Consulting as Ministry

Common Good Strategies partner Eric Sapp on helping Democratic candidates reach religious voters

By Beckie Supiano, Lynae Anderson, August 24, 2007

Full Transcript below.

Q. How does a football player end up in ministry, then public policy and then here right now in Alexandria?

A. I grew up in the Presbyterian Church, my father who’s an ordained Presbyterian minister but in ministry and other service – is currently the chair of the religion department at the University of Miami, and so the first four or five years of my life he was in parish ministry but then was basically a full-time professor from that point on.

So I always grew up with – I taught Sunday school, went on mission trips with our church, that sort of thing was always a very important part of who I was. And then when I went to college I got involved in Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which is an evangelical para-church group at school and at too young an age ended up becoming the president of FCA, and that was a really good experience for me, it was difficult at times but it really challenged me and was a humbling experience because Fellowship of Christian Athletes at Davidson was one of the most – one of the two largest Christian organizations on campus and was very well-known, so my position was basically known to everybody as a result there were a lot of times people would walk up to me and say, “You know, Eric, I know you’re president of FCA, and I have this issue, can you give me some advice or something.”

And what struck me was how often those relationships and those opportunities were created through guys on my football team, or I was resident advisor, so in my hall, or through student government where I was involved, and it really opened my eyes to ministry outside the parish—just how many people had these same faith crises, but if they didn’t have a real strong church home, if they needed another venue it gave them a more comfortable opportunity to come in and just explore different issues of faith. And I was a poli sci major, I decided, I knew I wanted to kind of go into international politics but kind of towards the end of my college experience through what was a very long story we don’t have time to for, felt a call to ministry and decided to go on to Duke and do two master’s, one in divinity and one in public policy.

Q. Tell me a little about your call and how you felt that moment.

I was doing international relations and conflict resolution program at the Hague my junior year of college and we took a trip to Great Britain to meet with their equivalent of secretary of state and on that trip I went to St. Paul’s for church, and because I didn’t understand the metro system, the underground system at all, I got there like an hour early, and so I sat down right in the front, and sat down with an American lady, we talked for the whole time, she asked me what I was doing, I told her I was on this program, wanted to go on and get a master’s degree in international policy. And at the end of the service, as we were walking out, she just said, “Oh, so you’re going to be a minister when you grow up, right?” and I kind of looked at her and thought, “No, we just had this long conversation, and I explained it to you,” and having a father who was a minister I’d been asked that question a lot growing up as a kid, and I always said no.

But that one time, it just really stuck with me and I was up until about two or three in the morning just wrestling with it and by the time I was done at the Hague I decided I was going to give it some serious thought, and went home and actually talked to some professors first before my parents, and then decided, the way I talked about it, I said, it’s dating me at the timing – I wasn’t sure it was a call necessarily, but I knew God was beeping me. So I figured the least I could do was return the beep. So I went on to div school, and realized as soon as I got there that it was the right place.

Q. What was div school like at Duke?

A. OK, well it was just a great experience and for someone- I was in poli sci and history at Davidson- it was just great because it was a change of pace, and I spend all day just focused on God. It was really cool. And studying, studying with people who were deeply devoted in their faith and were a real inspiration. I had wonderful professors, also got to stay- I was an area coordinator in charge of freshman dorms and so got a lot of kind of practical counseling pastoral experience through that, but just had a really good time and was stretched a lot, grew a lot, learned more than I can imagine.

And one of the nice things also was just after, when you’re in school studying the same things you’ll learn new facts but it’s kind of the same sort of process, like with church history for example I was learning things that I had absolutely never even thought of or heard before, so it was exciting in that way also.

And then I was unique in my program in div school and then also in public policy cause I was doing the joint degree, so I was doing the programs, I did two years of divinity and one in public policy and the final jointly, but I was always approaching them knowing that there was this other part of it and that there was this balancing side, so it gave me a different perspective on both my degrees that a lot of my classmates didn’t have.

