c. 2008 Religion News Service

COLUMBUS, Ohio _ There was a time when Ted Strickland was clearly what political pollsters would call a white evangelical Christian. Fueled by a teenage conversion experience, he attended a small Christian school in Kentucky and spent a summer preaching and passing out Christian pamphlets in Europe.

Forty years later, Strickland _ now Gov. Strickland _ preaches economic recovery, not religion.

Unlike some presidential candidates, Strickland speaks about his faith almost reluctantly. He’s known to quote Scripture verses or lines from old hymns but is measured in talking about his beliefs and how they’ve played into his first year as governor of Ohio.

When he weighs in on religiously charged issues such as abortion, abstinence education or the death penalty, he often is labeled as the former Methodist minister that he is.

In recent interviews, Strickland reflected on how his faith affects his personal and political life. This interview has been edited for length.

Q: The experience in high school, was it a sense of call to ministry?

A: I guess most people would refer to it as a conversion or a kind of born-again kind of experience. I can just say that it was a deeply meaningful experience that I’m not sure I fully understand even now. I just felt like that was what I was meant to do in life.

Q: That ministry was what you were meant to do in life?

A: Service. I would call it service. I don’t think I had a clear idea of how that would be expressed.

Q: Has your faith changed over the years?

A: My understanding of religious faith and of personal responsibility I think has matured. I used to feel like I had all of the answers. I’m not so presumptuous that I think I know what God would think.

I think that is in part the result of life experiences and in part it’s a result of just maturing. And I think it’s the fact that I have become more comfortable with questions and I don’t need all of my questions answered.

Q: And that’s occurred over time?

A: It has. And for a lot of reasons. I came to believe that there is a tendency on the part of some religious folk to see God with human characteristics, and then they assign to God some of the most damaging and destructive of human characteristics.

I think there is a danger of having God conform to our image, rather than trying to conform to his.

Q: Could you articulate your theology?

A: I probably could. I’m not sure I choose to because I think my theology is my theology. There was a time when I felt very comfortable and very certain of my theology. So much so that I was willing to sit in judgment upon the theology of others. And I don’t think that’s where I want to be at this stage of my life.

Q: How do you think it’s interacted with your duties as governor?

A: We are, at any stage in our lives, a culmination of all that we have previously experienced. We may not be able to point to direct correlations between those past experiences and our current condition or thinking. But does my seminary instruction affect the way I see the world, the way I evaluate the human condition, the way I determine priorities? I think absolutely. But so do all of the other experiences that I’ve had.

Q: Your friend’s son died last summer, and you left Ohio to spend time with them. How did your faith affect that?

A: When I find myself in those circumstances, I frequently remember … the words of an old hymn, “O, God Our Help in Ages Past.” It goes like this:

“Before the hills in order stood,

or earth received her frame,

from everlasting thou art God,

the endless days the same.”

I try not to sort everything out and feel like I’ve got every answer that comes to a person during those periods of time. … So I’ve tried to not demand of myself, or for myself, answers to all of the specific questions regarding what happens at death, after death and what the future holds.

Q: Are you a member of a church? Do you attend church regularly?

A: Not a local congregation. I still certainly consider myself a United Methodist. I attend different churches or sometimes don’t attend church at all, depending on where I am.

The Methodist church I think has a very noble history, and what I embrace theologically is probably closer to the doctrinal teachings and the social teachings of the Methodist church. The Methodist church has wonderful social teachings, things like fair pay for a day’s work. It’s very socially progressive.

Q: How do you feel about being identified as a Methodist minister or former Methodist minister _ especially in regard to abortion, abstinence education or other moral issues?

A: I think there are a lot of moral issues. I think whether or not there are hungry people in Ohio is a moral issue. The thing I find a little frustrating is that the media has fallen into … a fairly narrow description of what is a moral issue.

If you read the New Testament, you’ll find that Jesus said a whole lot more about pride and arrogance, hypocrisy and selfishness than he did about abortion. I don’t read about anything that Jesus said about abortion specifically. However, he talked about specific sins a lot.

There are some things that for me have been answered. We need to work to feed the hungry, and to cloth the naked, and to provide housing to the homeless and to provide health care to the sick. I can’t speak for everybody, but for me, those are settled issues. Non-debatable issues.

(Mark Rollenhagen writes for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.)

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