wfn.org | UCC Studies Economic Justice issues at Providence General Synod

[George Conklin <gconklin@wfn.org>]

United Church of Christ
Office of Communication
700 Prospect Ave.
Cleveland, OH 44115
contact: Barbara Powell
phone: 216-736-2222
email: powellb@ucc.org
http://www.ucc.org

Economic Justice summit raises conscience

By Nozomi Ikuta

Providence - July 3, 1999 --Some 150 UCC members from across the country took
part in a conference June 30 on economic justice, “Living Faithfully, Acting
Justly -- locating ourselves in a global economy.” The meeting was sponsored by
the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries Division of the American
Missionary Association, Office for Church in Society, Commission for Racial
Justice, United Church Board for World Ministries, Coordinating Center for
Women in Church and Society, and Office of Communication. 

“According to Kofi Annan’s Astonishing Facts!, ‘the three riches people in the
world have assets that exceed the combined gross domestic of the 48 lest
developed countries,’” said Bernice Powell Jackson, executive director of the
Commission for Racial Justice, who challenged participants to reflect on this
reality in light of Jesus’ counsel to the rich man to sell all his possessions.

Keynote speaker Dr. Radhika Balakrishnan of Marymount Manhattan College pointed
out that the richest 1 percent of people in the United States own 46 percent of
the wealth, the next 9 percent own 36 percent of the wealth, and the remaining
90 percent own 18 percent of the wealth in the United States. “The gap between
the rich and poor is continuing to grow because the global economy lets
companies hire the lowest wage workers from around the world,” she said. “We
need an alternative value system to the one based on consumerism and
accumulation.”

The Rev. Dr. Leon Spencer, Executive Director of the Washington Office on
Africa, concurred. “Raw market forces keep us from seeking the common good,” he
said. 

“We see here the ‘theology of the expendable — in our country and our world,”
said Jackson.  “This is not a new theology. It is the underpinning of
capitalism. What does it mean when whole groups of people, created in the image
of God, are expendable?” 

Jackson called for the cancellation of international debt as a way to begin the
process of restitution for the wealth which has been extracted from Africa and
other oppressed regions of the world.

Lead panelist Kim Bobo of Good News UCC in Chicago and Executive Director
of the
Interfaith Committee for Workers Justice highlighted labor issues as one way
people of faith in the UCC can get involved. “Everyone knows that in this
country, everyone has the right to organize,” Bobo said.  “But everyone also
knows that if you try to organize a union, you’ll get fired ... because labor
laws are violated so frequently.”

Bobo insisted that people of faith can make a difference. 

“In Minnesota, a new religion-and-labor group heard about a hotel whose new
management refused to recognize the workers’ contract with the previous
management,” said Bobo. “The group decided to pray — in the hotel lobby. They
prayed on Monday. Another group came and prayed there on Tuesday. Yet another
group came and prayed there on Wednesday. By Thursday, the hotel management was
on the phone asking the group to stop praying.” 

Participants left the summit with a broadened sense of the issues involved in
living faithfully and acting justly in a global economy.

“This has been a real consciousness-raising opportunity for me,” said Barbara
Nordlund, a participant from the Scottsdale Congregational UCC in Arizona, “to
know that UCC churches have so many resources to help them be advocates for the
disenfranchised.”