Barack just finished speaking at the annual conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in St. Louis, Missouri. He told the crowd that he would make faith-based social services an important part of his administration...

The challenges we face today -- war and poverty, joblessness and homelessness, violent streets and crumbling schools -- are not simply technical problems in search of a 10-point plan. They are moral problems, rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness -- in the imperfections of man. And so the values we believe in -- empathy and justice and responsibility to ourselves and out neighbors -- these cannot only be expressed in our churches and our synagogues, but in our policies and in our laws.

Here are some pictures from the event...