WASHINGTON (RNS) Politics and prayer intertwined as progressive faith leaders gathered here and across the country on Tuesday (Oct. 20) to remember people who died from lack of health care and press Congress to pass health care reform.
Here at National City Christian Church, about 50 people gathered for an Interfaith Service of Remembrance and Hope for Health Care for All, complete with sermons, prayers, memorials and funereal bagpipes.
“We gather here, yes, to remember. But we also gather here to begin to fight like hell for the living and for the future,” said the Rev. Graylan Hagler, senior minister of this city’s Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ. “We demand health care now, health care for all and health care without delay.”
As health care legislation slowly moves through Congress, President Obama and other Democrats have repeatedly sought to frame reform as a moral issue, and to enlist people of faith — particularly progressives — in helping to make the case.
Organizers, who include PICO National Network, Faithful Reform in Health Care, Interfaith Worker Justice, Catholics United and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, said religious leaders from a number of key political states, including Maine, North Dakota, and Florida, attended events dedicated to health care reform.
“We are here because we believe, as religious leaders, that the true measure of this legislation is whether it makes quality health care truly affordable for working families,” said Rev. Wallace Hartsfield, pastor emeritus of Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church in Kansas City, Mo., and PICO clergy spokesperson.
Tuesday’s service was billed as both a “day of remembrance” and “a day of action,” as people of faith across the country remembered the 45,000 people estimated in a recent report to die each year for lack of health care, and to advocate for a more “compassionate health care future.”
The service included prayers lamenting a failure “to care for every member of our human family” accompanied by stories of people who have died because of insufficient health care. One story was of a recent college graduate named Kimmy who did not seek medical care because of the cost.
“The death certificate will likely read `Complications from the H1N1 virus,'” said Rebecca Katz of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, “but the real cause of death was lack of insurance that would have provided access to the health care that Kimmy really needed.”
Other events Tuesday included a gathering on Capitol Hill to make a “faith witness for health care reform” and to lobby Congress about the issue.