By Sarah Dreier, Legislative Representative for International Policy and Advocacy for the ELCA Washington Office and the Episcopal Church Office of Government Relations

I’m the new Legislative Representative for International Policy and Advocacy for the ELCA Washington Office and the Episcopal Church (TEC) Office of Government Relations. This is the first joint, integrated position shared between our two churches and represents the innovative potential of the ELCA and TEC’s call to common communion.

Both my parents are ELCA clergy and they raised me to think critically about my faith. I have taken seriously Jesus’ revolutionary call, which is as radical today as ever,  to look beyond divisions of class, race, nationality, and creed, and to celebrate diversity among God’s people.  When I was old enough to vote, I noticed with dismay that religion was far too often misappropriated by those who had cast aside this theological message of inclusion and replaced it with a message of greed and exclusion.

I challenged this misappropriation of God’s global message in both academic and public policy circles.  It motivated my study of philosophy and legal studies as an undergraduate at Northwestern University; international sociology of law at the University of the Basque Country and political science at the University of Washington at the graduate level. My research at the Center for American Progress’s Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative also influenced my passion. 

I am thrilled to now be working to reclaim this inclusive message and infuse international development and U.S. foreign policy with God’s message of love.

With this message, I will be advocating to alleviate abject global poverty through the Millennium Development Goals. Specifically I’ll be urging Congress to address those vexing issues that plague the world’s most vulnerable: HIV/AIDS, food insecurity, humanitarian atrocities, unfair trade policies, and religious persecution.

I believe the work will be strengthened by our churches’ shared ecumenical voice.  I pray it serves as a model of dialogue and faith-based partnership at a time when religious diversity too often becomes divisive.

Together, as we grapple with some of the world’s most challenging problems, we’ll educate our communities and advocate for those in most dire need around the world. Together, we’ll discern how we can heed Jesus’ radical call to look beyond state borders and religious identity by being the voice for the voiceless in our nation’s capital and in our own congregations.

By Amy Johnson, director, Lutheran Office for Public Policy in Wisconsin

As students return to school, many will rely on their school meal program for a nutritious meal. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

This month Wisconsin students will return to their classrooms and take on the challenges of the year ahead. Far too many students will also be battling hunger while they are trying to focus on their studies.

If you’ve ever taught a student who’s gone without dinner from the night before, or breakfast that morning, you know empty stomachs are distracting and make it tough to learn. If a child has trouble learning it makes it even harder to achieve success in school, and lack of achievement can be a major road block in a child’s future.

This is the cycle of poverty playing out each day in our schools. However, there is a simple way to break that cycle and give our kids the tools they need to succeed. Children of all ages need three healthy meals a day, and Wisconsin’s students count on the school breakfast, lunch and after school meal programs to stay strong and focused.

Each day over 300,000 students in Wisconsin get a healthy start with a breakfast in their classroom. Hours later, school lunch programs provide a free meal to 330,000 low income students.

These meal programs are a strong and vital partnership between our schools and our state and federal government. Schools depend on the support from our state and the USDA to fund school meals, and the future of our state depends on all children having the food they need to succeed. Invest in our kids now, support school meals!

By Mark Carlson, director, Lutheran Office of Public Policy – California

The Sacramento Water Treatment Plant by the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers. Photo courtesy of Mark Carlson.

In California, a couple of well-known sayings are imprinted in the minds of those who care about water.  The most famous is attributed to Mark Twain: “Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over.” 

In the Central Valley, whose rich productivity is supported by federal dams such as Trinity and Shasta, signs along highways proclaim a California truth: “Food grows where water flows.”  My favorite is the passage from Ezekiel 47:9, engraved on the masonry over the Sacramento water treatment plant near the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers: “Everything shall live whithersoever the river cometh.” 

A couple of weeks ago, a Southern California Lutheran youth group rafted the Trinity River, a tributary of the embattled Klamath River, in the far north part of the state.  A portion of the coastal Trinity is diverted over into the Central Valley to the farms and cities far to the south. While rainfall and snowpack are abundant this year, three years of severe drought contributed to cuts in water deliveries, fallowed fields, dead orchards, unemployed farmworkers, suspended commercial salmon fishing, and highway signs of a more partisan and demonizing nature. 

