IT’S BEEN HALF a century since Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty, and obviously this is a war that we still haven’t won. According to the Census Bureau, in 2013 there were still 45.3 million Americans living in poverty. That’s nearly 15 percent of the American people, including one in five children and one in three children of color.
Progress has been made on global poverty, with the proportion of people living in extreme poverty worldwide cut in half between 1990 and 2010, but the World Bank estimates that 1 billion people worldwide still live on less than $1.25 per day. Push that up to a mere $2 per day and the number is 2.2 billion people—almost a third of all the people on Earth.
I’ve always described the central fact of God’s economy as this: There is enough, if we share it. There’s no question that we have the resources to end poverty globally and domestically. What we lack are the moral resolve, the political will, and better strategies to make it happen. Yet those three may finally be coming together. I believe there are new confluences occurring that could be both helpful and hopeful.
At a meeting at the World Bank in February, a new alliance with the faith community was envisioned that combines proven strategies for overcoming poverty with a prophetic call to people of faith and moral conscience to end extreme poverty by 2030. In the faith community, I see a new generation of Christians rediscovering those Jesus calls the “least of these” in Matthew 25. Even in politics, I see individuals across the political spectrum beginning to ask new and challenging questions about finding better approaches to addressing poverty.
In 2011, a coalition of U.S. Christian organizations from a wide variety of theological backgrounds and political leanings was formed to protect the poor and vulnerable in the federal budget process. Called the Circle of Protection, this coalition includes Christian organizations and institutions such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic Charities, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Salvation Army, The National Council of Churches, Bread for the World, Sojourners, and many others. We were blessed to be a founding member of the Circle of Protection and a key member of its steering committee.
Since its founding, the Circle of Protection has worked to preserve the integrity of the most effective programs for low-income families and children; the coalition has had more success than we thought possible. Even in difficult times of budget cutting, a “circle of protection” has kept millions of poor and hungry people from losing key safety nets that prevent them from plunging deeper into poverty.
As we enter into the 2016 presidential election cycle, the Circle of Protection now sees an opportunity to move from playing defense—doing what we can to prevent cuts to programs that poor people clearly need—to playing offense by providing the opportunity and commitment to move people out of poverty. In January, we announced our plan to do just that, when we issued a clear and strong challenge to all U.S. presidential candidates.
When candidates officially announce their campaigns, they will receive a letter from the Circle of Protection—signed by a diverse group of 100 prominent Christian leaders—requesting that they record a three-minute video spelling out exactly how they propose to solve the problems of poverty in the United States and internationally. These video statements will be posted on the Circle of Protection’s website and distributed to the members of our churches and organizations and to the press during the campaign season, without any judgment or comment on our part.
Our intention is to use the candidates’ statements to foster a new dialogue across the country, on all political sides, about how we are going to end extreme poverty globally and the shameful poverty we still have in the U.S. Voters will be able to see what each candidate has to say about these issues and decide for themselves which candidate has the best plans. Hopefully, the challenge from the faith community to make the video statements will put more pressure on candidates to take the issues of poverty seriously.
By raising our voices early and often in the 2016 presidential race and creating a forum for candidates to speak specifically on the issue of poverty, we hope that the Circle of Protection will create space in the campaign for poverty to be talked about in a much more serious way by those wishing to lead our country. Our clear purpose will be to see those newly elected leaders finally take an effective path to eradicating extreme poverty in the U.S. and around the world. That will take a citizen movement, and, as followers of Christ, we should accept nothing less.
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