When People of Good Faith Come Together

This week in Washington, D.C., folks from the left, right and center within the Christian faith came together to launch The Poverty Forum and to advance a set of policies to end poverty. From the Family Research Council and the Ethics and Public Policy Center, on the right, to Sojourners, on the left, The Poverty Forum is pushing a set of policies that cut across political divides. To see their list of more than two dozen proposals, click here (link: http://www.thepovertyforum.org/resources.php).

Before you start thinking this will lead to that proverbial freeze in you-know-where, let’s flash back to early February when the Obama Administration signaled that they۪d like to see just such a coalition advancing a poverty agenda within the White House.

Earlier this month, Obama signed an executive order establishing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships with a newly appointed director and a council of religious and nonprofit leaders who, according to a Chronicle of Philanthropy article (link: http://philanthropy.com/news/updates/index.php?id=7030), will advise the president on “antipoverty efforts and other issues.”

At the National Prayer Breakfast the day he signed the executive order, Obama laid out his vision for the office and how it will differ from the approach taken by the Bush Administration: “Instead of driving us apart, our varied beliefs can bring us together to feed the hungry and comfort the afflicted; to make peace where there is strife and rebuild what has broken; to lift up those who have fallen on hard times. This is not only our call as people of faith, but our duty as citizens of America, and it will be the purpose of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships that I’m announcing later today.”

The Poverty Forum seems very much in that spirit. Miracles anybody?

Posted by Shelley

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