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briefing

April 3, 1998	Contact:  Joretta Purdue, (202) 546-8722 Washington
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by United Methodist News Service

WASHINGTON -- America is in a "regressive revolution" that has the
nation retreating from basic human rights, a United Methodist clergyman
charged during a four-day forum.

"The regressive revolution that has swept across this nation's political
and religious life over the past 25 years must be understood, at least
in part, as a retreat from a full-bodied and whole-souled understanding
of human rights," said the Rev. Alan Geyer, a theologian, political
science professor and former editor of Christian Century.

Geyer gave the keynote address during the 28th annual Interfaith Public
Policy Briefing, which started March 29. Addressing the event's theme,
"Voices For Justice," Geyer and other speakers pinpointed the civil and
human rights challenges facing the United States.

Despite a tendency for people to view the United States as "an exemplar
of civil rights," the country is almost alone in failing to ratify
several international agreements in that area, Geyer said.

Domestically, the United States has also retreated from civil rights in
children's issues, the penal system, immigrants' concerns, health care
and other areas, he said.

A consensus has developed among major Christian, Jewish and Islamic
bodies that religious liberty is inseparably linked to all other human
rights, Geyer said.

"Religious liberty itself requires a whole view of humanity," he said.
Religious freedom is virtually meaningless if people cannot practice it
or enjoy the other liberties necessary to meet basic needs.

Aggressive efforts in the name of religious liberty can cause strife and
suffering if other human rights are disregarded, he warned.

"Idolatry of individualism" is the big challenge for the United States,
Geyer observed. "Money obsessions have shoved all matters of justice and
peacemaking to the margins." Churches, too, have downsized their justice
programs, he added.

The prevailing philosophy -- which he termed "the business mystique" --
is that business is good, but government is bad.

"While we Americans have a human rights-based government, we do not have
a human rights-based economy," he asserted.

The struggle for human rights continues everywhere in the world, Geyer
concluded. The case for human rights is a  "testimony of faith, of
conviction that every human life is infinitely precious, sacred, holy,
and that our common life with and for one another is a sacred covenant
of justice and loving kindness."

Rabbi Jack Luxenburg, senior rabbi at Temple Beth Ami in Rockville, Md.,
generally agreed with Geyer. However, he added that he believes that
human rights problems lie in people's "capacity to deny other persons
their humanity."

Differences are seen as barriers, rather than evidence of the infinite
Creator, he said.

The Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, senior minister of Foundry United Methodist
Church in Washington and an ethicist, said the key human rights question
is: "What kind of community are we to be?"

He spoke of the day-to-day problem of integrating religious conviction
with respect for the humanity of people who hold different views.

"Our diversity is either going to be an obstacle or a gift, and it needs
to be a gift," he declared.

"God has created us in common humanity as one family," Wogaman said.
"That is the grounding of our human rights concerns, and that is the
grounding of our identity as human beings."

Speakers at the briefing also addressed welfare-to-work programs.
Several said it is too soon to draw conclusions about their
effectiveness.

The welfare-to-work programs cannot be declared a success until they
survive a recession, said Rebecca Blank, a nominee to the White House
Council of Economic Advisors. 

For the past two years, the economy has been at its best point in more
than three decades and is favorable to job seekers in most parts of the
country, she noted.

Whether the jobs are stable and will lead to other possibilities is
unclear, she said.

She also posed the question of whether states are providing the support
systems necessary to maintain jobs.

"Single parents can't make it on the minimum wage" unless they have
supplemental services, said Anna Kondratas, a senior associate at the
Urban Institute. But she said Americans are concerned about equity, and
she hopes that states will use resources to assist all working poor,
regardless of whether they have been on welfare.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), a member of the House Banking and Financial
Services Committee, said that internationally, capitalism is where it
was in the United States when Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in
1933: unrestrained and without safety nets for the population.

Countries strive to attract capital by guaranteeing a high return. This
is accomplished, he said, through low wages, the frequent use of child
labor, low taxes that take away from infrastructure and education, no
unions, a stable government even if oppressive, and a lack of
environmental controls.

"Capitalism unadorned in the international setting does increase overall
production and exacerbates inequality," he declared. "It's global New
Deal time."

The United States and the International Monetary Fund should link aid to
countries' human rights record, Frank said. Indonesia, with its corrupt
and oppressive leadership, should be denied aid, he said. And Korea,
whose new president is a "human rights hero," should be helped, he said.

At the conclusion of the briefing, Acting Assistant Attorney General for
Civil Rights Bill Lann Lee, acknowledged the work of people of faith in
achieving civil rights laws. But the work is not done, he said.

The Fair Housing Act and the Hate Crimes Statute, passed after Martin
Luther King Jr.'s assassination 30 years ago, have not eliminated
discrimination or hate crimes, Lee said.

Enforcement is crucial, he said. He listed several indictments the Civil
Rights Division has achieved just in the 15 weeks since he was
appointed, including that of three men who terrorized Hispanics in an
Idaho town.

"We are not at the Promised Land," Lee said. However, he added, the laws
inspired by King's life and death are a road map out of the wilderness
of bitterness, petty squabbles and political bickering.
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