Letter to the Editor, Posted: 11/11/04
To the editor:
As an Evangelical Christian, I am dismayed at the lack of moral diversity of our Christian movement reflected in this election.
Why do Evangelicals refuse to grapple with the range of moral issues including poverty, education or lack of health care for 45 million people in the wealthiest country in the world?
Why donít Evangelicals ask serious questions about 400 billionaires with one trillion dollars worth of wealth in our country? Is it because a ban on abortion or a ban on gay marriage costs us nothing and wonít raise our taxes?
The Inter-religious Working Group on Domestic Human Need, a newly formed 20-member interdenominational group including the ELCA, American Baptist Churches, Presbyterian Church and Central Conference of American Rabbis, levels the following charges against each and every one of us.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 35.9 million people live in poverty in the U.S., 43 percent or 15.3 million living in deep poverty with cash flows equal to the poverty line.
In 2003, an additional 1.3 million people fell below the poverty line; 733,000 were children. Presently, 17.6 percent of all children in the U.S. live in poverty. The highest percentage on record, ever, in the U.S.
My brothers and sisters in Christ, while I stand before you guilty as charged, I choose no longer to be silent.
This Presidential election was a moral litmus test for social justice. And we failed.
Have we as Evangelicals lost our moral compass? And have we, worst of all, forgotten the greatest of all commandments?
Wade Vitalis
Shafer
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