In honor of International Day for People of African Descent, which is observed internationally on August 31 each year, ELCA Racial Justice Ministries invited Rev. Terrance Jacob to share some thoughts about being a person of African descent. For more…
Co-chairing a meeting with Sen. Barack Obama as equals
A case of faith-based community organizing laying the ground for a North-South relationship of mutual respect and the power it wields
By Terrance A. Jacob
In July 2006, I received an unexpected call from Sen. Barack Obama’s office in Washington, D.C. He was visiting South Africa for the first time and wanted to meet with me. At the time, I was serving as the Africa director of the Gamaliel Foundation, a faith-based organizing network focused on justice, equity and grassroots empowerment.
Sen. Obama had also worked with Gamaliel, in the 1990s on the South Side of Chicago — though we didn’t overlap, he was intrigued that a former activist, imprisoned under apartheid, was doing church organizing across the continents.
At first, his staff requested a meeting in Pretoria. I declined because I was too busy organizing local communities, building participative democracy in the new South Africa. A colleague in Chicago warned me, “You just turned down the future president of the United States!” I laughed and said, “I’ve got democracy to build. What can a U.S. senator add to that?” (I was half joking.)
Eventually I agreed to meet the senator in Cape Town, where he was also visiting Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I made one request: I wanted to bring along some housewives and local clergy — real people from the communities I did organizing with.
We met at a hotel boardroom on the Cape Town Waterfront. Before Obama arrived, his staff approached me and said, “Reverend, the senator would like you to co-chair the meeting with him.” When he entered the room, Obama greeted us with warm hugs. At the long boardroom table, he and I sat at the head, my delegation on one side, and his — including the U.S. ambassador to South Africa, the U.S. consul general, and their spouses — on the other.
My delegation laid out our concerns: crime, drugs, unemployment and especially the devastating impact of HIV and AIDS in our communities. We shared how we had visited the U.S. embassy in Pretoria in 2005 with a delegation that included U.S. and South African Lutheran bishops, clergy and lay leaders — 20 people in total — seeking funding from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) for churches working with AIDS orphans and patients.
We were turned away. Our U.S. partners were charged with returning home to get leaders to write letters to the U.S. ambassador in South Africa. In South Africa, we continued to organize, which involved calling even cabinet members and Health Ministry staff to meetings with congregations across the country.
As we shared this, Obama leaned over and whispered, “Reverend, I turned out the targets. You do the pin.” (That’s organizing-speak for: “I got the right people in the room — now make the demand.”)
So we did. When the ambassador didn’t immediately respond, Obama asked, “Mr. Ambassador, if you received letters from U.S. church leaders requesting this funding, what would you do?” The ambassador replied, “Then I would have to act.”
I said, “Then we’ll organize hundreds of letters.” He agreed.
After the meeting, Obama and I embraced again to acknowledge our “win.” Within weeks, he launched his presidential campaign. One year later, in July 2007, I moved to the United States to serve the ELCA, where I was called to bridge the divide between the church’s activist and devotional streams — linking deep spirituality with public action.
But there was a twist.
Despite over 500 letters, we heard nothing from the ambassador. So my U.S. partners contacted Candidate Obama. He wrote directly to the ambassador: “Last year, when Rev. Jacob and I met with you in Cape Town, you promised to act if U.S. church leaders wrote to you …”
Soon after, the ambassador released a paltry grant of $10,000 for Diakonia AIDS Ministry in Soweto — a project of the Lutheran Diocese of Johannesburg. Then the South African Ministry of Health — through organized pressure — contributed $40,000, quadrupling the U.S grant.
That ministry continues to do powerful work to this day. I visited them in 2024, and the fruits of grassroots organizing and North-South relationships of mutual respect are still visible.
This wasn’t just a meeting with a senator. It was a moment that revealed what’s possible when faith meets justice with mutual respect.
The Rev. Terrance A. Jacob is an ELCA pastor who emigrated from South Africa, his country of birth, when he accepted an invitation by the ELCA bishops in Minneapolis-St. Paul, with whom he had done global community organizing as CEO of Church Based Community Organizing, South Africa. He served on the central staff of the Gamaliel Foundation (Network) out of Chicago and has taught and done organizing in Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. He now serves St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Franklin, Tenn., as senior pastor.
