c. 2007 Religion News Service

Mayors’ report says cities are seeing more emergency food requests

(RNS) A majority of U.S. cities participating in a recent survey have seen an increase in the number of requests for emergency food assistance, the U.S. Conference of Mayors reports.

The Washington-based conference issued its annual Hunger and Homelessness Survey on Monday (Dec. 17), saying that 16 of the 19 cities that responded to questions about hunger saw increases in requests for emergency food aid in the last year. In addition, an average of 17 percent of people seeking food assistance are not receiving it.

The report by the conference analyzed homelessness and hunger in 23 of America’s major cities, including Boston, Los Angeles and Miami. Nineteen of those cities said they expect requests for food assistance to increase in 2008.

“Although 87 percent of our nation’s wealth is generated in our nation’s cities, hunger and homelessness persists in most of our country’s cities and urban centers,” said Conference President Douglas Palmer, the mayor of Trenton, N.J.

The survey found that the lack of affordable housing was the most common cause of homelessness for households with children. Other causes included poverty and domestic violence. For single individuals, mental illness and substance abuse were among the most common causes.

Twelve of the cities in the survey _ or 52 percent _ reported that homeless people seeking shelter are turned away some or all of the time. But that number is a marked decrease from 2006, when 77 percent reported that homeless were turned away from emergency shelters.

For more than two decades, the conference has documented the extent of homelessness and hunger. The 23 participating cities in the 2007 survey are members of the conference’s task force addressing those issues.

Other cities included in the study are Charleston, S.C.; Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Cleveland; Denver; Des Moines; Detroit; Kansas City, Mo.; Louisville, Ky.; Nashville, Tenn.; Philadelphia; Phoenix; Portland, Ore.; Providence, R.I.; Salt Lake City; San Francisco; Santa Monica, Calif.; Seattle; St. Paul, Minn.; and Trenton, N.J.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Lutherans purchase carbon credits to offset frequent flying

(RNS) While they can’t cut back on church business, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is hoping that perhaps a little bit of good karma will make up for the heavy environmental cost of their transportation.

The Washington, D.C., office of the ELCA decided to start purchasing carbon offsets a few months ago, after implementing more routine changes like printing double-sided, turning off lights and recycling.

“(Air travel) was an area of pretty major energy use that we really couldn’t cut back on but which we could try to offset,” said Mary Minette, the director for environmental education and advocacy at the ELCA.

Using an online carbon calculator, the office tallied up its yearly air miles and decided to invest in methane energy harvesting through NativeEnergy, a renewable energy company based in Charlotte, Vt.

NativeEnergy tabulated the carbon output for a roundtrip flight between New York City and Los Angeles at 1.97 tons, which would necessitate a $24 investment in renewable energy under their plan.

“The idea is that it neutralizes what you’ve done,” Minette said.

The Lutheran Church has been especially focused on global warming, Minette said, though they have also initiated programs on air and water pollution. “Care for Creation,” the church’s 1993 environmental call to action, highlighted a need for attention to climate change.

“It has such implications for our future and our entire creation,” Minette said. “I think it’s something where we have a moral voice to bring to bear.”

_ Kat Glass

Prayer cures a Briton’s legs, but not a stubborn bureaucracy

LONDON (RNS) A British pastor’s wife who claims the power of prayer cured her injuries was told her incapacity benefits could not be stopped because the government’s computers didn’t have a “miracle” button.

The result, said June Clarke, of Plymouth, England, was that she received more than $7,000 that she didn’t even want _ and she could not get the government to take it back.

The 56-year-old woman spent six years in a wheelchair after she was injured in a fall on a slippery floor while at work. Her hip, pelvis and spine were badly damaged, and she had to give up her job when her condition worsened.

But Clarke says she was healed last January after her husband, Stuart Clarke, pastor at the Hooe Baptist Church in Plymouth, prayed every day that God would “bring my wife back.”

When she realized four months later that the cure appeared to be permanent,she asked the government to stop the incapacity payments because, she said, “I felt uncomfortable taking benefits when I didn’t need them.”

But when she contacted the benefits office, she said, she was told that its computers weren’t programmed to recognize an apparently miraculous recovery and that “we haven’t got a button to push that says `miracle.”’

June Clarke has now managed to get the monthly $1,200-plus benefits checks stopped _ although the government still won’t allow her to return the $7,000-plus that she had already received.

“It wasn’t ours to spend,” her husband insisted, and “it can’t be that often that a government gets a complaint about unwanted cash.”

She says she’s finally worked out an agreement with the benefits office under which she can work as a care provider to get the money back into government coffers.

_ Al Webb

Quote of the Day: Mormon Leader Elder M. Russell Ballard

(RNS) “We cannot stand on the sidelines while others, including our critics, attempt to define what the church teaches.”

_ Elder M. Russell Ballard, the senior apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in a speech Saturday (Dec. 15) to graduating students of Brigham Young University-Hawaii.

DSB/PH END RNS