What I learned at CBF’s Advocacy in Action

I got to tag along with Cooperative Baptist Fellowship on its Advocacy in Action trip to Washington, D.C., last week.

Having participated in several similar advocacy trainings and trips with various groups, I thought I knew what to expect. The CBF event, held in D.C. March 9-13, surpassed all my expectations, and I left with new tools and a fire-like passion for this kind of work.

The week began with a dinner and presentation by CBF Director of Advocacy Jennifer Hawks. Depending on the company one keeps, the word “advocacy” can have any number of meanings — some positive, others negative. Hawks spent time breaking down what advocacy is (the act or process of supporting a cause or proposal) and how one moves from a problem to an action.

There are many forms advocacy can take: increased public awareness of the problem, increased enforcement of an existing regulation to address the problem, an amendment to an existing regulation or a new statute/law/regulation to solve the problem.

I asked CBF’s congregational advocacy officer, Sharon Felton, why advocacy is important within the Baptist tradition. Her response is illuminating for all Christians — particularly Baptists:

Baptists champion the separation of church and state, but too often we use that to avoid speaking out and engaging in justice work. We ignore the many biblical texts that teach us about advocacy and model God’s people advocating for others. We are called to love our neighbors and to do justice and that involves engaging with policies that harm communities. Advocacy can bring about change.

We never want to be partisan; we do want to equip and encourage people to advocate for justice for all our neighbors. Advocacy calls us to deeper engagement with our communities so that we have a world where everyone has what they need to thrive.

A deep dive into advocacy areas

On days two and three, CBF brought in experts from a variety of nonprofit partner organizations to explain the issues they are each focused on and to provide us with information to advocate on those specific issues if we so chose.

Hunger

Speaking on behalf of Bread for the World, Matt Gross (director of organizing and faith engagement) and Marco Grimaldo (strategist for national church partners and Latino communities) talked about hunger here in the U.S. and abroad.

Of particular emphasis for Bread for the World was their newly launched program to address child hunger called “Nourish Our Future.” The campaign enjoys bipartisan support and focuses on four legislative priorities: extending the child tax credit (as was done during the pandemic); fully funding and modernizing the WIC program (the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children); addressing the hunger faced by some college students; and supporting the global efforts to fight hunger and malnutrition.

Families

Rachel Anderson, founder of Hope & Consulting, offered information on policies that support families. CBF has a longtime relationship with Anderson, who helped the organization with its advocacy work around predatory payday lending. Now, Anderson and CBF are working on advocating for policies that support families like paid family leave and affordable child care.

There are bipartisan paid family leave working groups in both houses of Congress. They need to be encouraged to continue the work to address the desperate need for paid leave to support families — whether it is to welcome a new baby or to care for a sick family member.

There also is bipartisan support behind the Child Care and Development Block Grant program. Those leaders need to be encouraged to renew that program and increase funding which the states will, in turn, distribute to help fund child care.

Religious liberty

Representatives from Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty joined us to talk about the long-held Baptist distinctive of religious liberty. We were joined by Holly Holman (general counsel and associate executive director) and Karlee Marshall (media and resource manager) along with policy consultant Maggie Siddiqi. Since BJC has been one of the primary organizations addressing the threat posed by Christian nationalism, the conversation emphasized the danger this political ideology is for both religious liberty and democracy.

BJC’s legislative priorities are around religious liberty and how that shows up in education policy (for example, in the push for a national voucher program which would divert tax dollars to religious schools).

Separation of church and state

Like BJC, Americans United focuses on church-state separation. Dena Sher, associate vice president of public policy, joined us to talk about the threats to church-state separation posed by the Educational Choice for Children Act of 2025 currently making its way through both houses of Congress.

Both the House version of the bill (HR-833) and the Senate version (S-292) seek to utilize a loophole in the tax code to pass a national school voucher program by offering tax credits (not deductions) to individuals who contribute to educational nonprofits. These nonprofits operate as pass-through organizations that then regrant the donated funds as “scholarships” to students.

Voucher schemes have been pushed through half the states at this point, but it’s interesting to note that when vouchers have been on ballots as they have 17 times since 1967, the have been defeated every time. Time and again people have said they don’t want vouchers. Vouchers don’t improve educational outcomes and overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy.

Immigration

CBF’s own Elket Rodriguez, global migration advocate for CBF Global Missions, spoke with the group about immigration. CBF was recently a plaintiff (along with Quakers and a Sikh temple) in a lawsuit against the current administration to block ICE raids on houses of worship. A federal judge in Maryland granted the request for a preliminary injunction in the case.

In keeping with Baptist heritage, advocacy around the protection of houses of worship from the intrusion of the government remains a top priority for CBF. CBF seeks to restore and codify protections for sensitive locations (like houses of worship, hospitals and schools) and supports the Protecting Sensitive Locations Act currently working its way through both houses of congress (HR01061 and S-455).

Additionally, CBF seeks to protect and restore the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which provides a legal way for persecuted individuals — including many Christians fleeing violence — to come to the country.

Finally, CBF — like so many organizations and individuals — wants to see immigration reform. The U.S. economy relies on immigrants. We must find pathways to citizenship for many of the immigrants living among us (like DACA recipients) as well as passing a farm work modernization act to allow farmers to access more visas for the people we rely on for agriculture.

