WASHINGTON — When mainline Protestant leaders went to Washington in March 2005 to denounce President George W. Bush’s proposed budget as “unjust,” they were received much like the Old Testament prophets they look to for inspiration. Another lonely voice, crying out in the wilderness. By year’s end, the budget they rejected as immoral had passed through Congress by the narrowest of margins — Vice President Dick Cheney was called in to break a 50–50 tie in the Senate.
Although they lost the budget battle, activists say they have finally been heard and have discovered a way to portray arcane budget debates as stark moral choices that test the nation’s commitment to the poor. “I think what’s changed is over a period of years … there has emerged a wide agreement that poverty is a central biblical concern, and that did not used to be the case,” said Wes Granberg-Michaelson, the general secretary of the Reformed Church in America.
But a major challenge that remains is broadening that message to other faith groups that are more galvanized by hot-button social issues like gay “marriage” and abortion.
Indeed the influential Family Research Council urged a vote in support of the budget bill, and Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, called the budget boring and dismissed the debate as more “liberal social gospel.”
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