During their September 21-22 meeting, Governing Board members of the National Council of Churches (NCC) expressed concern about resistance to proposed health care reforms after hearing from staff members that alleged health reform opponents were partly motivated by racism.
The NCC, which strongly advocates for expanding the role of the federal government in the nation’s health sector, has partnered with Sojourners President Jim Wallis and other religious left groups in a “40 Days for Health Care” campaign intended to boost church member support for President Obama’s proposals.
“We do support President Obama’s efforts to reform health care,” said NCC President the Most Rev. Vicken Aykazian during his opening remarks before the Governing Board.
During the NCC meeting, the Rev. Brenda Girton-Mitchell, director of the NCC Washington Office, also expressed concern about a negative tone, referring to the “elephant of racism that is affecting our nation.”
Girton-Mitchell was backed by NCC Health Policy Intern Anastassia Zinke, who provided a legislative update on the health care debate to the ecumenical body’s governing board.
“A lot of the fringe elements that caused all of that media coverage were really racist in nature,” Zinke said, quoting former President Jimmy Carter’s comments about the raucous reception that many congressmen received in their local town hall meetings during the August congressional recess.
“A lot of those meetings that were highlighted in the news did not go well,” Zinke reported. “We seem to have lost the ability to dialogue with each other in a civil fashion.”
Zinke noted that at a recent NCC Health care reform task force meeting, the Rev. Dr. Eileen Lindner shared an article in the French publication Le Monde about how Europeans have been generally amused by the American inability to pass meaningful health care reform.
“But watching the town hall meetings, [the columnist] realized that there was a much darker current going on here than simply our lack of health care,” Zinke relayed. “The undergirding sentiment really reminded him of Vichy France, and that we need to keep that in mind, of the real dangers and pitfalls that surround us, and the movements that surround us in these sort of debates, and the repercussions and where they could be headed.”
None of the Governing Board members questioned Zinke and Girton-Mitchell’s accusation of racism, instead querying the Health Task Force members about the fate of the government-subsidized public health insurance option and the potential for undocumented immigrants to be covered under the recent proposals.
One Governing Board member noted that the AARP had 35 million members, of which only six percent were in their advocacy group, and only a small minority of that actually advocated for public policy.
“We have 45 million members, if only six percent of our membership was engaged in advocacy, we could bring a witness to what we understand to be God’s will for the world, in a way that we’re not able to,” she said. “I just want to say that is an agenda I hope we will be about in the years to come.”
The council also approved an open letter concerning civility in public discourse. The letter quoted the prophet Isaiah and called for “somber reflection on the ways we might restore dignity and civility to our national discourse both as a matter of social ethics and to bolster the highest traditions of democratic process.”
The letter also reflected the council’s concerns about alleged racism.
“Individuals cannot express their best hopes and acknowledge their deepest fears within a climate of intimidation and character assassination, and all too often this climate is the product of racism and xenophobia,” the letter read.
While the statement referred to a “rancorous and acrimonious” debate, it made no mention of past policy debates in the public square. The NCC, which called for immediate withdrawal from Iraq during the Bush administration, did not issue comparable calls for civil debate during that period, or express concern about the tone.
No comments yet
Leave a Reply