May 16, 2002
United Methodist Women send child care message to Congress
By Joretta Purdue
WASHINGTON (UMNS) – The officers of United Methodist Women came to the nation’s Capitol on May 15 to fulfill a mission for children.
They delivered messages from more than 6,750 church women who had written concerns about child care on oversize postcards during a recent assembly in Philadelphia. In their messages, the women expressed their care for children and the need for providing day care that working parents can afford.
Most of the cards were delivered to Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who has agreed to have some read into the Congressional Record. Miller introduced the Leave No Child Behind legislation to Congress last year, and although it did not become law, some of its points were incorporated into other bills.
The delegation of six officers also left cards at the offices of key senators, including United Methodists Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Debbie A. Stabenow (D-Mich.), as well as Blanche L. Lincoln (D-Ark.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W. Va.). The women visited with representatives as the House prepared to vote on a new version of the 1996 welfare bill, which has implications for child care.
The writing project at the 2002 Assembly of United Methodist Women on April 26 built on information provided by Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund. Only one of seven eligible children receives federal child care assistance, she said at the assembly.
"We’ve got to make these invisible children visible," Edelman told the UMW officers before they went to Capitol Hill with their message and postcards. "The church can’t be silent today."
Helen Blank and Debbie Weinstein with the Children’s Defense Fund briefed the women on the legislation that expires this year and will be rewritten by Congress. Blank explained that the main sources of federal money for child care are contained in two bills: one, the Child Care and Development Block Grant, and the other, the welfare bill known as Temporary Aid to Needy Families. Both are due for renewal.
The Children’s Defense Fund has worked with United Methodist Women since 1988 on issues related to children. It is urging Congress to add $20 billion over five years to federal child care spending to serve more children and improve programs.
Fund executives warned that President Bush’s welfare bill would increase the weekly work requirement for mothers from 30 to 40 hours, or from 20 to 40 hours in the cases of mothers with children under the age of 6, without adding money for child care. Bush promoted the bill in Chicago on May 13.
Children’s Defense Fund staff also spoke about long waiting lists for day care in a country where only 23 percent of families with children younger than 6 have both a working parent and a stay-at-home parent, and where 59 percent of infants have working mothers.
Currently, 69 percent of mothers with children under 6 years old and 78 percent of mothers with children 6 to 13 years old are in the work force, according to the Children’s Defense Fund.
In 1975, United Methodist Women adopted a statement encouraging legislation to fund quality child care and provide supportive services to children and families. The following year, the organization adopted a document calling for the nurture and protection of children. "Budget cuts that affect children made as a result of recession and budget deficits are inhuman and shortsighted," it said.
Members of United Methodist Women expressed similar concerns in their postcards.
"Children are the future of our nation," wrote Shirley Kennedy of Bella Vista, Ark. "They must receive quality care during the early years of their lives so they can reach their full potential."
Dorothy Watson Tatem of Philadelphia said, "We endanger the future of our country when we neglect our children through dismissal of children. Do we wish to invite devastation of our national future because we are not cognizant today of the need to nurture the child who could lead us in a beneficial manner tomorrow? Please pass/vote for the Child Care Development Block Grant."
"Child care is imperative in this great nation," stressed Ethel R. Arrowsmith, who did not give her hometown. "We are not a Third World country. We are rich in resources, talent and vision. But we need to act."
"Too many children ‘fall through the cracks’ and have no adequate, safe child care on a regular basis," Fannie Lou Wilhite of Huntsville, Mo., stated. "It is more ‘cost effective’ to provide safe, structured child care than to bear the later costs of more expensive health/social problems. As a dedicated child advocate, (I believe) continued child care for those additional 2 million children is a priority not only for our own individual communities but for children nationwide."
LaVersa Barto of Cottonwood, Ariz., wrote, "American children are our future. We must provide for their education and care. They are the most important asset we have. If we can spend millions for war, we can invest in our children. It is most important."
Some of the women commented on specific situations they knew about.
"There are children in our area who are not ready for kindergarten because they did not have an opportunity to go to child care programs prior to entering kindergarten," noted Juanita D. Staples of South Mills, N.C. "I believe all children should have this opportunity."
Frances Helen Guest said, "I live in New York City, where thousands of children sleep in a different homeless shelter each night and their parents have to find a new way and transportation to try to get them back to their school each morning. The parents both work and still can’t afford housing."
