Source material for Appendix 1 is found online at
How To Be an Effective Advocate . . . Making Our Voices Heard.

Appendix 2, pp. 134 - 136

"Just as the churches challenged the harshness of early-twentieth-century industrialization with a prophetic Social Creed in 1908, so in our era of globalization we offer a vision of a society that shares more and consumes less, seeks compassion over suspicion and equality over domination, and finds security in joined hands rather than massed arms." [134]

"We . . . commit ourselves to a culture of peace and freedom that embraces nonviolence, nurtures character, treasures the environment, and builds community, rooted in a spirituality of inner growth with outward action." [136]

Source material for Appendix 2 is found online at
A Social Creed for the 21st Century

"We recommit ourselves to reflect on the question of power and empire from a biblical and theological perspective, and take a firm faith stance against hegemonic powers because all power is accountable to God. We acknowledge that the process of transformation requires that we as churches make ourselves accountable to the victims of the project of economic globalization." [141]

Source material for Appendix 3 is found online at
AGAPE (Alternative Globalization Addressing Peoples and Earth) Document

"The signs of the times have become more alarming and must be interpreted. The root causes of massive threats to life are above all the product of an unjust economic system defended and protected by political and military might. Economic systems are a matter of life and death." [143]

"This is an ideology that claims to be without alternative, demanding an endless flow of sacrifices from the poor and creation. It makes the false promise that it can save the world through the creation of wealth and prosperity, claiming sovereignty over life and demanding total allegiance, which amounts to idolatry." [144]

"Now we proclaim with passion that we will commit ourselves, our time and our energy to changing, renewing, and restoring the economy and the earth, choosing life, so that we and our descendants might live (Deut. 30.19)." [148]

Source material for Appendix 4 is found online at
Accra Confession (Covenanting for Justice in the Economy and the Earth)

Intro, pp. xiii - xviii

"The term 'progressive' has long been used to represent an understanding of Christianity marked by an awareness of social sin, a consciousness of institutional and human potential and shortcomings, and an emphasis on the church's mission to engage the world. While progressive Christians support charitable actions to meet the immediate needs of people in crisis, their deeper concern is to transform the social systems and economic structures of society that marginalize people and the natural world." [xiv]

1. Christian faithfulness requires public action by churches and people of faith.

2. Christian social witness and public action should correspond to accepted practices of deliberative democracies.

3. The cause of social problems is often structural or systemic." [xviii]

"[The] problems and proposals [in this book] to create change will be explained and discussed in light of Scripture, tradition, science, and lived experience. Our aim is to challenge common assumptions and to prompt new ways of thinking about what makes sense in and for our world." [xxiii]

For Workers

[Note: On the Clarence Jordan story: "swap salaries" - This goes to the heart of issues of economic justice.  There is a pervasive story/myth that more money is needed for those who have a lot.  Even internally in unions typically the leadership is longer term and therefore better paid.  Most of the time in many unions % increases are offered by the employer and not countered with demands for a cents per hour across the board increase. 1% of $10/hr buys a lot less groceries than 1% of say $50.  The principle of the living wage needs to be proclaimed. - CM]

Beth Shulman, author of The Betrayal of Work, is quoted, "the great secret of America is that a vast new impoverished population has grown up in our midst. Yet these are not Americans who have been excluded from the world of work; in fact, they make up the core of much of the new economy. Indeed, our recent prosperity rests, in part, on their misery. Their poverty is not incidental to their role as workers, but derives from it." [4]

For Workers

"We need a rebellion, not so much against existing market institutions, as against the analytical tyranny of the idea of the market, as it applies to pay." (James Galbraith) [5]

In the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), minimum standards are determined for the compensation of pastors, but no minimum standards are set for the fair compensation of Christian educators, church secretaries, or custodians. The result is an accepted order for pay in churches that fails to consider the needs of all those called to serve the congregation." [6]
[Note: The same inequity is present in the United Methodist Church. This is an arena in which we do have direct power and influence. Are you using yours?- WW]

