KANSAS CITY, Mo. (ABP) — Ads airing on Christian and mainstream radio stations in several states are attempting to frame health care as a moral issue.
Sponsored by a broad coalition of faith-based groups, the ads urge members of Congress in swing districts and states to move forward with legislation making health care affordable for all Americans.
“We believe that health care is a moral issue,” Rayfield Burns, minister of outreach and missions at Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church in Kansas City, told reporters in a recent conference call announcing the ad campaign. “It is an issue that should be of great concern to those that sit in high places in our government.”
“Jesus was concerned about more than just the souls of men and women,” Burns said. “He was concerned about the whole man. We should be concerned as well.”
The ads are paid for by Faithful America, an online progressive Christian group. Formerly hosted by the National Council of Churches, in 2007 Faithful America moved to Faith in Public Life, a group of faith leaders formed to counter the partisanship of the Religious Right.
Organizers would not say how much they paid for the radio ads, saying they usually don’t reveal their strategies in that much detail.
Leading the effort is PICO, an acronym for People Improving Communities through Organizing, a national network of faith-based community organizations founded in 1972. Other sponsors include Sojourners, Gamaliel Foundation and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. A press release called it an unprecedented degree of collaboration between faith-based community-organizing networks and national religious groups.
The radio ads are part of a larger campaign including grassroots events, forums and meetings. Hundreds of ministers have pledged to preach on health-care reform this summer, and signatures are being collected for a National Clergy Letter supporting health-care reform from a faith perspective.