speaks to the important role of faith in our communities. 

In the opening section of the platform, which faith leaders from across Michigan helped draft, we say: "America has always been at its best when Americans ask not "what's in it for me," but "what can I do to give back?"  It's our proclamation that we are seeking the Common Good - the best life for each person of this state. The orphan. The family. The sick. The healthy. The wealthy. The poor. The citizen. The stranger. The first. The last." 

The bottom line is that we will truly move forward when we look past our partisan differences and begin to focus together on the fact that we are all God's children charged to seek the common good.  As people of faith, we must be willing to speak out for what is right and also be willing to say that our faith is bigger than any political Party or any single issue.

On the web: Granholm for Governor