"The living conditions of poor people and the economic disparities that we see along the lines of race and gender are causes for moral outrage. . . . Neither compassionate capitalism nor charitable programs adequately address the systemic nature of these problems." [8]

"Religious communities and labor unions have worked together to advance living wage laws across the country. The idea behind the living wage is that full-time workers will be paid enough so that they won't have to depend upon government assistance programs...." [9]

Chapter 2, pp. 12 - 16

For Families

"Families are, after all, our first school of justice." [12]

"It is also true, however, that family life is shaped by the larger social and economic context." [13]

"The meaning of 'family' has always been plural, to capture the differing stages of life and life's unforeseen events. The well-being of all families, not just married families, is a covenantal concern that cannot be reduced to 'heterosexual' or 'married.'" [14]

For Families

"In the United States today, having a job is essential to the well-being of most families. The existence, location, and working conditions of jobs, however are based on strategies designed to increase profits of business owners or investors. Sometimes these interests clash." [16]

"Poverty anywhere is not a family value, yet the United States has the highest overall poverty rate (17 percent) and the highest child poverty rate (21.9 percent) of all advanced countries." [16-17]

"If the values of a society can be determined by where it puts its time and money, then the outlook for our families is bleak indeed." [18]

"A political economy that denies these basic goods to families, whether in the name of 'family values' or in the name of 'free trade,' or, in some parts of the world, 'development' and 'progress,' destroys the basis of human well-being." [18]

"The call to Christians is to restore the covenant nature of community; to shape economic and public policies for sharing God's blessings adequately and fairly among all." [18]

For Those Affected by Drugs

"In the United States, with great fanfare, our newspapers constantly trumpet the latest big arrest and prosecution of drug traffickers, and yet drug trafficking persists at relatively the same levels, year in and year out. 'Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains,' Jean-Jacques Rousseau said, and the truth of his observation is quite evident when we look at our current state of national drug addition. From the jungles and files of Putumayo, Columbia, to the hard urban streets of Newark, New Jersey, my hometown, trafficking in cocaine in one form or another appears to be a necessity for some of the marginalized people of both societies.
     'What else can we do?' asked the campesinos. 'When we tried to raise fish in the farm pond projects that the government encouraged, the government still sprayed over our farm ponds and killed all of our fish!'
     'With nothing to bring to market I must plant coca where and when I can.'
     'What else can I do?' asked many of my clients in Newark. 'With our broke-down education, jobs moved out of the city, and no prospects in sight, how else can I survive.'" [23]

"My [earlier] theology, morals, and legal opinions were prescriptive rather than descriptive. Doing drugs was wrong, and therefore interdiction must be right. I held firmly to this conviction until I found out the truth in Putumayo and elsewhere. At that time, I did not ask the most appropriate ethically responsible question, 'What is going on?' It is only after that question is asked that other questions can be addressed. The truth of our circumstances comes out of rigorous examination of prevailing conditions." [24]

For Those Affected by Drugs

"Because the use of drugs is addictive and enmeshes people in a practice of sin, alienating them from God and from everyone around them, the use of drugs should be minimized for the good of all. . . . two progressive practical questions should be, What regulatory steps can be taken to minimize the use of drugs? And what regulatory practices should be taken to minimize the international criminal enterprise of drug trafficking?" [25]

"Who will save us from this body of death? Jesus is our Lord, but Jesus is neither responsible nor in charge of public policy; we the American people are. If the artificial surplus value of drugs was removed from the drugs, much like it was for alcohol with the repeal of Prohibition, then that surplus value would not be available to organized crime: this is the aim of decriminalization." [26]

Chapter 3, pp. 26 - 29

For Those Affected by Drugs

For Prisoners and Our Communities

"Instead of a society resting on coercion, exploitation, and inequality, Jesus desired to found a society resting on love, service, and equality." [Walter Rauschenbusch quote] [32]

"The call for justice present in this heritage assumes all persons are of value and thus gives rise to a corresponding obligation to address the situations where they are not valued. In the contemporary United States, prisons are one of the most challenging examples of how persons are not valued." [33]

For Prisoners and Our Communities

"One constant is that the majority of those classified as criminals are always from those classified as the poorest and most dislocated persons in society." [35]