Yet even now that our rivers and reservoirs are full, there are more than 250,000 mostly low-income people in the Central Valley who lack water safe enough for drinking, bathing and washing.  Among that group are the men and women who pick and process the fruits and vegetables that end up in our grocery stores and on our tables. There are about 300 projects, at an estimated $400 million, on the waiting list for the federal Drinking Water Revolving Fund to address severe contamination in such disadvantaged California communities (compared with about $35 million available each of the last two years).  

In addition, fragile agreements for water rights to the Klamath and San Joaquin Rivers, reached after a generation of litigation, are threatened by possible federal budget cuts that could ignite a new round of courtroom conflict.

Through history and by collective will and difficult compromises, the federal government has been a primary partner and stakeholder in working with state, local, and tribal governments and private interests in promoting what remains the elusive goal of safe, sufficient, sustainable water for all – farms, fish, people and healthy, productive ecosystems that all thrive “whithersoever the river cometh.”

By Amy Reumann, Director, Lutheran Advocacy Ministry in Pennsylvania

Diagram on fracking. Graphic courtesy of Propublica

The federal budget matters…in order to preserve clean water in Pennsylvania where a new American gold rush is on. This time it is to mine natural gas trapped a mile underground between layers of shale rock, using a recently developed technology called hydraulic fracturing (or fracking). Fracking injects huge amounts of water mixed with sand and chemicals deep underground. This action breaks up rock formations and releases the gas which is then brought to the surface.

This new, domestic source of energy is hailed as a cleaner burning fuel and a bridge to more renewable sources. Gas drilling activities provide a boost to job creation and local economies.  But the fracking process, which is currently exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act, also carries significant environmental risks, particularly for water resources and quality:

• Fracking one well requires about 4 million gallons of water, either drawn from local waterways or trucked in to the site.
• Gas drillers are not required to disclose the chemicals they use in the fracking process. These may include substances known to be toxic to humans and wildlife, including carcinogens such as benzene.
• A well brings over a million gallons of the fracking water back to the surface.  In addition to chemicals, it is often laced with corrosive salts and radioactive elements like radium found underground.
• Some fracking water remains underground, with ongoing debate as to the long term implications.

Pennsylvania sits atop the Marcellus Shale reserve. The state has welcomed drilling and its benefits, with over 3,300 drilling permits issued in 2010 alone. The state has been slow to evaluate the environmental costs and consequences. Impact on water resources includes:

• Pollution of rivers, including those that provide drinking water to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Harrisburg. Pennsylvania is the only state that has allowed drillers to discharge much of their waste into rivers through local sewage treatment plants, which are not designed to remove drilling contaminants.
• Contamination of water wells in proximity to fracking sites.
• Spills and overflows of fracking waste water from holding ponds and during transport.

The drilling debate has been deeply polarized.  Opinions for and against fracking both suffer from a lack of information based on solid research.  The federal budget matters if we are to forge sound policy to protect and preserve clean water in Pennsylvania. A current EPA study of the impact of fracking on drinking water resources, which includes three Pennsylvania sites, is currently underway. Its findings will provide direction for the oversight of natural gas drilling, and the preservation of water resources in Pennsylvania and the entire nation.

By Mary Minette, ELCA Director of Environmental Education and Advocacy

Flooding in the Fargo/Moorhead area. Photo Credit: Michael Nevergall

This month our series on the federal budget is focusing on how water programs may be affected by cuts in the federal budget.  The opening reflection focused on water quality and how proposed budget cuts will impact partnerships between the federal government and state and local communities. Those partnerships have made our nation’s waters substantially cleaner than they were 30 years ago

This spring and summer, several communities are struggling with a very different problem: too much water.  Higher than normal winter snowpack and greater than normal spring rain levels are overwhelming dams and levee systems throughout the Midwest and Southeast this year.  Communities in western Iowa, North Dakota and the Southeastern states along rivers from the Missouri to the Mississippi have been hit hard by flooding, with devastating impacts on farmland, homes and businesses.

