wfn.org | NCC Offers free download of 'Love for Poor' booklet

["NCC News" <pjenks@ncccusa.org>]

NCC Releases "Love For the Poor" Booklet for Churches

Washington, D.C., September 19 -- Hurricane Katrina will perhaps forever be
remembered for having shined an unflattering spotlight on racial and class
disparities in the United States. In an effort to help the nation move
forward, the National Council of Churches USA is releasing, "Love for the
Poor: God's Love for the Poor and the Church's Witness to It," a 40-page
booklet that seeks to help churches engage more fully in prayer, reflection
and shared action on behalf of the poor.

"When we act to care for the poor, it is a way of bearing witness to the
Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ," said Ann Riggs, NCC's associate
general secretary for Faith & Order who prepared the text with five faculty
members from the Washington Theological Consortium. The other authors are
Shaun Casey and Beverly Mitchell, Wesley Theological Seminary; John Crossin,
OSFS, Washington Theological Consortium; Eric H. Crump, Gettysburg
Theological Seminary; and, A. Katherine Grieb, Virginia Theological Seminary.

"The Church has wisdom about what to do to address poverty, not just what to
feel about it," said Riggs. "Christians are not just to worry about the poor
but we must also have some concrete things to do together," she said.

According to NCC's President, Bishop Thomas L. Hoyt, Jr., and General
Secretary, Rev. Dr. Bob Edgar, "Love for the Poor" is both timely and urgent
following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. "The Gospel directs us to
show loving care for those among us who are poor, and the member churches of
the NCC USA and our partner Christian communities have much work ahead in
carrying out this principal Gospel task, and in urging one another and the
wider community of persons of goodwill in our nation to respond wisely and
generously to the needs of our day," they noted in the foreword of the
booklet.

R. Keelon Downton, a post-doctoral fellow in NCC's Faith & Order Office said,
"This booklet is important because it challenges the individualistic,
spiritualized conceptions of love and is a reminder that if as Christians, we
ignore the poor during our time, we are in fact breaking with historic
Christianity." 

Copies of "Love for the Poor" can be downloaded free of charge from NCC's
website, www.ncccusa.org or by contacting Friendship Press, 7820 Reading
Road, Cincinnati, Ohio 45237, 1-800-889-5733 or via email at
Rbray@gbgm-umc.org. The booklet will be expanded and printed in book form
next year by Paulist Press.

The National Council of Churches is composed of Protestant, Anglican,
Orthodox, historic African American and peace communions representing 45
million Christians in 100,000 local congregations in the United States.

CONTACT NCC News, Leslie Tune, 202/544-2350, ltune@ncccusa.org; Philip E.
Jenks, 212/870-2252, pjenks@ncccusa.org