What struck me and kind of led to what we are doing now is I was a little wary going into the public policy program of how I’d be received, and this was in the, right at 2000, and the election- is everyone going to think I’m a certain kind of type of person because I’m the “div guy,” and what I found was actually the opposite, that in a way I got almost more credit and more of a pass on things, and if we talk about some cultural issue I can make a point and people would say “oh, that’s his faith, and that’s where it’s coming from, and we’re going to respect that,” and sometimes a classmate would say something similar and kind of get trounced by either one side or the other, but I almost got more of a pass and more respect because I was coming at it from a position of faith, and I think I put the time in, so it was more than just giving some sound bites, but I’d already spend two years in div school showing that this was important to who I was.

Q. That sounds kind of like what Mara was talking about, how once you’re coming from an authentic place, and showing people that, then they see it’s real and they respect it, so it’s not just on the college level or the div school level, but across the country.

A. And that’s just been our lesson that we’ve learned, that in all the campaigns, and that we knew coming in, that the authenticity is the key. Something else that we share that is kind of how we got into this, I also had many of those same feelings of – that I was raised in a Democratic household, the compassion issues, the justice side was always very important to who I was, but my faith was also deeply important to who I was and growing more so and more so kind of the older I got.

And what’s very interesting is a lot of my college friends, kind of going back to reunions and things, my first job after grad school was to work on the Senate Health Committee for Senator Kennedy, and there were a number of people for whom when I went back and, “Oh, what are you doing,” “I’m working for Senator Kennedy” “What? You were head of FCA, you’re a Republican!” and it was like, “No, I’ve always held the, my positions haven’t changed, my views haven’t changed.” And it was a lot of this kind of reaction against what Mara was talking about, how people felt that if you were a person of faith, you had to be one party. And I’ve had a lot of people say “You are the first Democrat who’s a real Christian I’ve ever met” or “How can you be a Democrat and a Christian?”

And when they say the first thing to me, I say, “Well I guarantee you that’s not the case,” but it is something, before we got started, that was just pervasive throughout our culture and the country that the real people of faith you saw in the media all the time they’d show the Republican faith person and the Democratic atheist Barry Lynn, so that was kind of the impression people got and a lot of what I felt, not only was it hurting the party and everything, but more importantly I felt it was diminishing the witness of the church, because I heard from a lot of people, you know, outside the church and did a lot of my ministry and relationships were kind of on the periphery, was this idea that all Christians are about is kind of the right-wing, fundamentalist side, GOP sort of politics, that would turn people away from the gospel and the true message of Jesus.

Q. How did you and Mara meet and get this whole idea going?

A. Well, I’m a Presbyterian Calvinist, so it’s Providence, it’s all — all things worked out to the greater good, but it was –

I was on the Hill and one thing that’s worked well in our relationship is while our visions are – constantly amazing how identical they are – we come from a different kind of perspective in that I was working on the Hill. I worked on the Hill for four years, Mara was coming from more the faith-advocacy community, and she came and did a presentation on Capitol Hill for staff of the Faith Working Group and she was talking about her success in Michigan, and I just heard her get up there and she was just saying everything that kind of I believed and was very articulate in doing so.

And we struck up a conversation afterwards, I think got coffee a few times, and my boss at the time, Congressman David Price from North Carolina was co-chairman of the Faith Working Group, he also had a divinity degree, was very interested in these issues, and staffing him I had a lot of leeway in bringing in different speakers for the groups he was in charge of and so we brought Mara in to present to members, and she came in and did a breakfast presentation where we had one of our largest turnouts of the year and then it was supposed to go from eight to nine, and people stayed until nine forty-five, which upset a lot of schedulers but was kind of an indication of how powerful this was and Mara and I just kept talking and then when she started up Common Good and immediately got kind of swamped with offers, and it was really better than anything I imagined doing to get this thing going off the ground.

Q. Mara talked about the different states that you worked on and highlighted Oregon as different and significant – what’s up with Oregon?