Environmental action

Madison Mayhew, policy and advocacy manager of Creation Justice Ministries, spoke about the Christian imperative to care for creation. The organization’s mission is “to educate, equip and mobilize Christian individuals, congregations, denominations and communions to protect, restore and rightly share God’s creation.” Their work sits at the intersection of creation care and environmental justice. They currently work with 38 Christian communities across the country.

One of the legislative priorities shared with our group is protecting the clean energy investments in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. A particular concern for Creation Justice Ministries is protecting the clean energy tax credits and “direct pay” option which allows smaller congregations to invest in clean energy quickly and efficiently.

A second legislative priority for Creation Justice Ministries is the protection of public land. With the current administration’s recent attacks on public land (such as mass, indiscriminate firings at the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service and opening many public lands to oil and gas drilling), this advocacy initiative is taking on new urgency.

Truth and Healing Commission

The Friends Committee on National Legislation is the Quaker lobbying arm on Capitol Hill. Their legislative representative for Native American advocacy, Rachel Overstreet (a member of the Choctaw Nation) joined us to talk about the Truth and Healing Commission.

The goal of FCNL’s Native American Advocacy is to establish a commission that will document what happened at the more than 500 U.S. boarding schools (more than 400 of which received federal funds) that took an estimated 200,000 Native American children from their families between 1880 and 1969. These boarding schools were, in turn, run by a wide swath of Christian denominations and the Catholic Church.

In both the U.S. and Canada, indigenous students were taken from their families, severely abused (and sometimes killed) in an effort to “Christianize” them and force their assimilation into Anglo society.

Canada established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2008. The commission issued a final report in 2015 and since then the country has continued to identify unmarked graves at former school sites.

The U.S. has only begun to deal with its role in this cultural genocide. Two years ago, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs held hearings and collected a handful of testimonies from survivors of the U.S. boarding school system.

Based on the committee’s findings, a bill has been introduced into the Senate: Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act of 2025 (S-761). As its name plainly states, the goal of the bill and of the advocacy work of FCNL on this issue is to establish a commission to collect testimonies of the survivors while many still remain with us.

Putting knowledge into action

The weeklong event with CBF culminated in a trip to the Capitol and meetings with our individual representatives.

I stopped by to greet the staff of my House representative, Congresswoman Julie Johnson. The Congresswoman wasn’t in but I was able to chat with her staff about my concerns about what is happening in Washington right now.

As a Democrat, the Congresswoman’s hands are tied in terms of holding the Trump administration accountable for its ongoing assault on our democracy. But I left happy to have made connections with the staff and plan to keep in touch.

For my visit to Sen. John Cornyn’s office, I went with two other Texans — CBF’s Elket Rodriguez and Lance Mayes, associate pastor of community engagement at Woodland Baptist Church in San Antonio. We met with Sen. Cornyn’s legislative aide, Lucie Flowers. We discussed our concerns about protecting houses of worship from government raids and our larger concerns about immigration reform.

I also expressed my concern that Sen. Cornyn and other Republicans in Congress are not doing their job as an equal branch of government and holding President Trump accountable. Flowers assured me Sen. Cornyn, a lawyer by training, takes that role very seriously. Only time will tell if that’s true.

Having been unable to get a response from our other senator’s office, we stopped by unannounced to leave materials for Sen. Ted Cruz.

Sen. Cruz notoriously flew to Cancun in February 2021 during one of the worst winter storms in Texas history — a catastrophic storm that resulted in 246 confirmed weather-related deaths.

The senator and his staff are well-known to Texans for being jerks. While the young staffer we spoke with listened to what we had to say, his demeanor was unsurprising to me.

When the full group gathered again after our Hill visits, there were lots of stories to share. Everyone agreed the event — from training to Hill visits — was impactful.

Jennifer Hawks, shared with me at the end of the week:

A lot of the stuff we see on cable news makes D.C. seem like a frightening city, an intimidating city, that we devolve into partisan fights at the drop of a hat. Most of what you see on cable news is performative to get onto cable news. And so it’s important for people to come and see that the staffers are normal people — regular humans who have emotions and dreams and hopes and fears and they’re able to have a normal conversation. They may or may not agree with you, but they’re going to have a respectful meeting and listen to you and hopefully take your information up to their boss and will build a relationship to start some change.

This wasn’t my first trip to the Hill, but it was my first with CBF. And I’m already looking forward to their next Advocacy in Action event.

The intention is to have some sort of D.C. advocacy trip annually, but CBF is also branching out. This fall they will be taking a group to Arizona to highlight some indigenous and environmental issues — particularly Oak Flat, where they will be working with the tribe to figure out how to be faithful advocates.

In reflecting on my week with CBF I’m reminded of James 2:26 “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.” I’m grateful for the folks at CBF doing the good work and for teaching the rest of us how to as well.

 

Mara Richards Bim serves as a Clemons Fellow with BNG and as program director at Faith Commons. She is a spiritual director and a recent master of divinity degree graduate from Perkins School of Theology at SMU. She also is an award-winning theater artist and founder of the nationally acclaimed Cry Havoc Theater Company which operated in Dallas from 2014 to 2023.