Debriefing after a busy afternoon on Capitol Hill, several of the women expressed concern at the lack of optimism they had encountered for funding child care and services to children. Legislators and aides had said they would be lucky to keep most of the money and provisions from the 1996 bills for another five years, with no additional money for other children or extra hours of care, no money for enrichments and harsher work requirements. Afterward, the women strategized about getting the word out in the church and lobbying Congress on the issues.
President Genie Bank of Lexington, Mich., led the group. Others included Vice President Brenda Brown, Spring Lake, N.C.; Recording Secretary Mee Sue Park, Van Nuys, Calif.; Vice President for Finance Myrtle Clingenteel, Bethany, Okla.; Vice President for Christian Social Responsibility Judy Nutter, St. Marys, W.Va.; and Vice President for Membership Diane Vogler, North Little Rock, Ark. They were accompanied by Response magazine Editor Dana Jones; Julie Taylor of the Washington office of the Women’s Division, Board of Global Ministries; and staff with the Children’s Defense Fund. The Women’s Division administers the United Methodist Women.
Purdue is news director in United Methodist News Service’s Washington office.
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May 28, 2002
Unofficial church group urges action for peace in Mideast
WASHINGTON (UMNS) – First-person updates on the situation in the Middle East led a subgroup of the United Methodist Federation for Social Action to issue a call for peace and justice in the troubled region.
In the call, the Middle East Network of United Methodists expressed "solidarity with all those who strive for peace and suffer from injustice." The network held its semi-annual meeting May 24. Neither the network nor MFSA are part of the United Methodist Church’s official structure. MFSA is an independent caucus of church members.
The network issued four specific calls directed at:
- Israelis and Palestinians. "We call upon Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and we call upon the Palestinians to pursue their legitimate claims for justice in nonviolent ways."
- The U.S. government. The network called on Congress and President Bush "to immediately enact legislation and implement any administrative decisions that support a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." The group also expressed support for the denomination’s position that asks the United States to stop military assistance and arms exports to the region (2000 Book ofResolutions, page 758).
- U.S. media. "Having concerns about the way events in the Middle East are reported in the U.S. media, we call upon the written, spoken and visual press to report the history and current events fairly." The network commended The Washington Post for providing a neutral history and maps in the newspaper’s May 15 issue, and expressed regret for boycotts and other forms of pressure being exerted on the Post and other media "to present only the views of one side."
- U.S. law enforcement. The group called upon law enforcement agencies to treat all people equally, regardless of a person’s ethnic origin or religious affiliation.
"We send our deepest sympathy and prayers to the Palestinian and Israeli people who have suffered from the recent violence and who want to have countries with secure borders, independence and self-rule," the network statement said.
The network cited several sources of hope, including Israeli citizens protesting their government’s actions on the West Bank and calling for a Palestinian state; a growing expression of concern among U.S. Jewish individuals and groups about the policies and practices of the Israeli government; and Palestinians condemning suicide bombing and calling for nonviolent responses amid their own suffering.
"We are heartened by the leaders of the United Methodist Church who are responding to the Middle East crisis with calls for United Methodists to become educated about the ongoing crisis, to speak out against all forms of violence whether by persons or states, to send observers to the Middle East to learn and to report back, and to stand in solidarity with the heads of churches in Jerusalem and other religious leaders in the area in advocating for a just and lasting peace in the region," the group said.
About 50 participants in the meeting heard briefings from several people who live in or have recently visited the Middle East.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a religious one, said former Ambassador Philip Wilcox Jr., president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. "It is a conflict between two conflicting nationalistic movements … over the same piece of land." Both sides see themselves as the exclusive victims, he noted in a brief history of the area from the early 20th century to the present.
"Violence has been a dreadful mistake" as a strategy for the Palestians, Wilcox commented, terming the suicide bombings "a disaster" for them. But he also observed that whenever the Palestinians have tried passive resistance, they have been crushed by the Israeli government.
Wilcox said he thinks the solution to the conflict lies in two separate secure states rather than a "binational" secular state, which he termed not viable. He warned that if the terrorism continues, Israel will continue to have right-wing governments. Wilcox urged the U.S. government to offer a plan and push for fair resolution of the conflict.
