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In the midst of the severe economic crisis that especially
devastates the poorest both here and around the world, participants
of Christian Churches Together (CCT) spent two days, January 14-15,
2009, strengthening and deepening our commitment to the goal of
cutting poverty in the U.S. by 50% in the next ten years. We
reaffirmed our unanimous conviction that our service to the poor and
our work for justice are “at the center of Christian life and
witness.” And we agreed to renew our prayers to understand and live
in faithfulness to our Lord’s teaching that when we serve “the least
of these”, we truly minister to our Lord Himself.
As we reflected on our current economic crisis, we resolved that our
economy and priorities must be reordered. The biblical teaching
about God’s special concern for the poor demands that any stimulus
and economic recovery plan must make the pressing needs of
vulnerable and low-income Americans a priority.
In order to help both church and society implement our consensus
Statement on Poverty adopted in January 2007, we had a fruitful
discussion on further principles and concrete ideas to strengthen
our work to dramatically reduce poverty, especially childhood
poverty.
Although CCT does not give direction to or speak for its
participating churches and organizations, we share these principles
and ideas with the hope that they may serve to flesh out and guide
implementation of the four objectives in our Statement on Poverty.
Principles
To reduce poverty, we call on churches, government, businesses,
communities and families to:
A. Strengthen Families
- Recognize that financial stress
exacerbates family instability and abuse, and family brokenness
places families at risk of poverty.
- Ensure that all families have access
to resources for strengthening families and safeguarding child
safety.
- Ensure that all families have access
to the basic needs of food, health care, and housing.
- Correct racial disparities and
structural injustices that undermine families, especially in
low-income communities.
- Affirm the central importance of
healthy families to strong communities, and reinforce parents’
responsibility for their children.
B. Strengthen Communities
- Identify, support, nurture and
retain local community leadership.
- Promote together in our
congregations the need to address both the results and the
causes of poverty in our communities, offering resources and
models.
- Support the efforts of community
organizing which empowers local communities in their efforts to
overcome poverty.
C. Make Work Work
- Affirm that a full-time job
should keep people out of poverty, not keep people in it. People
who are able and willing to work full-time should not be poor.
People unable to work should be supported and treated with
dignity.
- Affirm that a living family
income should include a combination of family earnings and
supports for transportation, health care, nutrition, child care,
education, housing, and other basic needs to provide a decent
standard of living.
D. Improve Education
- Family, community, and schools
must share responsibility for strengthening education.
- All children have the right to a
physically and emotionally safe school environment.
- School funding must result in
equitable education for all.
- Because everyone is created in
the image of God, the inequities and segregation in public
education which result from economic and racial injustice must
be corrected.
- It is important to assure access
to Early Childhood Education for all children in poverty.
Concrete Ideas for Church and
Society
While Christian Churches Together does not endorse or promote
specific public policies, we encourage church and societal leaders
to consider these specific ideas to reduce poverty:
A. Strengthen Families
- Strengthened national
child-nutrition programs, with funding to meet the growing need.
- Universal access to health care,
especially for children in poverty.
- Assistance to families at risk
of losing housing due to the mortgage crisis, including
protections for tenants.
- Comprehensive immigration reform
that protects the dignity and unity of immigrant families.
- Subsidies that provide access to
resources for strengthening families, such as premarital and
marital counseling, parenting skills, mental health care,
conflict resolution, financial management skills, and other
services to prevent family crises and restore healthy family
relationships.
B. Strengthen Communities
- Investment in low-income
communities and families should be a part of the economic
recovery package (more resources for job creation, food stamps,
a fully refundable child tax credit, and education for everyone
from pre-kindergarten to adults).
- People who are poor should be a
part of the decision-making process of the recovery proposals.
C. Make Work Work
- In order to protect and uplift
vulnerable families, there must be the right mix of the
following: an increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child
Tax Credit; a just minimum wage; expanded coverage of food
stamps, increased unemployment insurance; and other proven
investments that reward work.
D. Improve Education
- Mentoring programs to students
in pre-school through grade 12 should be provided using the
trained voluntary efforts of college students, church members
and others.
- Research should be undertaken to
identify safe school models that can be observed as part of a
comprehensive program to assure safety for students and staff in
all publicly funded schools.
- Present state/local formulas
that depend too much on local property taxes for school funding
must be corrected.
- Funding and/or provision for
Early Childhood Education should be a joint effort among
government agencies, religious organizations, community groups,
and private contributors.
We gratefully affirm the important
work of the vast number of organizations related to our churches
that work daily to overcome poverty, and we especially call
attention to Sojourners’ Mobilization to End Poverty (April 27-29,
2009) and Bread for the World’s national gathering (June 14-16,
2009).
It is the voice of our Lord whom we
hear calling in the cries of the poor that compels us to seek to end
poverty here and everywhere. It is the voice of the prophets
declaring that God rejects the prayer and worship of those who
neglect God’s summons to do justice that drives us to call
ourselves, all Christians, and all citizens to let justice roll down
like waters. Therefore, with prayer for strength and wisdom, we
resolve anew to place our work of compassion and justice at the
center of our Christian life and witness. |
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