Assault on the poor - international and domestic aid - Column

Christian Century, April 5, 1995 by David Beckman

* Write to your representatives and, especially, senators, telling them you want them to save development assistance to Africa, the federal food programs and assistance to poor people generally.

* Join Bread for the World or some other network that keeps you apprised of current political developments that affect poor and hungry people. This year, about 1,000 churches across the country are taking up an "offering of letters" to save development aid to Africa.

* Give money and time to political candidates who care.

These methods of active citizenship do work.

We also need to develop prudent strategies. Churches and charities that mobilize food assistance must also help the people they feed register to vote. The many organizations dedicated to helping poor people, both domestically and internationally, must rethink how we can together actually reduce hunger and poverty over the longterm. In the process, charities will become more political.

We also need to think creatively about reforming public assistance programs. We should push to reform domestic poverty programs in ways that will help employable people move up and out of poverty. Real welfare reform will cost more money, not less, but it will pay off for taxpayers and everyone else in the long term.

We should also work for foreign-aid reform--for a shift of funding toward programs that improve the livelihood of poor people and protect the environment. We certainly don't want to defend foreign aid as it was shaped by the cold war.

Finally, religious leaders can make their biggest contribution by teaching the faith. Christians must learn to live the connections between Jesus and justice. Otherwise, U.S. churches will be caught in Dives-like, damnable isolation from the poor. As a nation, we eat and drink deeply of God's grace. The God we know in Jesus has been patient with our disappointing generation. We have not yet reaped the violence we have sown. God's grace may be able to break through our individual and collective self-centeredness. If so we may be led not only to stop this war being waged on the poor, but to join together to wage a sustaining peace with them.