“We commented that we were all elected people,” said the Rev. Gradye Parsons, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA). “He reminded us that we didn’t face midterms.”

Twenty-one Christian leaders met and prayed with President Obama on Monday (Nov. 1), discussing joint concerns about poverty, U.S.-Cuban relations and peace in the Middle East.

Leaders from the National Council of Churches thanked the president for the passage of health care reform and voiced concern from the pews about stubborn unemployment rates.

“We weren’t going there saying ‘You need to do this for us, you need to do that for us,'” said the Rev. Michael Minnamon, the NCC’s general secretary, on Tuesday (Nov. 2). “We were also asking ‘What can we do for you?’ This is a spiritually demanding job and we are spiritual leaders.”

At the close of the 40-minute meeting in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, leaders said Obama asked for prayer, which was led by Bishop Thomas Hoyt of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.

For a president who made faith an integral part of his 2008 campaign, Monday’s meeting was decidedly low-key, with no public statements or photos released by the White House.

NCC leaders, who represent Orthodox, historic African-American and mainline Protestant denominations, raised other concerns, including the plight of the dwindling Christian population in the Middle East and limitations on travel to Cuba by U.S. religious leaders.

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