The poverty problem is a monumental task that stretches across religious and cultural lines, said Wayne Flynt, featured speaker during a poverty forum led by Alabama Poverty Project (APP) Nov. 15.
“This is one meeting place for all the world’s great religions,” said Flynt, co-founder of APP, professor emeritus at Auburn University and member of First Baptist Church, Auburn. “In every one of those religions, there is the same sense that life has to be renewed for the individual. It is a path of enlightenment, and it’s a path of justice that results from that enlightenment.”
He also provided statistics on the gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” and clarified common misconceptions about impoverished people.
“There are 37 million poor people in America — about 20 million are white, 8.8 million are African-American and 9 million are Hispanic,” Flynt said. “The South has one-third of the nation’s poverty, one-fourth of the nation’s population and one-sixth of the nation’s philanthropy. The seedbed for poverty, ever since the Civil War, has been the South. Our largest and most important single export to America has been our poor.”
He noted that problems commonly contributing to poverty are lack of education, personal choices, cultural patterns and societal injustices.
“The (poverty) problem is so overwhelming that the churches can’t do it alone,” Flynt said, adding that APP wants to help keep the debate about the facts, not opinion.
“We believe that congregations across the whole spectrum of religion in Alabama … have a common concern of justice for the poor,” he said. “Our job is to educate people with that and do the … research that results in the resources you need to preach that message.” (TAB)
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