Dianne Roe, who works with the Christian Peacemaker Team, told of accompanying Palestinian farmers to their own fields to harvest crops and being threatened so forcibly by Jewish settlement security and then the army that her group could not continue. And when farmers are permitted to harvest fresh produce, they are often blocked from taking it to market, she added.
Jim Winkler, staff head of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, noted that conditions have become worse for the Palestinians since the Oslo Accords in 1993 and 1995.
He contrasted conditions between two visits this year: with four United Methodist bishops in February and with a National Council of Churches delegation in April. The Israeli incursions into Palestinian villages and towns in the time between the two trips were not limited to a house-to-house search for terrorists, Winkler said. They showed systematic destruction of things like artwork, Bibles and the infrastructure of the society, such as roads and community structures.
Winkler spoke of seeing evidence that Christian facilities were targeted. Not only were buildings destroyed, but the Israelis stole all the hard drives from computers while leaving the shells and accessories behind. "This took time" and expertise, Winkler asserted, and was "part of a widespread strategy."
He reported that the second trip, made at the invitation of religious leaders in the area, included a visit with the president of Syria, who said the role of the United States in the Middle East is extremely important but that this country is looking through a security lens rather than a political lens, as needed there. The NCC group also met with the king of Jordan and others. All these Middle Eastern leaders, including the Orthodox Church’s patriarch, had sophisticated analyses of the Washington scene, Winkler observed.
Noting that he is not an expert on the Middle East, Winkler said he learned the political and church leadership in the Middle East knew more about the workings of the U.S. government than most United Methodists know about their own denomination, its official positions and the reasons for the positions it has adopted.
"We need to push hard" on Congress and the Bush administration "to pursue a fair and impartial resolution to this conflict," Winkler declared. U.S. citizens have failed to achieve a policy on the Middle East that is fair, he said.
He also warned, "As we raise our voices we will be attacked, and we will be called anti-Semitic."
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May 23, 2002
Philippine workers seek living wage
News media contact: Linda Bloom (212) 870-3803 New York {233}
NEW YORK (UMNS) – Workers in the Philippines are dealing with the same issues – the need for a living wage, the effects of globalization and the privatization of companies – that U.S. workers face, according to a United Methodist organizer there.
The Rev. Israel Alvaran, assigned by the church as a person-in-mission to focus specifically on labor issues, discussed the situation in the Philippines while visiting United Methodist Board of Global Ministries offices in New York.
He also is a member of the denomination’s Concern for Workers Task Force, which was established in 1996 to educate the church about workplace justice in the context of the Christian faith and to advocate for workers’ rights on both a local and international basis.
A key concern in the Philippines as well as many other countries is that workers be paid a realistic salary with which they can support themselves and their families, or a living wage, rather than a minimum wage. In Manila, for example, the cost of living for a family of five is roughly $10 a day, but the minimum daily wage is $5.40.
Low pay is one reason why more than 5 million of the nation’s 75 million people work in other countries. Filipino doctors and teachers can earn more as domestic workers in Hong Kong than in their true professions at home, Alvaran pointed out.
Within the United Methodist Church, Filipino pastors earn as little as $40 a month or up to $400 a month, depending on where they live. Filipino bishops, on par with their American counterparts, earn thousands more a month, he added. "The disparity exists not only in society, but also inside our church."
The legislative body of the Philippines currently is considering a living wage bill that would give every worker the right to fair pay, either by a wage increase or tax relief. "I’m not really sure if it’s going to pass," Alvaran said.
Part of the problem is that the labor movement in the Philippines is not unified. "We have lots of workers’ groups that have varying or different ideological views," he explained. "We can’t get these people to come together."
Alvaran is hoping that the Labor Empowerment and Advocacy Center, a recently established joint project of Union Theological Seminary and the United Methodist Manila Episcopal District, will help draw the factions together. One way this might be accomplished, he said, is through the organization of church labor councils.
Plans for the center also include training and education for church workers, seminars on labor organizing and management skills, preparation and translation of resources for local congregations, and continuation of the seminar’s labor summer exposures, where seminarians work in nonunion factories and scout out potential labor organizers.
Other labor concerns in the Philippines include the right of the secretary of labor to assume jurisdiction during certain labor disputes, which, according to Alvaran, "effectively takes away the right to strike and even the right to bargaining."
The increasing number of workers on short-term contracts, rather than regular employment, is an issue because such workers receive no benefits and are not allowed to join unions. Regulations for specified "industrial zones" also make union organization difficult.