"A constant moral questions that has run through all of the different forms of involvement has been how to draw boundaries around the marginalized. Tensions over this boundary can be seen most clearly in approaches to poverty as the Christian church struggled with the biblical notion of poverty as a virtue, a notion that was eclipsed with the rise of capitalism and the Protestant Reformation and modified into a boundary between deserving and undeserving poor." [35]

"Public discussion of punishment today continues to include a changing mix of vengeance and reform." [36]

For Prisoners and Our Communities

"While retributive justice looks back at the disrupted social order, restorative justice looks toward the future to consider the development of relationships that make possible a more peaceful community." [37]

"... since the community has been violated, it is the community's obligation to engage in the work of restoration." [37]

"A recent article on U.S. prisons by the U.S. program director for Human Rights Watch was titled 'U.S. Addiction to Incarceration Puts 2.3 Million in Prison.' To call actions 'addictions' is to say that the behavior is irrational, harmful to the self and others, and yet driven by what seems to be an inescapable desire. Christians need not -- indeed should not -- be these kinds of persons. We have much work to do." [39]

[Note: Mother Jones encountered a man in prison for stealing a pair of shoes. She said, "You should have stolen a railroad, they would have made you a Senator." A Woody Guthrie song includes the line "Some men rob you with a six gun. some with a fountain pen." Although the circumstances and technology have changed the disparate nature of the administration of criminal justice has not. Employers frequently get away with stealing the wages of employees by skipping out or closing down without paying the payroll or shorting the employee in other ways. Many prosecutors don't press charges in such cases. Another example is assault and murder by pollution.  

-----------------------------

The following individuals  were incarcerated: Jeremiah, Daniel, Jesus, Peter, Paul, Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King,  Dietrich Bonhoffer, Dorothy Day, Perry Saito and a host of others like them. In unjust situation people are punished for doing justice. - CM]

For Public Education That Practices and Promotes Peace

• Is not an earmark of a democratic society its ability to educate all of its children?
• Shouldn't public education for all children be an outward sign of how well U.S. society is providing a context for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all of its citizens?
• How have the failures of public education become an outward sign of the moral corruption of our democratic ethos? [42-43]

For Public Education That Practices and Promotes Peace

"Is the larger social agenda of [No Child Left Behind] driven by an economics of profit rather than an economics of justice and care? An emphasis on raising test scores in science and math seems to suggest a concern with gaining a competitive edge in the global marketplace. I certainly understand the need for a citizenry that has technological acumen, but what is the larger socio-moral vision guiding the education of our children so that they are responsible creators and consumers of technological advances that are the earmark of twenty-first-century life? What kind of persons are we educating our children to be, not simply what are our children being educated to do? [44]

For Public Education That Practices and Promotes Peace

"From a faith-based perspective that reflects a communal interest in the well-being of our nation's children, it is time to rethink a progressive Christian approach to public policy. . . . The two terms that drive this reframing of the goals of public education policy are violence and just peace. [47]

Within this understanding, social injustice is an act of violence because it occurs when institutional structures of a society operate in ways that destroy human hope and possibilities and objectify people seeking to live within those structure." [47]

". . . 'disinformation' is a key feature of the U.S. context; disinformation has to do with a willingness on the part of public officials to tell lies that manipulate facts and us." [47]

"If inquiry into the violence of public education policy itself becomes the subject of political discourse and policy making, might we begin to find more authentic ways to narrow the educational gap between privileged and disadvantaged students as well as open a window onto why violence in the schools exists?" [48]

"Faith-based advocacy for public education in the twenty-first century must surely have a twofold purpose. The first purpose is to become a place where the community can gather to discuss what is going on in the local schools in light of the diversity of faith confessions represented in the community. The churches must be places where congregants are nurtured to become partners in 'ecumenical political dialogue.' . . . . Perhaps it is time to enact strategies of nonviolent resistance to get the attention of policymakers and to reawaken all of us as to the failures of public education as acts of violence. Instead of reacting to the violence of a Columbine after the fact, it is time for people of faith to be proactive catalysts for a social climate of nonviolence." [48-49]