A. Well, Oregon and some of our other – these were examples to answer the question of, can this only be done by super-religious people, or in areas where you have very obvious Bible-belt sort of places or super-strong Catholic evangelical communities? And Oregon, again, America’s a religious nation, so you’ve got people in every single state and every single district who are people of faith – strong people of faith.

But Oregon is officially the least religious of all the states, and yet their party understood that this was an area where they had just completely ceded ground to Republicans, and they had some visionary people who also realized that a lot of what they stood for was what the faith community wanted and believed in, and so they brought us in to help them get a program started up, and we did a training for all of their elected officials and candidates and campaign managers, and on just the very basic – a lot of it was just breaking down stereotypes of here are the communities that are in your state, this is what they’re interested in, and talking to them about what Mara said about the listening meetings, getting those set up, how to just do basic things like Christian radio ads, using the Christian media et cetera.

And what we heard, a couple different things, a lot of, it was a mandatory training, so everyone had to come and some of the people weren’t super-excited to go at the beginning, but then afterwards told the party that it was just completely different than what they’d expected, cause they kind of expected a Religious Right Democrats kind of style, and that’s not our approach.

And they also just recognized all the opportunities, and the party got a faith caucus started, they did a bunch of different things and were so successful they actually won some additional grants from the DNC to expand out their faith outreach and it worked well, they won back one of their Houses and were very pleased, continued it on and actually now the two leaders for their new Democratic Party Chair position were both the co-chairs of the fait caucus, and so it’s kind of carried over moving forward.

We also had a candidate in Kansas who was Hindu and won in Wichita, a very conservative evangelical state district, and he gave a lot of credit to these efforts and it shows that you don’t have to be exactly the same as the people you’re talking to, but in his case and in all of our candidates’ cases – what they’re doing is – they’re just showing up, listening, showing respect, recognizing the contributions the faith community provides, and when the people agree with you on most of the issues – just getting over some of those basic hurdles of respect is often all it needs to tip the balance.

Q. And do you see this continuing to happen, on maybe not on a larger scale but more Democrats recognizing this?

A. Yes, and that’s obviously our hope but we’re working towards our goal for this year is to really expand out our efforts and the state party levels because that was such a successful model because then everything worked up and down the ticket but it was also a model that continues on after the election’s over. Whereas with candidates the focus shifts, with the party you can keep relationships going and continue to expand things out. So we’re hoping to do that with more parties and we’re already reaching out into different areas and then I think just the successes of ’06 and the fact that our candidates won ten to twenty points better in the faith communities, it’s gotten a lot of attention and that people saw that it could be done while still holding on to core democratic principles, we didn’t give any of that up.

And some of the early media talk was that oh, these quote-unquote more conservative Democrats were winning, but then, when people started looking more closely, they realized that it was Heath Shuler, Ted Strickland, Sherrod Brown, Bob Casey, these were people who were speaking in a way in some of the most progressive, populist visions, there were few Democrats were talking more about poverty or the environment and making it more central to their campaign than these candidates, who were really in a way given the opportunity to do so because they did it in the context of their faith, where it worked with both the right and the left and was a way to bring something back into the central part of what it means to be a Democrat that consultants and people would say, oh, that’s not real popular anymore, you can’t talk about it, but in the context of their faith and saying, “This is what I care deeply about,” it was something that they felt compelled to talk about and it worked and so I think people looking at the numbers and looking at also just the message are starting to respond, and as Mara mentioned you’re seeing it also in all the presidential candidates are moving this forward and so a lot’s happened in the last two years.

Q. Are we going to start seeing other companies or firms similar to yours?

A. I’m not sure. I think what we’ll see and what our hope is we’ll put ourselves out of business, but you’ll see more companies and consulting firms just making this part of what they do, you’ll definitely see more campaigns doing that, more state parties doing that, the DNC [Democratic National Committee] is getting staff to do that and so it works best when it’s part of the whole as opposed to kind of a separate add-on and we’re definitely seeing that happen right now within the Democratic Party and hope to see that continue on in the future.