As we pray for the recovery of these communities, we recognize the strain that rebuilding will place on the budgets of families and companies, and on the resources of local, state and federal agencies. As a church body, we do what we can through the work of ELCA Disaster Response. 

But we should also consider how the shrinking budgets of local, state and federal governments may impact the ability of communities to deal with flooding in the future. 

The Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette recently reported that a critical monitoring system used by the National Weather Service to predict the path that floodwaters may take could be impaired because of federal budget cuts.  Stream gauges, operated by federal agencies working with states and local communities, track water flows in rivers and streams throughout the country.  Without this data it will be difficult to accurately predict when and where flood waters will crest.  But state and local governments are struggling to support these projects and federal budget cuts will endanger the monitoring system even further.

In a time of budget austerity, how do we decide which programs to save?

Pastor Reg Schultz-Akerson quotes Matthew 5 at a Season of Prayer event held at Faith Lutheran Church in Chico, California. Photo credit: James Henson

In solidarity with our brothers and sisters serving, working, and living in Sudan, the ELCA encourages you to pray for peace for all of Sudan as South Sudan approaches its independence from the North on July 9th, 2011.

Here is a prayer shared by Faith Lutheran Church in Chico, Calif.:

Abba, heavenly Father,

On behalf of the community of Chico, California allow our voices to be heard in unison with others across this nation and across the world. We pray for peace and self-determination for our brothers and sisters in South Sudan as they begin the Good Works as people of a new nation.

Lord hear our prayers:

Let the land yield crops; not land mines.

Lord hear our prayers:

Grant that the people of South Sudan may dig wells for water; not graves for their children from violence and war.

Lord hear our prayers:

Grant that both adults and children may be free to pick up pencils to write rather than pick up guns to kill.

Finally, God may the words of your prophet Isaiah come true so that the South Sudanese and all peoples begin to “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” (Isaiah 2:4)

In Jesus name we pray.

Amen

Guest blog posting by Eric Sigmon, director for advocacy, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. This posting highlights the human dignity issues with regards to welcoming refugees into the United States.

On June 20th, the United States will celebrate World Refugee Day to raise awareness about the estimated 15.2 million refugees around the world and to celebrate the wonderful contributions refugees provide to communities across the country.

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS), a nationally recognized organization based in Baltimore, MD, welcomes refugees and migrants on behalf of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. LIRS partners with the federal government, local refugee resettlement partner organizations, and churches and volunteers to help refugees in the United States learn English, enroll their children in school, find jobs and become self-sufficient.  Since 1939, LIRS has welcomed over 372,000 refugees to the United States.

Here is a snapshot of the refugee populations LIRS currently assists:

Iraqis: LIRS has a long history of resettling Iraqi refugees, with a larger influx of arrivals in recent years. Many Iraqis have arrived to the United States through a special program to protect Iraqis who have been targeted as a result of their work and affiliation with the U.S. military.

Burmese: The Burmese are one of the largest and most diverse groups currently being resettled by LIRS. Since 1962 Burma has been under military rule. The oppression of minority ethnic groups has been brutal. Many Burmese refugees have lived in “temporary camps” for two decades or more. Many children and young people are born into these camps and do not know about life outside of these camps.

Bhutanese: Bhutanese refugees are mostly ethnic Nepalis from southern Bhutan, known as “Lhotsampas,” who have lived in camps in Nepal for more than 16 years. The Lhotsampas coexisted peacefully with the majority population, the Druk Buddhists, until the 1980s. Protests and clashes with the police culminated in the forced expulsion of Lhotsampas from the country in 1990.

Somalis: In 1990, after the civil war in Somalia, the Somali refugee crisis began and it continues today. Many Somali refugees have lived in camps in Kenya and Ethiopia for protracted periods with no durable solution available other than third country resettlement.

