As debate over banning gay “marriage” began in the Senate, one religious leader across town argued that another issue deserved more religious attention — hunger.
“There are some in the ministry concerned about homosexuality,” said Lennox Yearwood of Washington’s youth-oriented Hip Hop Caucus. “It is time for us to be concerned with what is going on in the kitchen.”
Yearwood and six representatives of religious organizations made impassioned pleas June 5 for an end to hunger. The panel discussion was sponsored by the national food bank network, America’s Second Harvest, on the eve of the fifth annual National Hunger Awareness Day, June 6.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said 38.2 million Americans lived in households unable to purchase enough food in 2004, an increase of 2 million from the previous year. America’s Second Harvest claims that one out of every four people in a soup kitchen line is a child.
“This is embarrassing …,” Yearwood said. “In the richest country in the world, in the most powerful, beautiful nation in the world … how do we bring hunger into the 21st century?”
The panelists called for the strengthening of anti-hunger programs, such as emergency food assistance and food stamps in the Farm Bill, expected to be debated and rewritten by Congress next year.
“This kind of farm bill is good for U.S. farmers, it is good for hungry people, and it is also a piece that we need to move to the Shalom of God,” said David Beckmann, president of the Christian anti-hunger lobbying group, Bread for the World. (RNS)
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