Evangelicals urge Bush to focus on poverty issues_20705

Posted: 2/04/05

Evangelicals urge Bush to focus on poverty issues

By Robert Marus

ABP Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (ABP)–A group of prominent evangelical Christian leaders–including heads of two Texas Baptist schools–have asked President Bush to pay more attention to poverty issues in his second term.

The group of 76 academics, activists and other leaders sent the letter to Bush in mid-January, on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. It asked Bush to invest political capital in improving economic conditions for the poor in the United States and around the world.

The letter noted that overcoming poverty is as important an issue to Christian voters as are issues often cited by other evangelical leaders and media outlets as crucial to evangelicals.

“Precisely the commitment to moral values (including the sanctity of human life) that shapes all our political activity compels us to insist that as a nation we must do more to end starvation and hunger and strengthen the capacity of poor people to create wealth and care for their families,” the letter read.

The letter's signers include several progressive evangelicals, such as Ron Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action and Jim Wallis of Sojourners, who have been highly critical of Bush's economic policies.

But it also includes many evangelical leaders who have stayed out of politics or spoken out frequently in favor of Bush policies, such as Christianity Today editor David Neff, Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals, and Salvation Army head Todd Bassett.

Several Baptist college presidents signed the letter, including Paul Ames of Wayland Baptist University and Doug Hodo of Houston Baptist University. Others were David Black of Eastern University in Pennsylvania, Jerry Cain of Judson College in Illinois and Pat Taylor of Southwest Baptist University in Missouri.

The leaders said the poverty rate and lack of health insurance–even for hard-working families–in the United States is morally unacceptable.

Sider said the letter “offers clear evidence that the widespread view that President Bush's evangelical constituency care only about abortion and family issues is simply false. … As the president charts his agenda for the next four years, he needs to understand that large numbers of his evangelical 'base' insist on expanded efforts to reduce poverty.”