"One More 'Moral Value': Fighting Poverty"-NY Times Article

[gorbal]

One More 'Moral Value': Fighting Poverty
By JOHN LELAND

Published: January 30, 2005

During the inaugural festivities in Washington this month, three evangelical Christian groups sponsored a black-tie "Values Victory Dinner," where they celebrated the electoral strength of "moral values" as a factor in the campaign. In the shorthand of postelection polls and analysis, that meant opposition to abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research.

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But many religious leaders, including some evangelicals, think the current focus on moral values has created a platform to talk about other issues, especially poverty, as both political and moral concerns. "The good news about the bad news was that the spin doctors, whether they got it right or wrong, have said that values are so important to our political system," said Robert Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, an association of liberal denominations that represents more than 100,000 congregations. "They've given an opportunity for us to say, 'We're people of faith, too, and we're going to talk about what the Bible says about poverty.' When nine million children are living in poverty, that's a moral value."

Mr. Edgar and other religious leaders across the theological spectrum are trying to shift the debate. Last week, Mr. Edgar announced an ecumenical summit meeting, sponsored or supported by more than 30 religious groups, to promote world peace and the elimination of global poverty.

Evangelical organizations, whose views were often stereotyped after the election, are also seeking a broader definition of moral values. "We've let not evangelicals, but the right wing determine what moral values are," said David J. Frenchak, president of the Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education, a nondenominational group that helps develop urban ministry programs at 12 seminaries or divinity schools around the country.

In Chicago last weekend, Dr. Frenchak joined a gathering of 20 Christians, mostly evangelicals, to produce a book defining moral values to include a focus on poverty. At the meeting, one man held up a Bible from which he had cut every verse that addressed poverty. "There was hardly anything left," Dr. Frenchak said. "He said, 'I challenge anyone in the room to take their Bible and cut out every verse about abortion or gay marriage, and we'll compare Bibles.' "

Dr. Frenchak said he had been involved in more conversations about moral values in the past two months than ever before. "We meet to discuss how poverty got left out of the discussion of moral values. The question is, 'How do we talk about what we do as a moral value, rather than as an assumed good?' I don't think a day goes by that I don't get some communication about rethinking an understanding of moral values."

In postelection analyses, "values voters" were often equated with evangelical Christians, just as "values" were equated with opposition to abortion and gay marriage. But evangelical churches and seminaries have become increasingly mobilized around poverty both in the United States and abroad.

"This is the great secret story," said Jim Wallis, a progressive evangelical who runs Sojourners magazine and Call to Renewal, a network of religious groups committed to combating poverty.

"The perception of evangelicals is that all they care about is abortion and gay marriage, but it isn't true," he said. "It hasn't been for years."

Mr. Wallis has long tried to assemble a coalition of progressive or moderate evangelicals and Roman Catholics with mainline Protestant organizations on moral issues like poverty. Though his voice has sometimes been a lonely one, his new book, "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It," enters the New York Times best-seller list this week at No. 11. Mr. Wallis, Dr. Edgar and other religious leaders, including Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, met with Democratic members of Congress to advise them on how Democrats could inject their faith and moral values into discussions of their policies, including those intended to help the poor.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/politics/30poverty.html?ex=1142312400&en=d5b99f3578a6675d&ei=5070

[redphish]

1. Of course the for profit megachuches ignore poverty as an issue.

The poor people can't give up any of their cash to them.

[Erika]

2. The GOP has lied saying we have no poor U.S. citizens

Our poor are just lazy and sit home and watch their full screen TV's all day and wait for their welfare checks, and of course, they inject the race card into it.

[undergroundpanther]

3. My issue with church charity

Is you have to get a dose of jesus before you get help from them.
If the churches would just stop selling god and would shut up and help and do REAL charity without a "price"I wouldn't feel so cynical.

[gorbal]

4. I think that conservative christians just make real christians look BAD!

They aren't all nuts. It's just that the loudest and most obnoxious amoung them seem to grab the limelight.