Evangelicals are affirming their stance on the environment, writes Adelle M. Banks in Tuesday’s RNS report: Leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals have affirmed their stance on caring about the environment-indirectly rebuffing complaints that a staffer was too environmentally friendly-and endorsed a statement condemning torture. Focus on the Family Chairman James Dobson and two dozen other evangelical leaders had asked the board to consider ousting the Rev. Richard Cizik, the association’s vice president for governmental affairs, because of his “relentless campaign” against global warming. But NAE interim President Leith Anderson said no formal action was taken on the request by Dobson and the others. Instead, board members reaffirmed their document supporting “an evangelical call to public engagement,” which embraces care for the creation.
The pope says church social teaching is `not negotiable’, reports Francis X. Rocca: Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday (March 13) reaffirmed church teachings on divorce and priestly celibacy and said Catholic politicians have a duty to follow church doctrine on abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage. In a follow-up letter based on last year’s Synod of Bishops meeting, Benedict said lawmakers are bound to “introduce and support laws inspired by values grounded in human nature,” including “respect for human life, its defense from conception to natural death, (and) the family built upon marriage between a man and a woman.” Those values, the pope said, are “not negotiable.”
Joanna Corman looks at a coffee company in Sacramento that takes fair trade one step further: For the 15 years he spent working for a company that negotiated the lowest possible prices for coffee beans, Tom Angus was able to remain “mentally disconnected” from the poverty he saw in the eyes of South American coffee growers. Yet when his pastor would talk about living out one’s faith, something would nag at him. By 2003, Angus could no longer ignore that nagging feeling and quit his job. In May 2004, with his friend and fellow parishioner Betty “Jinxi” Allen, the pair started Beneficio Coffee. Most Fair Trade companies buy coffee from coffee growers’ cooperatives for $1.26 a pound; Beneficio pays $1.39, plus a separate wage for coffee processors. After deducting its expenses, Beneficio channels 20 percent of its proceeds back to the farming communities, and sends an additional 10 percent to a charity of the buyer’s choice.
Katherine Boyle notes that fair trade sales are taking off: As Fair Trade sales skyrocket across the nation, programs reaching out to the faithful have sold more coffee, handicrafts and chocolate from Third World countries than ever before. “Fair trade gives people of faith the option of an ethical consumer choice,” said Kattie Sommerfeld, the fair trade projects coordinator at Lutheran World Relief, whose handicraft sales have doubled over the past year. Internationally established Fair Trade minimum prices are set by the Fairtrade Labelling Organizations. Prices are based on the cost of production, a sustainable income for the farmer and “living wages” for workers, and include a 5 percent per-pound premium that goes to a farming cooperative for investment in social projects and infrastructure improvements in the country of origin.
