WASHINGTON (ABP) — A broad array of religious leaders has launched an ambitious effort to combat domestic hunger and poverty.
Several hundred Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other leaders culminated a weekend conference in Washington June 7 by visiting Capitol Hill offices to lobby Congress on behalf of the “Hunger-Free Communities Act of 2005.”
The legislation sets a goal of ending hunger in the United States by 2015, and would require the Department of Agriculture to report on progress toward that goal annually. It also would include “sense of Congress” language in an attempt to keep future Congresses from cutting funding for anti-hunger programs.
In addition, the legislation would create a $50 million fund to provide grants to what its supporters call “grassroots” anti-hunger and anti-poverty programs.
The bill has a bipartisan group of sponsors, including Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) in the Senate and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Tom Osborne (R-Neb.) in the House.
The private groups supporting the bill are as ideologically diverse as the politicians. The night before the lobby day, their representatives and more than 1,000 participants in the “One Table, Many Voices” conference gathered at the Washington National Cathedral for a rally against hunger.
“The massive reality of global hunger and poverty has revealed our own spiritual poverty and is bringing us together,” wrote Jim Wallis, head of Call to Renewal, which co-sponsored the conference, in Sojourners magazine's online edition. “The religious leaders [who were] gathered at Washington's National Cathedral also have different political views. But maybe soon overcoming poverty could become a bipartisan issue and a nonpartisan cause.”
Conference participant Cynthia Holmes echoed Wallis' observation. Holmes, a St. Louis attorney and former moderator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, pointed out that three of the denominational leaders who helped lead the service were from three often warring factions within Baptist life — CBF Coordinator Daniel Vestal, Stan Hastey of the Alliance of Baptists, and Barrett Duke of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
“It was a very interesting and encouraging situation to see people who really were across the theological and political spectrum uniting to make their voice heard for people who don't have food,” Holmes said.
She said the legislation was designed “just to keep the safety net there for people who would go hungry otherwise.”
Holmes also acknowledged that the sense-of-Congress language in the bill would not be legally binding on future budget votes — but that supporters could try to make it morally binding. “Obviously, if they're willing to pay lip service to it and not do it…then it's meaningless,” she said. “They're as good as their word. But we can hold them to their word, and remind them of that.”
The legislation, known as the Hunger-Free Communities Act of 2005, is S. 1120 in the Senate, and H.R. 2717 in the House.