Religious Leaders “Call in God” to the Budget Fight

Religious leaders announced a fast Monday to protest proposed cuts in spending to domestic and international aid programs.

Sojourners’s Jim Wallis spoke to reporters at the National Press Club calling on believers to join in a hunger campaign to erect a “circle of protection” around government programs that aid the poor.  Wallis was joined at the podium by David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, Ritu Sharma of Women Thrive Worldwide, and former Congressman Tony Hall.

“A line has been crossed in this budget debate,” said Wallis. “Extreme budget cuts are now being proposed and this fast is a spiritual escalation to bring these critical moral choices to the attention of the nation, and to seek God’s help in doing so.”

Indeed, according to speakers, this is no mere hunger strike to make Congress listen to reason. This is an appeal to the Most High, whose will it is to see spending for these programs maintained at or above 2010 levels.

“Ultimately, this is a fast before God,” said Wallis, “to whom we turn when we don’t know what else to do. We turn in prayer, and hope to change hearts, starting with our hearts, the hearts of our lawmakers, [and] the heart of our nation.”

“Listen to God’s heart as you make your decisions,” Wallis warned Congress.

“We believe it’s time to call in God,” agreed Hall, who undertook a similar fast in 1993 to protest federal budget cuts. “A fast has to be first unto God to humble ourselves and to unleash him. Your faith is also unleashed when you struggle against injustice.”

H.R. 1, the first version of which passed in the House in February, is still being contentiously debated.  Democrats have accused the proposed spending cuts as “vicious”, aiming at spending that ostensibly adds little to the deficit while ignoring the programs that contribute most. Major entitlement programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, were not specifically mentioned by the speakers as likely candidates – though defense spending provided a useful scapegoat.

David Beckmann, a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, argued that any government programs affecting the poor should be spared scrutiny.

“We should look at the other 80 percent of federal spending,” said Beckmann. “There is not any biblical injunction against taxing rich people. There is a lot that the Bible says about being right, doing right, by hungry and poor people.” Beckmann called on Senators and House Representatives to reach a bipartisan agreement before April 8^th, when the current continuing resolution sustaining federal operations expires.

In the face of the repeated temporary federal funding measures passed over the last few weeks, religious leaders have made the best of every opportunity to air their concerns about what they consider to be intrinsically “immoral” cuts proposed by Congress. At this weekend’s Ecumenical Advocacy Days conference, the National Council of Churches and other organizations similarly called for a halt on budget cuts that would specifically affect women. Ritu Sharma, one of the speakers at the press conference, addressed participants at the NCC’s three-day summit in Crystal City on Sunday in preparation for a day of lobbying on Capitol Hill. 

Sharma placed certain cuts in discretionary spending on the same level as murder.

“There are cuts that kill, and there are cuts that don’t kill,” she said. “You hear a lot of members of Congress talking about ‘across-the-board cuts. That’s the fair thing to do.’ It’s not. That’s a lie.”

Beckmann argued that the sheer magnitude of need worldwide outweighs the ability of the church and other religious organizations to respond. “We’ve done so much in our country to collect food, to pass out food to hungry people through charitable channels. All of that together is equivalent to about six percent of the food that low income people get from the federal programs.”

“We can do more through charity and through our religious communities, [but] we cannot make up the difference for what is being proposed by many in Congress right now,” he said.

Speakers admitted that some government anti-poverty and welfare programs have been notoriously wasteful and inefficient, but still maintained that spending levels for these programs should not decrease accordingly.

Though the campaign’s website tentatively ends the fast on April 24^th, the leaders insisted they were in it for the long haul. “We’re doing this for breakthroughs,” said Wallis.