Southern Baptists care about hungry and hurting people. Look around the globe and one finds Southern Baptists living out the command of Jesus to feed the hungry. In Myanmar (formerly Burma), Baptists are working alongside national Christians to provide water filters and purification systems to some of the hundreds of thousands displaced by the May 3 cyclone.
In China, Baptists are working with other groups to provide food, health care and building materials as families in Sichuan province attempt to rebuild following the May 12 earthquake that claimed about 70,000 lives.
In Niger and Senegal, Baptist representatives provide emergency food relief for people caught in a devastating drought. In Thailand, Baptist representatives teach vocational skills such as goat and cattle production, along with health care, as the country struggles with food shortages.
In Iowa, Baptist volunteers prepare thousands of meals for victims of the recent Midwest floods.
Every year, Southern Baptists give millions of dollars through a special offering to the World Hunger Fund to help care for hungry people at home and around the world. In times of special need, Southern Baptists dig deeper.
Following the December 2004 tsunami in Southern Asia, Southern Baptists gave more than $17 million for food, shelter and various projects.
Still all the efforts combined result in what one Baptist representative in Africa called “a drop in the bucket” compared to the need.
Worldwide 854 million people suffer from hunger. Almost 1 billion people live on less than $1 a day. Every day, more than 25,000 children die before their fifth birthday from hunger and hunger-related causes. More than a billion people lack access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
The needs at home and abroad are overwhelming. They are much more than volunteer organizations like Southern Baptists can ever hope to address.
This may be one reason messengers to the 151st annual session of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) meeting in Indianapolis in June called on Southern Baptists to engage in another way of helping hungry and hurting people.
The resolution titled On Political Engagement said, in part, messengers urge Christians to engage the culture through “participation in the democratic public policy and political process in order to help fulfill the Kingdom mandate … ‘to bring industry, government and society as a whole under the sway of the principles of righteousness, truth and brotherly love.’”
In short, Baptists should help formulate public policy.
Government policy makes a difference in the world. In 2000, the United States, along with the majority of other nations, adopted an ambitious goal to eradicate hunger and poverty in the world and pledged to work with other nations to achieve the other so-called Millennium Development Goals. Chief among these is to cut in half the proportion of people in the world living on less than $1 a day by 2015.
A little more than halfway to that date, the number is still high — 980 million in 2004 — but that is down by 270 million people from 1990. In Southeastern Asia, the percentage of people living with insufficient food has dropped from 18 percent to 12 percent. In Latin America, the percentage of children under age 5 who are underweight has dropped from 33 percent to 27 percent. In sub-Saharan Africa, 70 percent of children are now enrolled in primary education compared to 54 percent at the start of the program.
In Africa, Asia, Latin America and other areas, progress has been made to reduce hunger and poverty, to lower child mortality and to expand primary education. That progress is largely due to efforts by national governments.
In the early 1970s when Arthur Simon founded Bread for the World (a Christian advocacy group for the hungry), he observed that by helping the U.S. government change one policy related to hungry and hurting people, Christians could provide more help to those in need than they ever could through their respective churches.
Perhaps that is why the recently adopted SBC resolution called for Baptists to be involved in helping shape public policy.
Looking at the current situation, one notes that the recent reductions in hunger and poverty did not come without costs. The U.S. Congress upped appropriations to fight hunger by about $1 billion a year for the past few years. In 2008, the United States will spend about $16 billion on anti-poverty programs around the world. The amount sounds large, but it composes less than one-half of 1 percent of the nation’s $3.1 trillion budget.
The world’s current food crisis means more money will be needed just to hold the gains made against hunger and poverty. In developing countries, the average family spends 80 percent of its income of food and has few resources when food prices double.
Bread for the World and several other Christian groups are currently lobbying Congress to increase the dollars appropriated for hunger and poverty relief as well as for better coordination of the nation’s efforts in these fields.
Currently U.S. global development policies and programs are implemented by 12 departments, 25 different agencies and almost 60 government offices.
Alabama Rep. Spencer Bachus, along with Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, took the lead in introducing the Global Poverty Act to help coordinate U.S. efforts and to provide clarity in the purpose of the programs, coordination of what is done and accountability for how the money is spent. The proposal passed the House of Representatives overwhelmingly and now awaits action in the Senate (S. 2433).
Personally we support both the effort to increase funding for hungry and hurting people and to reform government structure to provide more coordination for U.S. anti-poverty efforts. While decisions about helping hungry people are made by Congress, hunger is not a political issue. Nor is it a Democratic issue or a Republican issue. Helping hungry and hurting people is a Christian issue.
As the recent resolution indicated, there is more than one way to help. It can be done through our churches and denomination and with special offerings. It also can be done by helping influence public policy.
Both kinds of help are desperately needed.
To find out about how you can become involved in public policy discussion involving hunger, go to www.bread.org/learn/global-hunger-issues.
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