For Healing and Wholeness

"This basic fact - a lack of affordable, high-quality care for all - presents people of faith with a pressing moral dilemma. What does it mean to love our sick or uninsured neighbor as ourselves?" [53]

"There is more to the uninsured story: the Census Bureau does not count the millions who are underinsured. . . . To be 'underinsured' means that you are insured only part of a year, or that you have some insurance but it does not adequately meet your health needs (the coverage is too limited or too expensive, the deductibles are too high, or all of the above). [53]

"... the roots of racial-ethnic health and healthcare inequities are complex and multilayered, yet too many Americans of relative racial or socioeconomic privilege are unaware of the harsh realities that people of color confront routinely. That needs to change if we are sincere in our calling as Christians to protect life and to love our neighbors as ourselves." [55]

"Over time and through avoidance, denial, and a simple lack of awareness, our collective ethical vision has become (mis)shaped by a kind of moral astigmatism. By learning this history (of unethical medical and research practices) and asking critical and self-reflective questions about the present, we can correct our flawed vision, make amends to those harmed, and seek more just practices, laws, and structures." [55]

Chapter 6, pp. 55 - 58

For Healing and Wholeness

"The argument that universal healthcare is too complicated or too costly fails to convince me. It is not beyond American intelligence to figure out, but it will require moral commitment and grit.
     Moreover, the language of 'neighbor-love' and 'common good' presents important critiques of the strong currents of individualism and consumerism in the United States. When an individualistic and consumerist ethos predominates, bioethical deliberations devolve into ' Do I as an individual have a right to purchase the treatment, do the research, profit from it, and so on?' That is a simplistic approach to complex moral questions. Some suffer from an entitlement syndrome - assuming that they are entitled to any treatment - no matter the cost or how spending money on it might limit care or research in other areas." [57-58]

For Healing and Wholeness

"Blanket rules are not as helpful in discerning the moral path as are honest and thorough discussions with a gathering of the patient, loved ones, skilled and dedicated healthcare providers, and emotional/spiritual caregivers - who are all committed to finding the best outcome for the particular patient in a particular moment." [60]

"Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara writes, 'We have no consistent record of humanity's progressing in virtues and moral values. Instead we have the impression that at each moment of our history, we have to learn all over again the meaning of giving and receiving respect."' [61]

For Financial Security in All Stages of Life

"[At the turn of the 20th century] Many Christians saw it as their moral responsibility to advocate for progressive public policies that would address the needs of the working class and others living in poverty. Social gospelers such as Walter Rauschenbusch, Vida Dutton Scudder, Richard Ely, and Reverdy Ransom critiqued the church for its own complacency in response to the plight of the working poor and used the church's distinctive voice to advocate for change. Among other things, they advocated for an eight-hour workday, security in old age or disability, and laws against child labor. Many of the reforms that they called for later became part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal." [64]

"In his 1932 nomination acceptance speech, Roosevelt acknowledged, 'This nation is not merely a nation of independence, but it is, if we are to survive, a nation of interdependence.'" [65]

For Financial Security in All Stages of Life

"Communion should be viewed as an illustration of God's desire for human, social, economic, and political relations. It demonstrates the ways in which God calls believers to community and mutual sharing, and to creation of redemptive social systems that ensure economic security for all." [67]

"When Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, he was establishing a call to spiritual memory that both inspires and renews faith, as well as issuing a call to action and faithfulness. The faithfulness to which we are called, despite the often tempting desire to remain behind ecclesial walls, means living responsibly in all areas of human life." [68]

For Financial Security in All Stages of Life

"J. Gordon Chamberlin, in his book Upon Whom We Depend: The American Poverty System, purports that the issue of poverty is a theological issue that lies at the heart of the Christian narrative. For Chamberlin, churches must move beyond rhetoric to action. Simple charity, he says, is merely a way of sustaining the status quo and does little to address the systemic and structural realities of poverty in America. Maintaining Social Security is critical to curtailing the harsh reality of poverty." [70]

