Sojourners Celebrates the Obama Administration

Rebekah Sharpe
May 21, 2009

Note: This is the first of three articles covering the Sojourners Mobilization to End Poverty conference. For Part Two about the equating of liberal policies with Christianity, please click here. For Part Three about Jim Wallis’ talk on Evangelical shift, please click here.

Although not present in person at the April 26-29 Sojourners’ “Mobilization to End Poverty,” President Barack Obama, twice before a guest of Sojourners, sent a video-recorded message to the approximately 1,100 Sojourners gathered at Washington, DC’s Convention Center. President Obama told the crowd, “My administration is working to match your service with a commitment of our own: that the least of these will not be forgotten. That’s why we’re working to reduce poverty… why we passed the SCHIP bill to insure that millions of kids have the healthcare they need.”

Sojourners’ chief Jim Wallis joked about how his group’s relationship with the current administration was improved from that of prior presidencies. “I was talking to a reporter just the other day,” said Wallis, “And he asked me, ‘what’s the difference in this White House and previous White Houses?’ And I said well, sometimes with other White Houses they’ve been quite eager to arrest us. This one puts you on taskforces which sometimes takes more time.”

Wallis acknowledged that this political change had inspired him to reconsider the Biblical prophets with whom he identified. In past attempts to speak prophetically about policy matters, Wallis said, “When I think about how we relate to power my models and archetypes are Micah, Amos, Obadiah; it’s our paradigm, habit.” In contrast, “now we have a President and a Congress who want to seriously confront poverty… I think we need some theological reflection. We may have to learn from Joseph, and Daniel, who had the king’s ear.”

While President Obama could not be present in person, he sent three of his administration staff to represent the White House. Joshua DuBois, the Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, Martha Coven, the Domestic Policy Council’s Special Assistant to the President, and Van Jones, the White House special adviser on green jobs, enterprise, and innovation addressed attendees.

Eager to contrast the work of this administration’s Faith-Based office with that of the Bush administration, DuBois said, “The previous office largely focused on leveling the playing field, making sure that faith-based groups had access to the federal government, access to funds. And access is important, but the President thought that we needed a mission beyond access.” He queried, “Once the playing-field is leveled, what are we doing on that field, how are we partnering with faith-based groups to serve that need?”

Coven reassured the audience, “We have a President who was a community organizer, and who lived these issues and understands them. It is really important to him not only that we tend to the needs of the most vulnerable but that everyone in America has a shot at grabbing that first rung on the ladder to the middle class.” She mentioned expanded funding for unemployment insurance, food stamps, and welfare [TANIFF] program passed as a part of the administration’s recent recovery program. Coven asserted that these expansions were “the right thing to do for two reasons,” because “people are hurting, we need to make sure there’s help there for them” and “second, it’s the right thing for the economy.”

But Coven warned that these programs did not come without cost. She commented, “I think too often there’s a disconnection between what we want and how we’re willing to finance it. And this is a president that wants to close that gap and say budgets are moral documents, we finance what we value, let’s put the money together.” She added, “If we’re serious about making commitments to expand access to healthcare, making sure people have the education they need, and the opportunity they need, then you can’t do that by… not tending to what our federal revenue base is.” Unlike her previous statements on the economic recovery package, Coven did not proffer a prediction about the effect of higher taxes on the economy.

In a similar vein, Van Jones assured the Sojourners audience of President Obama’s concern for their issue areas. “I’m from Tennessee, though, I know when you see a duck on a pond moving smooth across the water he’s paddling like heck underneath. And we got a President that’s paddling like heck underneath to make sure we get the job done for you. That’s who we have in the White House,” said Jones. He enthused, “You can go back to your communities and you see people who are hurting and you see people who are suffering and you see people who are frightened. I want you to know you can go back and tell them, ‘I’ve been to Washington, DC, I got a chance to hear from the President of the United States who cared enough about us to send a word of hope, and I want you to know when you go back you can say that help is on the way.”

The applauding audience echoed Jones’ excitement when he declared, “That guy on the video screen: that was the President of the United States. I don’t know about you, but I’m still getting used to that.” Citing Obama’s qualifications for dealing with poverty, he exclaimed, “You have a President that doesn’t have to read about poverty in a book. You have a president who knows poor people.”