c. 2004 Religion News Service

Coalition Releases `Blueprint’ It Says Can End Hunger

WASHINGTON (RNS) A coalition of organizations marked National Hunger Awareness Day by releasing a detailed plan to fight hunger and poverty in the United States.

The “Blueprint to End Hunger in America” was proposed by the National Anti-Hunger Organizations, a coalition of 13 faith-based and other hunger activist groups, at a news conference Thursday (June 3).

“We tried to lay out a set of eminently doable and affordable programs,” said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center. “This blueprint lays out a path, and we plan to lead and to push policy-makers and the nation as a whole to go down that path.”

The group called on the federal government to cut hunger in half by 2010 and eliminate it by 2015, the goals the United States set for itself at the World Food Summit in 1996. It also said the Senate must pass the Child Nutrition Reauthorization legislation, which would continue funding existing programs and also expand summer food programs and fresh fruit and vegetable pilot programs for low-income children.

“This blueprint is not just about more federal money,” said the Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “It is about making federal programs more effective.”

Nearly 35 million Americans are either hungry or threatened by hunger, according to government figures. About 13 million of them are children.

The blueprint called on state and local governments to expand nutrition programs and make applying for food stamps easier. It said schools and community organizations should help increase awareness of programs that already exist for easing hunger.

NAHO also urged individuals to demand that elected officials support anti-hunger programs. They released a questionnaire for people to use as a guide for asking officials about hunger-related issues. The group emphasized that while hunger is not a partisan issue, it should be a pressing issue in an election year.

“Hunger is something the politicians should be able to join together to deal with,” Beckmann said.

In a reference to political strategists who divide the country into Republican red and Democratic blue states, Beckmann said, “In this election year, hunger is not a red issue or a blue issue. It is a red, white and blue issue.”

_ Juliana Finucane

Proposed Bill Would Cancel Poor Countries’ Debt

WASHINGTON (RNS) A bipartisan group of legislators introduced the “Jubilee” Act in the House on Thursday (June 3). The bill would cancel the debts the world’s poorest countries owe the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and “bring the simple biblical concept of debt forgiveness into the complicated worlds of politics and finance,” one lawmaker said.

“Five years ago,” said Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., one of the bill’s co-sponsors, “the worldwide Jubilee movement reminded Congress that the Lord instructed the people of Israel to celebrate a Jubilee, or Year of the Lord, every 50 years.”

According to Leviticus 25, God enjoined Moses to free slaves and forgive debts during a Jubilee year.

The bill was co-sponsored by Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass.; Spencer Bacchus, R-Ala.; Jim Leach, R-Iowa; and Barbara Lee, D-Calif. The lawmakers said debt cancellation was a “moral issue,” and money saved by countries by eliminating their debt could be used for education and the eradication of disease and hunger.

Waters has also called on the president to emphasize the morality of debt relief at next week’s G-8 meeting of the world’s most affluent nations.

“President George W. Bush often reminds us of the importance that religion plays in his life,” Waters said. And he “should bring the biblical principals of justice and charity into the boardroom of the IMF.”

The introduction of the bill was welcomed by members of the Jubilee USA network, a national coalition of religious and secular social-justice groups. The network “applauded the prophetic action of these five congresspeople who have demonstrated the political, spiritual and moral courage to call for the IMF to do their fair share for debt cancellation,” said Marie Clarke, the national coordinator for the Jubilee USA Network.

Clarke said the groups plans to deliver a letter endorsed by hundreds of religious leaders from across the world to the G-8 countries’ heads of state. The letter will emphasize the “moral imperative” of debt cancellation, she said.

The Jubilee USA Network is also organizing an interfaith service in Brunswick, Ga., not far from where the world leaders will meet. The service will include chanting by Buddhist monks, jamming by a jazz trio and praying by representatives from a host of religious movements.

With the Congress’ summer recess approaching, it is unclear how far the bill will get in the House, but the Jubilee coalition is excited nonetheless. “This is our visionary bill,” said Adam Taylor, executive director of Global Justice and an associate Baptist minister in Washington. “This is what God’s kingdom should look like.”

_ Daniel Burke

Canadian Anglicans Affirm `Sanctity’ of Same-Sex Couples

ST. CATHARINES, Ontario (RNS) One day after deferring a decision on whether to bless gay relationships, Canadian Anglicans on Thurday (June 3) approved a statement that “affirms the integrity and sanctity of committed adult same-sex relationships.”

Delegates meeting here at the triennial General Synod governing convention said the statement was intended to send gay and lesbian Anglicans a conciliatory message in the wake of the vote the day before.

Delegates on Wednesday voted to put off the explosive issue of whether to allow individual dioceses to conduct blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples until the next meeting of the General Synod in 2007. A theological commission will study the issue.

