wfn.org | NCCCUSA HEAD ISSUES CHALLENGE: "END POVERTY AS WE KNOW IT"

[CAROL_FOUKE.parti@ecunet.org]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
Contact: Wendy McDowell, NCC, 212-870-2227
Internet: c/o carol_fouke.parti@ecunet.org

NCC8/13/96       FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

REAL CHALLENGE IS TO END "POVERTY AS WE KNOW IT,"
NCC GENERAL SECRETARY TELLS NOMINATING CONVENTIONS

 NEW YORK, Aug. 13 ---- The Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary
of the National Council of Churches (NCC), is telling Republicans and
Democrats alike that the real moral challenge is to "end poverty as we know
it."  Dr. Campbell is calling on both nominating conventions, their
nominees, Congress and voters to ask moral questions "about God's people -
especially those who are young, old, sick, strangers [or] vulnerable."

"Questions of faith are often impolitic questions," she says.  "For
example, our question is not 'Can we end welfare as we know it?"  People of
faith must put the question quite a different way: 'Can we end poverty as
we know it?'"  Stressing "God's vision" which "wills us to love all
people," Dr. Campbell says, "It is in service to that vision that we must
examine the questions of health care, day care, welfare, work, tax
reduction, peace and prosperity."

Dr. Campbell has pressed her point in statements in a variety of arenas,
including a July 18 news conference in Washington, D.C., a keynote address
Aug. 6 to Progressive National Baptist Convention women meeting in Kansas
City, Mo.,  and an Interfaith Alliance rally Aug. 11 in San Diego (a
similar rally is planned for the Friday before the Democratic National
Convention in Chicago).

She had called repeatedly on Congress to reject the proposed welfare reform
legislation and on President Clinton to veto the bill.

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