Eritreans: As a result of the Ethiopia-Eritrea war from 1998-2000, Eritrean refugees have sought protection in neighboring countries. Political tensions and increasing repression continue in Eritrea, with the targeting of independent evangelical groups. Most of the refugees LIRS currently serves practice Christianity or Islam.

LIRS also continues to serve refugees from Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and the former Soviet Union. In honor of World Refugee Day, please take time to pray, volunteer with a local refugee resettlement organization, or visit the LIRS website for further information:

 LIRS Advocacy Page on Refugees

 LIRS Work to Welcome Refugees

 Frequently Asked Questions About Refugees

 LIRS statement — Improving the Welcome for Refugees Resettled to the United States

 LIRS statement — LIRS Supports Legislation to Provide Permanency to Liberian Migrants in the United States

 LIRS statement — The Impact of Budget Proposals on Justice, Job Creation, Public Safety, and Civil Liberties

Sudanese woman with her son (Photo Credit: ELCA Washington Office)

Sudan has been plagued by internal conflict for nearly 40 years. A variety of complex factors, including race, ethnicity, religion and economic disparities fueled a 22-year conflict between the north and south and are also largely at the heart of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Darfur that began in 2003.

Now South Sudan will be embarking on a new era. After a Comprehensive Peace Agreement ended this year, the people of Southern Sudan voted for independence from the rest of Sudan. On July 9, South Sudan will become an independent nation.

Recently, there have been reports of renewed violence in the contested area of Abyei. Abyei was to have its referendum to determine whether to be part of the North or South. However, the people in Abyei were not able to vote.

“Given the ongoing insecurity in Abyei, the Security Council believes that the security and prosperity of both parties would benefit from a continuing UN-mandated presence in Abyei after July 9, as well as from UN assistance for the parties’ management of their border after the independence of South Sudan. In this context, the Council urges the parties to reach agreement on a continuing UN-mandated presence.” (UN Security Council statement, June 3, 2011)

We invite you to pray with us as this ongoing violence continues to threaten humanitarian efforts and as the people of Sudan prepare for a new shift in political leadership. On every Friday from now until July 9, let’s give thanks to God and hope to the people of Sudan as they prepare for this significant step in securing peace for their country. These dates are June 10, June 17, June 24, July 1, and July 8. In the United States, we are called to pray at 11 a.m. (EDT), 10 a.m. (CDT), 9 a.m. (MDT), and 8 a.m. (PDT).

Here is a prayer from the Presbyterian Church (USA):

Our loving Heavenly Father,

We come before you to ask your forgiveness and seek your direction and guidance for South Sudan.

Lord, we know that bitterness and resentment are like toxic thorns in our soul, sapping our mental process, thought-life, will, motivation, and joy of our life.

Remind us that we will be the prisoners of our strongholds if we cannot forgive our brothers and sisters.

Help us to remember that forgiveness is the deliberate act of the will to pardon another individual or self whether we like it
or not.

Thank you for your word that we receive forgiveness in the same manner that we forgive others.

Help us to work out the torments of forgiveness with you alone our God and the other person, we are making the list of persons and situation causing troubles in South Sudan.

Intervene with the formation of the new Government and give us peace in South Sudan.

In Jesus Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.

Aliamma George
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Mission Co-Worker
Malakal

Guest Blog by Marissa Harris Krey, Advocacy Developer of Lutheran Advocacy Ministry in PA (LAMPa)

Lutheran advocates participate in a workshop sponsored by Lutheran Advocacy Ministry in Pennsylvania (Photo Credit: LAMPa)

Last week, close to 140 Lutherans gathered in Harrisburg for LAMPa’s (Lutheran Advocacy Ministry in PA) annual Lutheran Day at the Capitol.  Torrential rain could not stop our advocates from gathering together to learn about issues facing Pennsylvania’s most vulnerable.

Why didn’t the rain stop them?  Why did so many travel so far? 

One advocate said, “Lutheran Day reminded me that I am not alone in my advocacy efforts on behalf of the poor and hungry”… together  1 + 1 + 1 can make a powerful difference.