The “sanctity” measure, which passed with a show of hands, will help assuage gay Anglicans who were disappointed with the deferral vote, said Chris Ambidge, Toronto leader of Integrity, the Anglican gay and lesbian caucus. “This says the Anglican Church values you as partnered people,” he said.

While the latest move stops short of authorizing dioceses to hold same-sex blessing rites, observers noted it will provoke rancor in the already heated debate over homosexuality in the 77 million-member global Anglican Communion.

The Rev. Peter Moore, a former Toronto rector who now serves as president of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Pennsylvania, said the measure “seems to intentionally confuse the voice with which the Canadian church speaks on sexual morality, which undercuts the church’s ability to speak on anything.”

But others said the church must extend compassion to gays and lesbians.

“This says to thousands of people that we love you, we include you among the faithful, we seek to live with you, to work with you, to know you,” said the Rev. Dennis Drainville of the Quebec diocese, who seconded the “sanctity and integrity” motion.

Others questioned whether using the word “sanctity” in relation to same-sex relationships made the motion a matter of doctrine.

The Washington-based American Anglican Council blasted the “sanctity” statement. “It flies in the face of clear teaching of scripture, natural law … and the vast majority of Christians worldwide,” the conservative group said.

In the meantime, because the church did not vote against allowing priests to bless same-sex unions, each of Canada’s 30 dioceses can still choose to do so.

However, “I hope that many will hold back simply to avoid a major schism for the church,” said the newly elected primate of the church, Archbishop Andrew Hutchison of Montreal.

_ Ron Csillag

L.A. County Removes Cross From County Seal

(RNS) Los Angeles County supervisors, faced with a lawsuit to remove a tiny gold cross from the county seal, have voted to remove the cross, but the Roman goddess Pomona will stay.

County supervisors voted Tuesday (June 1) to remove the cross, which was incorporated into the seal’s original 1957 design to represent the Catholic missions founded by Jesuit missionaries.

The American Civil Liberties Union had said the cross represented an “impermissible endorsement of Christianity” and was “unconstitutional” as a violation of the separation of church and state.

“We realize this is not the most important civil liberties issues in our society,” Romana Ripston, executive director of the ACLU’s Southern California office, told the Los Angeles Times. “But it does make some people feel unwelcome. And we feel the county seal should be welcoming.”

The seal, which appears on all county vehicles, meeting rooms and employee badges, also features a Spanish galleon, a tuna fish, a dairy cow, the Hollywood Bowl, engineering tools, oil derricks and Pomona, the goddess of gardens and fruit trees, to represent agriculture.

Janice Hahn, a Los Angeles City Councilwoman whose father designed the seal, was one of two City Council members who supported the seal.

“I believe this seal in no way favors the promotion of any religion over another, just as the Goddess Pomona certainly does not encourage the act of pagan worship,” she told the supervisors in her testimony.

Some supervisors worried that changing the seal would set a bad precedent. The city of Redlands, Calif., already removed a similar cross from its seal after legal threats from the ACLU.

“Where does it all end?” asked Supervisor Don Knabe, according to the Times. “I do not think we should capitulate. As the largest county in America, if we roll over, what’s next?”

Evangelical Scholar Mark Noll Given Library of Congress Chair

WASHINGTON (RNS) The Library of Congress awarded Mark A. Noll, the prominent evangelical church historian, a distinguished research position on Tuesday (June 1).

Noll, who hopes to use the vast resources of the Library and the proximity to lawmakers to study the significance of the Bible in American public life, is the third recipient of the honor.

Appointees usually hold the position, which officially goes by the name “Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in American History and Ethics at the John W. Kluge Center,” for one year.

Prosser Gifford, the head of the Office of Scholarly Programs, which oversees the Kluge Center, said that the Library of Congress is “pleased to have in the Maguire chair a historian who has written about and added so much to the rich history of the roots of American Protestantism.”

The holder of the Maguire chair, according to the Library of Congress, usually conducts research on the ethical issues associated with American history.

Noll, who teaches Christian thought at Wheaton College and is the co-founder for the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, is considered one of the premier evangelical church historians in the United States. Among his many books are “The Work We Have to Do: A History of Protestants in America,” “A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada” and “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.”

The Library of Congress established the Kluge Center in 2000 in order to draw leading scholars, lawmakers and the Library’s rich collections together to “stimulate and energize” a fruitful conversation, the Library said.

_ Daniel Burke

Quote of the Day: Mark Pelavin, associate director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism

(RNS) “These actions hurl a wrecking ball at the wall separating church and state, and it is America’s houses of worship that will be taking the blow.”

_ Mark Pelavin, associate director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, criticizing President Bush’s “faith-based initiative” and a campaign plan to identify 1,600 “friendly congregations” in Pennsylvania where campaign information could be distributed.

DEA/PH END RNS