Invocation by the Rev. Dr. R. William Franklin of the American Academy in Rome at the One Voice for Change rally in Rome, Italy on April 12, 2008.
We gather together today at this ancient public square, in the shadow of the Roman Forum, to answer the call of our country, the United States of America, to exercise our right as a free people to choose the next American President. This is an historic moment of opportunity for the American people. And it is an honor today to be joined by our Italian friends as they in these days choose a new government for their nation. This Forum is hallowed ground for both Italians and Americans. For us as Americans, the Forum is hallowed because the framers of our American constitution looked back to the ancient Roman Republic which inspired some of the most advanced thinking of our Founding Fathers and Mothers.
Even the Roman Emperors, one of whom is commemorated by this Trajan’s Column, invoked the spirit of the Roman people to lend legitimacy to their rule, and we in a more democratic age, as the American people, answer the call for new leadership, not an emperor or a tyrant, but rather one who will give new life to the spirit of our venerable constitutional democracy. In this 2008 election season we see living signs emerging once again of the self-confidence and optimism that marked the birth of our American nation, of that revolutionary generation’s bold assurance, in tough times, in looking to the future, based on the best traditions of our past embodied in a place like this Roman Forum, and in the spirit of “We the People.”
We are here today because we have dedicated ourselves to that democratic ideal by supporting Senator Barack Obama in his campaign for the White House, to follow him all the way to his inauguration as the 44th President of the United States.
We do this because we believe Barack Obama exhibits the bold assurance of our American Founders, that he is a great soul, strong to live, as well as to think. We do this because in this primary campaign he has rejected cynicism and the politics of the past, and instead he has made a fresh new connection to America’s sources of idealism which go all the way back to ancient Rome. We answer the call because Barack Obama has re-ignited hope.
Senator Obama has said that in recent years Americans have lost a uniting spiritual purpose, a narrative arc of purpose that unites all our citizens across the narrow divides of denomination, class, race, and ethnicity. He says that each day thousands of our people go about their daily routines, dropping off their kids, driving to the office, trying to stay on their diets. But work, possessions, busyness are not enough. Something more is required. And so today we invoke that great uniting spiritual purpose of our people that Barack Obama has reminded us of in this campaign.
We have answered the call and are here today because Senator Obama offers to us the kind of leadership in the office of the President that will create a more perfect union of common purpose, that will advance the profound aspirations of the American people, and that will once again give space to an American community of love, made up of believers and non-believers, of old and young, of red and blue.
We answer the call because we believe Barack Obama will open the way for the American people to draw on the authentic elements, not the cynical and self-serving elements, of our tradition, finding in him an inspiring source of strength and confidence for all citizens. And so this afternoon I invoke that still vital spirit of the American people that it will inspire us in this presidential campaign, that it will propel us now to go all the way to victory, and to vindicate the idealism which has been so fundamental in our country’s past.
Thank you.
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