I believe the “political activities” are on the other foot. The UCC General Synod was in June of 2007, celebrating that denomination’s 50th Anniversary. It is only now fully nine months later, when Senator Obama has become the front-runner in the race for President, that this investigation is launched. Further, the IRS did not contact the UCC or communicate with them while coming to this decision.

I was present when Senator Obama gave this speech at General Synod (along with 10,000 of my closest church friends and neighbors). There were no campaign buttons, signs, electioneering or other such politically related activities. Indeed, the UCC leadership took care to instruct the assembled about the fact that this was a faith event and we were welcoming a member of our church to talk to us about his personal faith in the public square.

It was an extraordinary speech. Pundits and competing candidates have criticized Senator Obama for being more about words than deeds. This is, of course, just political noise, but it is true that some words are more effective than others. This speech was an insightful, even luminous glimpse into the fundamental human dilemma of the search for meaning and purpose in life.

We may have to go back to Lincoln to find such a weaving of transcendent themes of meaning and purpose in the search for how we want to live as Americans. What is truly innovative in this speech by Obama and what makes it such an incredible model for how we engage the public square with our faith without violating the separation of church and state, is that he never collapses his faith in Jesus Christ into a narrow path to salvation; instead, he reaches out from the power of his faith in God to the universal human striving for meaning in a world where poverty and injustice threaten to drive us down and out into despair and nothingness. People want “a narrative arc to their lives” Obama said.

The narrative structure of the speech was to take the audience with him as he went from his conversion to a personal faith in Jesus Christ to the broad theme of meaning and purpose in human life.

He started talking about his work as a community organizer and his work with older church folk who confronted him about being more an observer of faith, than a believer. He decided he’d better find a community of faith.

So one Sunday, I put on one of the few clean jackets I had, and went over to Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street on the South Side of Chicago. And I heard Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright deliver a sermon called "The Audacity of Hope." And during the course of that sermon, he introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, He would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in Him. And in time, I came to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life.

It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church, as folks sometimes do. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. The skeptical bent of my mind didn't suddenly vanish. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth and carrying out His works.

If anyone could think that’s engaging in “political activities” than I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.

Obama went on to say what I think is the truly innovative part of how he relates his faith to public service, not only in his own life, but also in the larger American journey.

But my journey is part of a larger journey – one shared by all who've ever sought to apply the values of their faith to our society. It's a journey that takes us back to our nation's founding, when none other than a UCC church inspired the Boston Tea Party and helped bring an Empire to its knees.

The temptation to empire is the temptation to persecute freedom, especially religious freedom, rather than respect and honor it. It is now another UCC church, the national United Church of Christ, that is standing up for individual freedom, especially the right to religious expression free of government persecution.

Read the full text of the speech and all the relevant documents by going to the UCC website and judge for yourself.

The “narrative arc” of this speech tracks the “narrative arc” of how we as Americans respect our Constitution and also passionately engage in public service as a higher calling.

There is true irony in the IRS investigating the UCC for the presentation of a speech that may go down in history as one of the most profound articulations of how we as Americans live into transcendent meaning and purpose through our free, democratic institutions. Truly that is ironic. And sad.