c. 2005 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Religious leaders from around the country and across the political spectrum have launched a massive political campaign to end hunger in America.

They are calling on Congress to pass a hunger-related bill and demanding President Bush not cut federal funding of poverty and hunger programs.

“Arguably it is almost the whole of all organized religion in the United States,” said the Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, of the Hindu, Muslim, Protestant, Catholic and Jewish leaders lobbying against hunger. “This is the beginning, we feel, we hope, of a new movement to overcome poverty.”

A group of more than 600 activists participated in a weeklong conference on poverty and hunger that ended Tuesday (June 7). Organized by Bread for the World, a Washington-based Christian anti-poverty group, the conference, “One Table, Many Voices,” was designed to mobilize religious organizations.

On Tuesday, some who attended the conference made a lobbying trip to Capitol Hill, where they did their best to protect federal food assistance programs, especially food stamps, from funding cuts and structural weakening.

For many, the spiritual apex of the conference occurred Monday, when more than 1,500 people attended an interfaith service featuring more than 40 heads of religious organizations at Washington’s National Cathedral.

Thirty-five of the 40 signed a letter to the president, delivered Tuesday, asking him to fight hunger, according to Jennifer Stapleton, spokeswoman for Bread for the World.

“We lead faith communities that represent the entire spectrum of U.S. religious life and together include more than 100 million people. Our diversity and the collective size of our faith communities make this an historic event,” says the letter. “We ask you to protect the national nutrition programs from funding cuts and damaging structural changes.”

Congressional support for the anti-hunger campaign is evidenced in the recent introduction of the Hunger Free Communities Act, which would set a time line for the eradication of hunger and poverty and create budgetary promises to make it happen.

The bill is sponsored by Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and Republican Sens. Gordon Smith of Oregon and Richard Lugar of Indiana. House sponsors are Republican Rep. Tom Osborne of Nebraska and Democrat Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts.

But Bread for the World’s Beckmann, a Lutheran minister, said reaching bipartisan consensus on the bill has been extremely difficult and that progress could not be made on hunger without such support.

Rabbi Jerome M. Epstein of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism said religious communities needed to apply pressure to see the bill passed.

“The truth is that no one in Congress can say hunger isn’t an issue,” said Epstein. “We have to help them to put politics aside and figure out how to get things done.”

Beckmann said he was hopeful the presence of evangelicals would help bring more Republican leaders to the table.

“We will suffer no longer under the stereotype that we only care about a few hot-button issues,” said the Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president of government affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals. “This is an issue that symbolizes a change in our mentality.”

Bishop Mark Hanson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the country’s largest Lutheran body, said all people of faith have a responsibility to eradicate hunger.

“Too many Christians look at the church as a refuge from the world,” Hanson said before the service. “Our duty is to both call and lead by example.”

At the service at the Washington National Cathedral, religious leaders paid tribute to the lessons of charity and compassion hallowed by all of their faiths and religious texts.

“The promise of heaven is no more hunger,” said the service’s keynote speaker, the Rev. Njongonkulu Ndungane, the Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa.

“But the message of all of our readings is that the plight of the hungry must not be left for heaven.”

MO/PH END RNS

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