United Methodist institutions are not immune to labor problems, he said. A union formed by faculty and staff at Wesleyan University five years ago has taken the school to court for back wages and other compensation, and Alvaran said he is in consultation with the union at Mary Johnson Hospital concerning valid complaints that must be addressed.
The increased presence of U.S. troops in the Philippines, as part of the U.S. war on terrorism, has become a concern of both church members and union leaders, according to Alvaran. He estimated that 3,800 U.S. military personnel are currently in the country, most of whom are said to be there for joint training exercises.
A particular concern, he said, is that the campaign against terrorism will be used to undermine democratic rights.
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May 22, 2002
Church program works with USDA to help rural homeowners
A UMNS Feature
By Cathy Farmer
Miss Ruby has lived on the hill for most of her 76 years. That’s what locals call the high ground that climbs steeply out of the rich delta farmlands of northwest Tennessee.
The hill is a patchwork of small hardscrabble farms like Ruby Erwin’s 46-acre home place, outside the small town of Ridgely. The house, an inheritance from her parents, has sheltered her and the dogs and cats who keep her company since her husband left her a few years ago.
"I can’t work," Miss Ruby explains, rubbing her swollen ankles and placing a careful hand on the elusive pain in her side.
"The doctor tells me I’ve got the crippling arthritis. And now I’ve lost a right smart of weight. I’m not sure just why."
It isn’t easy for Miss Ruby, living on the hill. Her house doesn’t have indoor plumbing, and there’s no bathtub, no shower, no commode, no vanity.
She washes herself in the kitchen sink. Perched out back is an outhouse built about six years ago by a work team from Reelfoot Rural Ministries, an agency of the United Methodist Church’s Memphis Annual Conference.
The elderly woman can’t make repairs to her water-damaged home by herself, and she has no children to help her. Her monthly income, a check for $565 from Social Security, won’t buy materials or pay for labor.
"Miss Ruby fits the profile of the people we want to help," says Bob Fritchey, Reelfoot’s community services director.
Fritchey explained that Reelfoot is working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide safe, well-built homes. The USDA’s Section 504 grant program provides up to $7,500 for low-income, rural homeowners to modernize or improve their homes.
Reelfoot has been assigned five of the grants. "The only stipulation to the grant," Fritchey says, "is if they sell the house in three years, they have to pay back the money. Otherwise, the grant is forgiven."
Reelfoot looks over applications for grants and determines their eligibility. "Then we provide the labor using our volunteer work force. We use the grant money for supplies and for professional labor when we need special skills," Fritchey says.
In Miss Ruby’s case, Fritchey is bringing in a work team on May 28 from First United Methodist Church in Jackson, Tenn. Curtis Hudson, the church’s youth minister, says his Jackson First team will have at least 30 youth and 10 adults to work on the house. First Christian Church in nearby Alamo, embarking on its first mission trip, is sending a team of 12 youth and three adults to work with and learn from the United Methodists.
"We’ll be there four days, working from dawn to dark," Hudson says. "During that time, we expect to replace the roof, fix the rot underneath, re-shingle, insulate and put siding on the house, re-wire, re-plumb, build a bathroom from the ground up, provide new walls and ceilings in the kitchen, bathroom and living room, paint everything we can paint, put in new light fixtures, get her new or nearly new appliances, and put in some flower beds."
Third-, fourth- and fifth-graders from Jackson First will plant the flowers.
The best part of the project, Hudson says, will be getting to know Miss Ruby.
"Missions like these teach our young adults what it means to serve," he says. "The people we help have the most amazing stories. These are people just struggling to make it."
Fritchey says he has 61 applications from people in the area who need help.
"We hope to help most of them," he says. "So far in 2002, we’ve worked with 17. We’d love to have more adult work groups involved."
For her part, Miss Ruby says she loves Reelfoot. "And I’ll be tickled about my house."
More information on the Section 504 program is available from local and state offices of USDA Rural Development or by going to www.rurdev.usda.gov online.
Farmer is director of communications for the Memphis (Tenn.) Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church
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May 30, 2002
Religious leaders express concern on refugee admissions
By United Methodist News Service
U.S. religious leaders have expressed concern to President Bush about the low number of refugees that have been admitted into the country so far this year.
