wfn.org | Episcopal Church helped to develop debt relief bill

[Daphne Mack <dmack@dfms.org>]

For more information contact:
Episcopal News Service
Kathryn McCormick
Kmccormick@dfms.org
212/922-5383
http://www.ecusa.anglican.org/ens

99-084S

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Episcopal Church helped to develop debt relief bill

(ENS) The proposed Debt Relief for Poverty Reduction Act of 
1999, which received strong support from Presiding Bishop Frank 
T. Griswold during its June 15 House committee hearing, in fact 
received Episcopal Church input from its beginnings.

The church's Office of Government Relations in Washington, 
D.C., worked for more than a year with a coalition of other 
churches and development organizations to develop this 
legislation, said Tom Hart, director of the office.

He noted that, although Griswold did not appear at the 
hearing to deliver his three-page statement, he was quoted 
prominently during the hearing by House Banking and Financial 
Services Committee Chairman James Leach, an Iowa Republican who 
also is an Episcopalian.

Griswold was among the first of many church leaders to 
endorse the legislation that would provide debt relief to the 
world's poorest countries under arrangements that would encourage 
human development. This Episcopal Church effort for debt relief 
is part of the Jubilee 2000 worldwide movement inspired by 
biblical texts calling for a year in which land is allowed to lie 
fallow, slaves are set free, land is returned to its original 
owners and debts are cancelled. --Kathryn McCormick