Chapter 8, pp. 73 - 75

For Immigrants

"The irony of the present immigration debate, a paradox conveniently ignored by politicians and unknown to many average citizens, is that U.S. policies are directly responsible for the Hispanic presence in this country." [73]

"... U.S. citizens [have] created the myth that this country has never invaded another country for territorial gain. Sustaining such an assumption leads to the false conclusion that all Hispanics immigrated to the United States, when in reality, the United States immigrated to lands held by Latino/as." [74]

"To make matters worse, the treaty agreements and historic land titles after the war [against Mexico] were ignored by the U.S. government, hence providing 'legal' means of seizing lands owned by Mexicans. Mexican Americans were reduced to a 'reserve' army' of laborers, allowing the overall southwestern economy to develop at their expense." [75]

Chapter 8, pp. 75 - 77

For Immigrants

"The reason 'they' keep coming is bananas, and our refusal to deal with the role of bananas contributes to much of the misinformation surrounding the current immigration debate." [75]

"To protect their [banana] interest, the U.S. government overthrew the democratically elected government of Guatemala and replaced it with a military dictatorship under the pretense that Arbenz was a community. . . . Almost every country along the Caribbean has been invaded by the United States at least once during the twentieth century.
     The result of U.S.-installed banana republics created poverty, strife, and death in all of these countries. Inevitably, resistance to the United States manifested itself as fight or flight. Hundreds of thousands were killed or disappeared, while millions fled north." [76]

"...why do they keep coming? When the U.S. military provided the freedom for U.S. corporations like the United Fruit Company to build roads into these developing countries to extract, by brute force if necessary, their natural resources, and when maquiladoras along the border extracted cheap labor, some of the inhabitants of those countries, deprived of a livelihood, took those same roads to follow their resources. They come following what has been stolen from them. They come to escape the violence and terrorism we unleashed upon them. We have an immigration problem because, for more than a century, we have exploited and continue to exploit Latin America." [77]

Chapter 8, pp. 77 - 83

For Immigrants

"The phrase that appears most often in the Bible (after 'do not be afraid') is to take care of the 'alien within your midst.' Throughout the Bible we are reminded of God's concern for the alien and the stranger. Aliens and strangers in the Bible are those who have been victimized, oppressed, or enslaved by others; those who are vulnerable because of lack of family connections or support; and those whose nationality or religion differs from the dominant culture. In the exodus story, God told the Israelites to welcome the stranger because 'you were once aliens in the land of Egypt.'" [80]

"The New Sanctuary Movement is, first, and foremost, an interfaith movement designed to enable congregations to publicly provide hospitality and protection to a limited number of undocumented families whose cases reveal the moral contradictions of our present immigration laws." [81]

Chapter 9, pp. 85 - 89

For People Lacking Affordable Housing

"Historically, there was a generalized presumption in the United States that all 'citizens' would have consistent access to some level of secure, affordable, sufficient housing. Unfortunately, not all persons were full citizens [at times white women, Native Americans, landless, African Americans, and industrialized poor did not have access to housing]. [86-87]

"In more recent times, mental health policy, cuts in government support, poverty, racial/ethnic identity, and disasters continue to determine whether or not persons have regular access to secure, affordable, sufficient housing." [87]

For People Lacking Affordable Housing

"When we consider the role of Christians in engaging housing challenges, following Jesus' ministry of healing suggests that Christians are called to help heal the personal and social brokenness that prevent persons from taking actions in their circumstances as well as to provide immediate assistance in housing people." [91]

For People Lacking Affordable Housing

"Engaging his judgment, his will, and his emotions, the Samaritan expressed love by determining a course of action that included use of his intellect, his finances, and his energy. Often the meaning of loving persons at the level of social engagement is conceived as related only to financial and physical resources. . . . When love is thought of as including intellectual expression, new ideas and approaches to problems can arise that focus on immediate circumstances of individuals and, more importantly, address institutional and social factors that cause affordable housing problems." [92]

"In 2000, the National Alliance to End Homelessness, developed a plan to end homelessness in ten years. Entitled 'A Plan, Not a Dream: How to End Homelessness in Ten Years,' the program addresses ways to stop homelessness through prevention and housing." [93]

