From the transcript of the October 2004 debate between Alan Keyes and Barack Obama:
MAGERS: A question for Mr. Obama, from Carlos Hernandez-Gomez.
HERNANDEZ-GOMEZ: Senator Obama, you say you’re a Christian, but Ambassador Keyes said that your record runs counter to Jesus’ teachings. What’s your reaction to your opponent’s assertion that your own Lord and Savior wouldn’t even vote for you?
OBAMA: (laughs) Well, you know, my first reaction was, I actually wanted to find out who Mr. Keyes’ pollster was, because if I had the opportunity to talk to Jesus Christ, I’d be asking something much more important than this senate race. I’d want to know whether I was going up, or down - there are all sorts of questions, I think, that I’d be interested in.
Look, I’m very proud of my Christianity, and it sustains me and it’s part of what motivates me to get involved in public service. As I said before, I started in this town, in Chicago, organizing with churches, and the enormous faith and resilience and courage that was shown by persons of faith made all the difference in the world, in terms of setting up after-school programs for youth, or making sure that we have affordable housing in many communities that are having tough times all across this state. But, what I don’t think is appropriate, as a public servant, is for me to assume my faith is absolute and to, therefore, presume that people who are of different faiths, and have different perspectives, are somehow evil, or wrong, or that I can’t have a dialogue with them and arrive at common ground.
MAGERS: Thank you very much. Mr. Keyes?
KEYES: But of course, the question involved here wasn’t people of different faiths, but people who profess the same faith, and that faith is faith in Jesus Christ. And the question, I think, that I would pose to the Lord is not whether I’m “going up” or “going down.”
I want to know where He stands, so that I may follow Him. I want to know where He stands with respect to the will of the Father, to Whom He looks. And on these questions, like abortion, He says the taking of innocent life is an abomination. On these questions, like traditional marriage, He says He created us male and female, and that the wrong use of the body in this way is, again, as the Scripture says, an abomination. He defined marriage not as the union of man and man, or woman and woman, but as man and woman, and “the two become one flesh”
So, when I look at where Christ stands, and I look at where Senator Obama stands, based upon that record of Christ’s understanding which we acknowledge as Christians to be the true record, I say, “Well, Christ is over here. Senator Obama’s over there. The two don’t look the same.”
And that means that I’m not thinking about Alan Keyes. I am thinking about the Lord. And to say I don’t have the right to do that means that you’re trying to suggest that my faith-shaped conscience has no place in our politics. And yet, if I go into the voting booth or into public life without my faith-shaped conscience, then I have no conscience. For, the Lord said I must love Him with my whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. There’s nothing left over. Without faith, there’s just a faith-shaped void where the conscience ought to be.
And I challenge all the voters of this state who profess to believe in Christ: “How can you vote from such a faith-shaped void?” Without the Lord, your vote will not be based upon that faith which ought to shape your life. And for anyone to suggest that you leave it behind
MAGERS: (talking over) Thank you, sir.
KEYES: at the door of the voting booth or public service, suggests something utterly incompatible with what the Lord ourself told us, Himself, rather, told us
MAGERS: (talking over) Thank you, sir.
KEYES: about the meaning of life.
MAGERS: Senator Obama, you have thirty seconds.
OBAMA: I don’t need Mr. Keyes lecturing me about Christianity. That’s why I have a pastor. That’s why I have my Bible. That’s why I have my own prayer. And I don’t think that any of you are particularly interested in having Mr. Keyes lecture you about your faith. What you’re interested in is solving problems like jobs, and health care, and education. I’m not running to be the minister of . I’m running to be its United States Senator.
MAGERS: Mr. Keyes, thirty seconds.
KEYES: I think that answer is typical. When it really comes down to it, though Senator Obama professes faith when it’s convenient to get votes, at the hard points where that faith must be followed and explained to folks, and stood up for and witnessed to as folks who were martyrs in the early church said, he then pleads separation of church and state, something found nowhere in the Constitution, and certainly found nowhere in the Scripture as such. So, I’ve gotta tell you, I think that this is a typical example that ought to be examined carefully by discerning people of Christian conscience.
MAGERS: (talking over) Thank you.
That dialogue and others like it are why I sent money to Keyes during his fight with Obama for the Senate seat. Obviously he was trying to challenge his own people — Christians—to do the right thing. The party was using Keyes’ skin color to try to do the political thing. But the people wanted the jiveass Golden Calf — free jobs, free housing, free sex, free healthcare, union bosses, political tyranny.