The Rev. Paul Dirdak, chief executive of the United Methodist Committee on Relief, and the Rev. John McCullough, a United Methodist who serves as executive director for Church World Service, are among those leaders asking the President to ensure that the maximum allowable number of refugees -- which is 70,000 for 2002 -- is admitted.
In a May 21 letter, the leaders pointed out that Bush had "reaffirmed our nation’s tradition of welcoming refugees" last Nov. 21 by committing to the 70,000 figure for the following year.
So far, however, only about 11,000 refugees have arrived in the United States. "We are deeply concerned that unless strong measures are immediately invoked, thousands of desperate refugees will be forced to languish in the misery that is the plight of most of the world’s 15 million refugees," they wrote.
Responding to the needs of such vulnerable people reflects both the values of religious communities and the moral leadership of the country, according to the religious leaders. "In a world where so much human suffering exists and where thousands of innocent persons are so violently uprooted, we feel that our country must be especially generous in assisting victims of terror whose only hope for rebuilding their lives is resettlement in the United States," the letter said.
The letter acknowledged the enhanced security measures deemed necessary after the tragedy of Sept. 11 and the effects of those measures upon the movement of refugees. "However, we believe that a nation that is strong in defending its traditions and principles must include in this defense a zealous adherence to guaranteeing the life-saving opportunities that admitting refugees to our communities represent," the letter continued. "To sacrifice this moral high ground is to submit to those forces that do not honor our spiritual and moral values nor the values of the nation that has allowed all of our faith communities to live together in harmony and peace."
Bearing witness "to the enriched fabric of our communities made possible by the gifts of grateful newcomers," the letter concludes by asking Bush to "assign the highest priority" for the maximum admission of refugees.
Other signers of the letter included representatives of the Christian Reformed Church, Episcopal Church USA, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church (USA), American Baptist Churches, USA, Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
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May 29, 2002
African churches must embrace heritage, evangelist says
By Lesley Crosson
HARARE, Zimbabwe (UMNS) – The church in Africa ministers on an impoverished continent ravaged by war and conflict, pillaged and used as a toxic dumping ground by the West, and dependent on Western financial resources.
With that stark description of a place where the United Methodist Church is growing rapidly, the Rev. Fernando Simone Matsimbe detailed the roots of and remedy for the West’s "lack of understanding of the context in which the church in Africa proclaims the gospel."
Matsimbe, director of evangelization and church growth for the Southern Mozambique Conference, spoke at a May 14-23 evangelization academy organized by United Methodist churches in southern Africa and the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries. The event in Harare was one of several such training sessions held throughout Africa by the board’s evangelization and church growth program area.
Speaking to some 30 clergy and lay leaders from Mozambique, Angola and Zimbabwe, Matsimbe said that Western "arrogance born of socioeconomic supremacy" led early missionaries to believe that they had discovered in Africa "a place without hope and without God." But, he declared, "God was present in Africa long before the missionaries came, and the Africans knew it."
The work of missionaries – assisting with education, health and spiritual ministries – was and continues to be significant, he pointed out. However, successful proclamation of the gospel in a society "whose cultural and religious aspirations are not respected" requires recognition by the Western church that Africans "are not mere objects of mission, but active participants in the ministry of the church."
The critical task for the church in Africa is to engage in a process of "understanding itself and finding a way to be both Christian and African," he said.
Rather than viewing itself as isolated, the African church must assert itself as an extension of the global Christian church and a "visible manifestation of God’s presence in the world." The good news on this continent of enormous need and enormous gifts, he said, is that "God loved the world, including Africa."
It remains for African churches to embrace their context and culture by enriching the practice of Christianity in their churches with traditions and practices that are unique to Africa and not counter to the gospel, Matsimbe said.
He illustrated the point with the observation that Africans have a strong belief in "mediators," some of whom are ancestors or even witch doctors. Those mediators take "our prayers and aspirations to God." Rather than reject that as African and therefore not Christian, "We can use that belief to explain Christ to Africans as the mediator" through whom they can petition God, Matsimbe explained.
Other African cultural values, ceremonies and traditional practices, particularly around important life events like funerals and weddings, must be affirmed and incorporated into church liturgies, he said.
Paraphrasing Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu, Matsimbe declared, "Blackness is not a fault or failure of creation, but a gift from God." And so, he said, "the gospel must be allowed to leave the European vessel it was planted in" so that it can take root in Africa.
Crosson is director of public relations for the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries.
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