"One important outgrowth of McKinney-Vento [Homeless Assistance Act] is the unfolding of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness. Created by Congress . . . . Congregations can join Interagency efforts by engaging programs such as state and local ten-year plans to end homelessness and creating state Interagency councils." [93-94]

"The health and vibrancy of a democracy--or any society--ultimately rests on the strength of its citizens. In view of this, self-interest suggests the need to change systems that weaken citizens and society." [94]

For All Creation

Chapter 10, pp. 101 - 103

For All Creation

"When we as taxpayers subsidize ... commodity crops, we are inadvertently supporting the very cycle of social and environmental ills that do us in America and elsewhere so much harm." [102]

"From the perspective of Christian ethics, the Bible offers a visionary and trenchant approach to thinking about our environmental problems in the form of covenantal theology and jubilee justice. Not only does human-initiated ecological devastation cause the most vulnerable among us to suffer disproportionately and cause demonstrable harm to future generations, but our environmental sins also violate the entire creation with which God continues to be in covenantal relationship. . . . whatever philosophical or theological debates may remain about the moral status of individual animals, entire species, or whole ecosystems, it seems clear that the people of God have been enjoined to recognize the intrinsic values of creation and not simply its instrumental use." [102-103]

For All Creation

"If you are unaware of the most pressing environmental concerns of your particular region or community, consider doing your part in maintaining access to clean, sufficient, and affordable water for the sake of human rights and environmental justice, so as to keep water in public trust - not corporate control." [104]

"While working for structural change through farm bill reform and in light of the fact that the industrialized food we eat in America, on average, travels thirteen hundred to two thousand miles before it reaches our plates, consider supporting your local or regional community food system . . . . [105]

For Alternatives to War and Militarism

"[The U.S.] is imperial in the sense of enforcing its idea of world order in its own interest, presuming the right to lay down the rules of trade, commerce, security, and political legitimacy. It rewards or punishes nations on the basis of their willingness to create open markets, support U.S. military policies, and establish pro-U.S. government." [110]

"Waging an offensive war to change the government of a sovereign nations and restructure its economy is an imperial enterprise. Doing it to consolidate one's power and change the political culture of a sprawling, explosive, multinational region halfway around the globe is more so on a staggering scale, with staggering costs." [110]

For Alternatives to War and Militarism

"... Pentagon budgets are getting 'blacker,' to use the defense and intelligence jargon. Over 20 percent of the Pentagon's acquisition budget in 2008 is devoted to secret, classified programs, a return to the Cold War level of classified spending. Impending technologies such as warhead-like bullets and neurobiological signature-tracking satellites will give lethal new weapons to covert warriors, evading the politics of war." [113]

Chapter 11, pp. 113 - 116

For Alternatives to War and Militarism

"Increasingly U.S. citizens are awakening from the toxic combination of bad theology and bad politics that prevailed in the years following September 11, 2001. . . . In good theology it is understood that god does not take sides with nations; there are always bad leaders to be coped with and contained; nations are too sinful and power-oriented to be instruments of redemption; and redemption from evil is God's business." [115]

"The church has not lacked official statements against a war that did not come remotely close to being a last resort. The church has lacked, however, the mobilization of antiwar conviction that makes a difference." [115]

For Funding Our Values

"Many Americans would be surprised to know that out of every tax dollar roughly twenty-nine cents goes to the military and nineteen cents goes for interest on the national debt. That's half of our tax dollars right there. Out of the remaining fifty cents, four cents goes for education, two cents each go to housing and the environment, three cents to nutrition, and job training gets only one-third of a penny! Clearly the support that we, as a society, are giving to the 'least of these' in our midst pales in comparison to the amount of our federal tax dollars that are being spent on war, defense, and debt." [119]

"... the question is: does our national budget reflect the values that are truly important to progressive Christians?" [119]

"Patterns of wealth and poverty are neither natural nor inevitable, but rather a result of economic and public policies that function to allow for the concentration or the sharing of wealth." [119-120]

For Funding Our Values

For Funding Our Values