Summit challenges church to make urban poor a priority
7/29/2003 By John W. Coleman Jr.* WASHINGTON
(UMNS) - Society is at a threshold in how it responds to the needs of
poor people in urban areas, and speakers at a United Methodist summit
called for the church to make those needs a priority.
"We stand
on the threshold of health and wholeness or chaos," Bishop Felton Edwin
May told about 200 banquet attendees on July 25, during the United
Methodist National Urban Summit.
He was introducing the guest
speaker, U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) of Baltimore. But May's words
summed up the four days of speeches, workshops, and lobbying efforts
that addressed public policy issues on behalf of struggling cities.
May,
who leads the Baltimore-Washington Annual (regional) Conference,
suggested the church's National Urban Strategy Council develop a plan to
"put urban ministry at the top of the agenda of the 2004 General
Conference."
More than 140 clergy and laity in urban ministry
around the nation attended the July 23-26 summit. They represented
conference and district ministries in urban and metropolitan areas,
church-based community development projects, Communities of Shalom, and
urban churches with nonprofit mission agencies.
Drawn by the
theme, "Proclaiming Holy Boldness on the Hill," they met to influence
federal spending priorities that can help or hinder their work among
poor residents of urban communities. Those priorities include key
congressional bills, such as establishment of a national affordable
housing trust fund, reauthorization of the 1996 welfare reform law and a
proposal to shift Head Start funding from federal to state control.
Also
addressed was President Bush's Faith-Based and Community Initiative,
which aims to make federal funding for social services more available to
religious groups, and the effects of tax cuts and escalating defense
spending on domestic anti-poverty programs.
Participants
received briefings on these legislative concerns, a primer on the
federal appropriations process, and training in how to properly lobby
congressional leaders. They then visited their senators and
representatives on Capitol Hill, or in most cases, discussed their
concerns with congressional aides and requested follow-up actions.
"There is an attack on the poor but also an attack on America," said Cummings.
The
four-term congressman and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus
lamented a lack of understanding among his fellow lawmakers of the daily
struggles of poor people, who suffer from inadequate food and health
insurance. He criticized the proposed changes in Head Start allocations,
rising college tuition and reductions in Pell grants for needy college
students.
Cummings stirred listeners by recalling his own
difficult life - being raised poor by uneducated parents and placed
inappropriately in special education classes for six years - and his
rise to become a lawyer and national political leader.
He
denounced post-Sept. 11 homeland security measures, including increased
public surveillance, as a threat to the basic civil rights of U.S.
citizens. He wondered aloud what kind of world his 8-year-old daughter
and other children would inherit.
"The very thing Bush and
others said, about the terrorists trying to take away our rights and
freedom, is what we are doing to ourselves," he said.
Other
speakers cited thresholds facing urban ministries as both the government
and the denomination make decisions about where to apply limited
resources.
The Rev. Dorothy Watson-Tatem, executive director of
urban ministries in the denomination's Eastern Pennsylvania Annual
(regional) Conference, compared the post-modern city to Sarah, Rebecca
and Rachel in the Bible, women who were barren for years before giving
birth to leaders of Israel.
She and Bishop Hae-Jong Kim of the
Western Pennsylvania Conference challenged urban ministry workers to
seek creative solutions to problems and be bearers of the light of
Christ in their cities, illumining the darkness and giving hope to those
who despair.
Caleb Rosado, a professor at Eastern University in
Philadelphia, said today's leaders and agents of social change must
discard the practice of viewing the world as city versus suburb, rich
versus poor, and different races, religions, political parties and
nations in opposition to one another.
Citing Jeremiah 29:7
-"Seek the welfare of the city, for in its welfare you will find your
welfare" - Rosado called for a new, holistic approach that borrows from
Scripture and quantum physics in seeing all things as united and part of
one another.
"It's no longer the old Newtonian thinking that the
whole is the sum of its parts," said Rosado, who chairs the Department
of Urban Studies, Leadership and Development at Eastern University's
Campolo School of Social Change. "It is knowing now that the whole is
within its many parts."
James Towey, director of the White House
Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, defended Bush's efforts
to make federal funding more available to churches and religious
agencies offering low-income housing, drug prevention and treatment, job
training and other community services. He also defended the president's
position on allowing churches to discriminate in hiring based on the
religious views of applicants.
"A lot of poor people don't trust
the government for many reasons, so it's beneficial for us to partner
with faith groups that they do trust," Towey said. Hiring discrimination
for religious purposes has been allowed for decades, since the 1964
Civil Rights Act, he said. "But you can't discriminate against the
people you serve."
Towey responded to complaints about obstacles
and restrictions in receiving federal aid for programs, and he disagreed
with the claim that faith groups critical of Bush's policies are being
barred from receiving support.
The summit was cosponsored by four
United Methodist entities: the Board of Global Ministries' Office of
Urban Ministries, the National Urban Strategy Council, the Board of
Church and Society, and the Baltimore-Washington Conference.
Several
speakers warned that the denomination and many of its regional
conferences are neglecting urban ministry in favor of supporting new and
growing churches in suburban areas, a recurring complaint among urban
ministry advocates.
"The church is moving toward church growth
and away from urban ministry, and we're being left behind," said the
Rev. Karen Shepler, chairwoman of the National Urban Strategy Council.
"We
have abandoned the city," said the Rev. Chester Jones, top staff
executive of the United Methodist Commission on Religion and Race. "If
we didn't have you (urban ministry leaders), we wouldn't have ministry
there."
At that point, May suggested making urban ministry a
churchwide priority when the denomination's top lawmaking assembly meets
in Pittsburgh next spring.
Said the bishop: "I cannot tolerate
seeing the agenda of the poor and suffering being set aside because of
those who are only concerned about their lives and their lifestyle."
# # #
*Coleman is co-director of communications of the Baltimore-Washington Conference.
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