Heavenly Hope and Earthly Realities
January 9, 2008
Well, I successfully managed to remember – with the first opportunity – that we are indeed in 2008 and not in 2007 any longer. So with the date above accurately indicated, let’s move into the New Year with both vertical and horizontal points of view.
APP board member Jim Evans just had a very good column published by the Montgomery Advertiser. Jim writes from a pastor’s perspective about charity and justice. Having just exited the holiday season, with all the good charitable efforts that take place therein, he calls for a broader view of the effort to eliminate poverty – the need for justice.
People of faith – and those of no faith too – are really good about charity. We like the immediacy of meeting the needs for food, clothing, and such. But the things that make for poverty are deeply rooted and will require something more, change that addresses the systemic realities that keep our neighbors in poverty.
Jim’s article is a good place to start. Here’s some more stuff from the religious point of view…
First, you may want to know about an event taking place in Montgomery later this month. The “Keys to Understanding Poverty” conference will take place January 31, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The speaker is Louise Kneese and the $15 fee includes lunch. It’s sponsored by S.T.E.P. Foundation and First Baptist Church Community Ministries. You can call 334-262-3141 for more information. I’ve talked with Lisa Rose at FBC, who is very committed to addressing poverty. I hope to be able to attend myself. We need the state’s Baptists on board!
The conference is taking place within what has been designated as Poverty in America Awareness Month, an initiative of The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD). You can go to their site to learn more. It’s part of the Poverty USA website, also a resource generated by Catholics, which is linked to this one. There’s a lot of information, so be prepared to cruise the site for a while.
On what some might think the “other end of the spectrum,” Pentecostals are also working the problem. This article from Enrichment, an Assemblies of God publication, begins with recognizing the gift of becoming agitated, that is, with becoming uncomfortable with things being the way they are. This is a good resource also for Biblical background to a Christian response.
That same journal has available this article by well-known Christian ethicist Ron Sider, author of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. Some of the numbers here are dated, but the basic ideas are important.
Sider also heads a group known as Evangelicals for Social Action. The ESA takes what they describe as a holistic approach to social issues. In other words, it is a balanced approach of both vertical and horizontal points of view. Visit the ESA site and you can sign up for their weekly e-newsletter that addresses a number of social concerns, poverty among them.
So, speaking of the horizontal view, I have of late recognized a common theme in editorials from the state’s newspapers when they address our common needs – it always seems to come back to revenue, or more commonly - money.
Take jury pay, for instance. This editorial describes how Alabama lags behind in daily remuneration for jury duty. At only $10 a day and 5 cents per mile travel, we fall far short of federal payment of $40 a day. The need to raise our jury pay is evident, but the problem again is adequate revenue to cover it. This editorial points again to the need for tax reform.
Well, and so does this one, and for reasons that particularly resonate with APP enthusiasts. The need to reform the tax structure is because our current system “soaks the poor.”
This article points to one of the other reasons we need tax reform. We just can’t depend on the revenue streams that we look to for the money we need. Once again, the Education Trust Fund will fall short, this year, of projections, meaning that legislators have to look elsewhere to make up the shortfall, most likely in dwindling reserve funds.
So this last editorial illustrates well the point I’m trying to make. Year in and year out there is an outcry for change in the means by which our state funds our services. Yet year in and year out there is little change.
With a new legislative session on the horizon, however, let’s not quit the effort. I for one will be supportive of the “same old editorial” being written again and again until real change comes about. It’s a matter of justice, no matter what your perspective – vertical, horizontal, or a combination of the two.
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