Posted: 5/28/04
Call for Renewal seeks to make poverty an electoral issue
By Robert Marus
Associated Baptist Press
WASHINGTON (ABP)–Fighting poverty should be a far more prominent issue for American Christians in the 2004 elections than it has been in the past, a diverse group of leaders meeting in Washington maintain.
The Christian anti-poverty group Call to Renewal hosted what it called an “anti-poverty mobilization” recently.
It brought together a broad array of Christian denominational executives, ministry leaders and local activists to discuss how to make the status of the nation's poor an electoral issue.
Asserting “nothing seems to embarrass the political class in Washington today,” veteran broadcast journalist Bill Moyers chastised large corporate interests for their influence on government.
“The political class is not embarrassed by the fact that the gap between rich and poor in America is greater than it has been since 1929,” he said in the conference's keynote address.
Moyers noted statistics that show the average middle-class family has lost ground in real-dollar terms in the last 40 years, while the wealthiest Americans have gotten much wealthier.
Many middle- and lower-class families, he said, “are playing by the rules and still getting stiffed.” He said that creates cynicism about politics in those groups.
Meanwhile, the continued consolidation of wealth in the hands of individuals and large corporations gives them ever-greater influence over the laws that affect the lives of those families. “Friends, the class war was declared a generation ago,” he said.
Moyers, a Baptist seminary graduate who grew up in Central Baptist Church of Marshall, said one of the reasons for the deteriorating conditions for the poor is that, “over the last few years, prophetic Christianity has lost its voice.” He said that was partially because “the Religious Right drowned out everyone else and they hijacked Jesus. … He was made a militarist, a hedonist and a lobbyist.”
“Let's get Jesus back,” Moyers said, to loud applause from the attendees. “Jesus drove the money-changers from the temple. We have to drive them from the temples of democracy.”
Like Moyers, Susan Pace Hamill, a University of Alabama Law School professor, criticized the political zeal–common in Washington in recent years–to cut income taxes.
“Tax policy is a moral issue,” said Hamill, who was honored by Call to Renewal for her unsuccessful attempt to change Alabama's regressive tax structure.
“You're never going to conquer poverty and reach every human made in the image of God … without fair tax policy,” she said.
Hamill, a former corporate tax lawyer and a graduate of Samford University's Beeson Divinity School, said across-the-board tax cuts that cause governments to slide into deficits and ultimately cut services are immoral.
“They give a little $50 tax cut to the middle class and give thousands to the upper echelons,” she said. “That's the equivalent of selling out for 30 pieces of silver.”
Everyone dislikes taxes, Hamill said, but they aren't inherently bad. The government has a responsibility to create a system of social services that not only protect the public's safety and health but also ensure that those not born with economic advantages have the tools to succeed and break out of poverty, she said.
“The only way to do (that) is through a community tax revenue pool, because we're too greedy to do it any other way,” she said. “No amount of beneficence and charity will do the job.”
The conference's organizers invited President Bush and Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to present their plans for reducing poverty. Although both campaigns said their candidates had scheduling conflicts, they sent representatives in their stead.
Alphonso Jackson, the newly appointed secretary of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, pointed to his own history as the youngest of 12 children in a Texas family below the poverty line.
Although eligible for food stamps at one point, he said, his father refused to accept them. Instead, his family relied on their church to help them through their crises.
“Poor is a state of mind; poverty is a condition,” he said.
Jackson decried President Lyndon Johnson's “War on Poverty” and the federal “welfare bureaucracy” it created. “Poverty, in my mind, won the war,” he said.
He blamed the welfare system with creating dependency among the poor on government handouts.
“That's the liberal perspective in this country–very paternalistic and patronizing,” he argued.
He touted Bush's attempts to expand the government's ability to fund social services through churches and other explicitly religious institutions as the key to solving poverty.
“The government can't make people love each other,” Jackson said.
Later, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), representing the Kerry campaign, delivered a litany of differences between Bush's and Kerry's policies on tax and economic issues.
“I believe that government has a moral obligation in making opportunity real,” DeLauro, a Catholic, said. “I don't believe in every man or woman for themselves.”
However, she also tried to answer pointed questions from participants about the Democratic Party's uncompromising abortion-rights stance.
She also entertained a question about Democrats' perceived reluctance to talk about their faith as readily as some Republicans.
“Let's not mistake the talk for the word and deed,” DeLauro responded. “When you look at what has guided the Democratic Party over the years, the focus … is synonymous” with Christian principles.
In a press conference following the presentations, Call to Renewal leaders expressed frustration with both political parties' views.
“When I listened to Secretary Jackson, I heard no vision,” said Carole Shinnick, director of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a Catholic group.
Conversely, Ron Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action, expressed frustration that many Democrats have abandoned their support for expanding government funding for faith-based charities.
Wes Granberg-Michaelson, general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, said Democrats still have a religion problem.
“For a Democrat to be elected today, he has to be able to connect to the religious impulses that underscore real political issues,” he said. “The Democratic Party has to overcome an allergy to speaking about faith and policy.”
Conference participants signed a “Unity Statement on Overcoming Poverty.” The statement said: “As Christian leaders in the United States, we recognize that we live in a time when political and social issues threaten to divide the church. Although there are issues on which we do not agree, we come together to affirm that justice for those in our society who live in poverty is, for all of us, a deeply held religious belief on which we are firmly united.”
It also called for religious leaders to “ensure that all people who are able to work have jobs where they do not labor in vain but have access to quality health care, decent housing and a living income to support their families.”
Dozens of Catholic, evangelical, and mainline Lutheran and Episcopal leaders signed the statement. Baptists signatories include Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Coordinator Daniel Vestal, Alliance of Baptists Executive Director Stan Hastey and American Baptist Churches General Secretary Roy Medley.
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