Rev. David Beckmann, President of Bread for the World, was our keynote speaker and perhaps the biggest reason our advocates braved the storms. Several in attendance were amazed by his reminder that we have made progress on hunger in the past (in the U.S.) and that we are making progress RIGHT NOW all across the world. 

Matt, a resident of Lancaster, said, “I was struck by Beckmann’s comment that Americans have trouble seeing the dramatic progress.”  For many, Lutheran Day is about the opening of eyes:  to see the good, and to see the bad — but to see the bad together, and all the love and hope in the room that wishes it were not so, and believes in a God with transformative powers.

David Beckmann, keynote speaker and President of Bread for the World, shared inspiring advocacy stories with the group. (Photo Credit: LAMPa)

This year’s keynote also reminded our advocates of the power in story telling.  Beckmann shared two stories, one of which I will tell again here.  Helpfully, Beckmann was open and honest about the feedback he gets from people who don’t believe in the power of faith-based advocacy. “I just don’t know who I’m really helping,” some say.  “You’re helping people like my son,” Beckmann said as he transitioned into his story.  The birthmother of Beckmann’s adopted son was on WIC (Supplemental Nutrition for Women, Infants, & Children) when she was pregnant. 

Stories such as this carry significant weight with lawmakers.  As faith-based advocates, one of our primary responsibilities is to help our elected officials see the faces behind the numbers on their spreadsheets; to help remind them who will really be affected by the policies they propose.

The value of coming together from many different places for a day like Lutheran Day may seem hard to measure, but it always shines through our evaluations.  This year was no exception: 

“Through networking, there seemed to be a proactive attitude emerging and a belief that we have an opportunity to be one strong voice in advocacy”.  Amen.

The proper role of government—how big it should be, and what, exactly, it should be doing—is a hot topic in our country.  Some say too many government regulations are slowing economic growth and preventing companies from creating new jobs.  Others say government has a critical role to play in revitalizing our economy and protecting our families and our communities from harm.

So what if a regulation will cost businesses money and time in the short term, but will protect us from toxic pollution for years to come?

On May 3, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a new rule under the federal Clean Air Act to limit emissions of toxic chemicals, including mercury, arsenic, lead and dioxin, from power plants.  The rules will also limit emissions of fine particles into the air. The public now has 60 days to comment on the proposed rule. Click here to provide your feedback.

Why is this rule needed now?  Power companies have fought these regulations for 20 years, arguing that they will have to raise rates in order to install the new equipment necessary to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxics. 

However, the pollutants the rule will reduce are extremely hazardous. Mercury, for example, affects brain development, making even small exposures dangerous for children and women who are pregnant or could become pregnant.  The EPA estimates that as many as one in every six women in the U.S. has blood mercury levels high enough to put a developing baby at risk.  All 50 states have mercury advisories for consumption of at least some of the fish found in their lakes, rivers and streams. 

According to the EPA, nearly fifty percent of the mercury in our air and water (and fish!) comes from emissions from coal-burning power plants. This new rule will ultimately reduce those emissions by 91 percent. More than half of U.S. power plants already have pollution control equipment that meets the new standards—these new requirements will level the playing field by requiring that all power plants protect the public’s health from harmful emissions.

Mercury is only one of the toxic pollutants that will be reduced by this new rule. Other pollutants affected by the rule are linked to cancer, heart disease, chronic asthma and other significant health problems.  These health problems cost all of us—in higher insurance rates, in loss of productivity, and especially in loss of lives.  Among other benefits, the EPA estimates that by 2016 the new rules will help to prevent more than 12,000 emergency visits annually and 850,000 days of lost work.  The agency estimates that the rule’s restriction on fine particle emissions alone could save between $59 and $140 billion in health care costs annually in 2016.

Martin Luther wrote that government is the means “by which most of all God preserves to us our daily bread and all the comforts of this life.”  It seems to me that reducing highly toxic pollution and thereby improving public health fits his definition of good government.  What do you think?