This weekend people of faith will go to their churches, mosques, temple and houses of worship seeking guidance and strength, a sense of community and support. Our houses of worship seek to be our spiritual homes, and our religious leaders strive to provoke reflection and highlight important issues and values that affect our daily lives and community. In the nest two weeks our houses of worship will be not only a spiritual home but also a lighthouse. This is critically important given the mean-spirited and highly partisan public debates that are dominating the air and radio waves.
People of faith are concerned about what is happening in our nation.
However, political leaders have chosen to focus on scandals that distract from the important issues of government that affect our lives and communities in the most basic ways. This drifting away from substantive discourse and reliance on 30-second distortions and attack ads, creates a political climate that is both alienation and out of step with the cultural values of our nation. Indeed, the home of our representative democracy, the institution in which we stand today, embodies the cultural values of its people in the most basic unit of expression and truly the most powerful - the right to vote. This individual expression has collective meaning because we are entrusting our elected leaders with the task of governing and navigating through issues that have great significance in the life of our nation and future generations. To cast an we must have access to unbiased nonpartisan information.