R08-08 A resolution concerning economic justice work in the Episcopal Church (to be submitted to the 2009 General Convention)

Resolved, that the Diocese of Southern Ohio, through its Deputation, support the submission of the following resolution to the 76th General Convention of The Episcopal Church, meeting in Anaheim, California, July 2009:

Resolved, the House of _______________ concurring, that the General Convention affirm and adopt the following actions as the policy and program for Economic Justice of The Episcopal Church during the next six years.

1. The Episcopal Church shall urge Episcopal congregations to continue to engage in the acts of mercy and justice in which many congregations and Jubilee Centers participate. The goal of such activities should be to find ways of ending the increasing disparity that exists between social classes in our world.

2. The Episcopal Church shall urge each Episcopal congregation to fully and wholly know its neighbors, to develop relationships with the disenfranchised in their community, knowing people by their names, and to form a local partnership with an agency that is working with people of little income or resources.

3. The Episcopal Church shall continue and deepen its advocacy and shall urge its dioceses and congregations (in concert with the Episcopal Public Policy Network) to advocate for legislation which provides adequate levels of support and opportunities for all people.

4. The Episcopal Church shall urge dioceses and congregations to promote and participate in church-based community organizing whereby people of the local community exercise the power of numbers and conviction to bring their needs to the attention and effective action by elected officials and governmental bodies.

5. The Episcopal Church shall support and participate in and shall urge dioceses and congregations to support and participate in various models through which low-income people can take control of their own lives and meet their own needs: models such as community development corporations, housing corporations and cooperatives, and small business development.

6. The Episcopal Church at every level shall be encouraged to make loans and deposits at a level of one to ten percent of its financial assets to community development financial institutions (community loan funds, community development banks and credit unions, and micro-loan business funds) to support local community development, and, where helpful and necessary, to create such a financial institution themselves.

7. The Episcopal Church shall develop at the national level a community development loan fund which is open to deposits from Episcopal dioceses, congregations, organizations and members with a goal of becoming a $24 million fund that will support the “community-controlled economic development programs of the disadvantaged” (quoted from the Economic Justice Resolution of the 1988 General Convention).

8. The Episcopal Church shall fund the Episcopal Network for Economic Justice at a level of $100,000 per year for the coming triennium so that it can continue and increase its mission of supporting and assisting economic justice work at every level of the Church and can help implement the ministry envisioned in this resolution.

Presented by:
The Rev. Richard Burnett, Trinity, Columbus, Chair, The Social Justice and Public Policy Network
Contact: r-burnett@trinitycolumbus.org

EXPLANATION
The House of Bishops, in their paper “Economic Justice and the Christian Conscience” published in October, 1987, called for a fundamental reordering of human values “if we are to have any hope of challenging society’s present enchantment with overweaning individualism, human avarice and social irresponsibility.” They went on to say that

"The moral imperative for Christians is not so much to offer simple answers to the paradox of a prosperity that generates poverty but rather to seek understanding of how the growth and extent of such poverty constitutes both a moral contradiction and a systemic social flaw that serves to undermine the very prosperity which helped create it. The special challenge to Christians is to commit themselves to a process of informing the conscience of society at large about this paradox and to suggest a variety of ways by which individual Christians in their personal activity and their church in its corporate life can witness."

On the basis of this statement the House of Bishops voted to encourage dioceses to bring forward to the 1988 General Convention resolutions for action on economic justice.

In response to the Bishops’ call, the Diocese of Michigan brought the resolution “Taking Action for Economic Justice” to the 1988 General Convention in Detroit, significantly impacting the justice ministry of the Episcopal Church at that time. The resolution was passed by the Convention, and many dioceses and parishes took up the banner. Some started community loan funds and credit unions or placed money in already existing investment vehicles. Others created housing development corporations to create low income housing throughout the country. Still others created business incubators and micro-enterprise funds for small business development.

As congregations and dioceses adopted this program, the program itself broadened in scope:

1) Church people involved in service ministries to the poor were often called to an advocacy ministry: to join their voices to those of the poor to demand increased and more effective government and agency services.

2) Congregations joined church-based community organizations through which neighborhood people developed the power to improve their neighborhoods and the services the government provides to them.

3) The Church participated in efforts to obtain an increase of the wages of lower-income workers through living wage ordinances in local communities, an increase of the minimum wage, and ultimately the unionization of low-income workers.

In doing this ministry, participants discovered that community investment and community development were not as easy as they sounded. They learned that they also needed public support and that they needed to do serious advocacy with state and national governments to get that support. They needed to overcome divisions based on race, class, ethnicity, urban, suburban and rural differences. They needed to reach for new levels of cooperation and collaboration. In 1996 they founded the Episcopal Network for Economic Justice to provide the leadership, technical assistance and support their work required.

Recently a call was raised for a revised and strengthened economic justice resolution to respond to the pervasive economic crisis, moral contradictions and systemic social flaws we are experiencing twenty years later. Our economy has not been kind to working people and lower income people. Changes in the world economy are literally changing the way we do business. Despite a rising productivity, the wages of working people have not risen for more than 20 years. Factories and businesses have been moved overseas, contributing to an untenable unemployment rate here at home. The safety net that was designed to provide lower income people with basic necessities while they prepared to join or rejoin the workforce has been seriously weakened. The mortgage foreclosure crisis has deeply challenged the recent trend of irresponsible and unregulated lending. We find ourselves mired in a financial crisis that includes both decreases in income and increases in prices, putting the squeeze on many Americans.

The Episcopal Network for Economic Justice (ENEJ) asks The Episcopal Church to enact a new economic justice resolution appropriate to this decade. A background paper Twenty Years Later, available at the website www.enej.org, recognizes the complexity of the current economic crisis. It describes seven current trends -- each with serious ethical implications -- that affect all of us: globalization of the economy, multinational corporations with limited local or national accountability, the Iraq/Afghanistan wars and the increase in militarization, immigration struggles, environmental degradation, reduction of government services, and the reduction of moderate and middle class income and wealth. The document calls upon the Church to respond both with its prophetic voice and with its action to the deepening economic crisis in which our nation and our world find themselves. The Church may be the only institution that can credibly challenge economic policies which are based solely on market solutions without consideration of the human and environmental costs of our decisions.

The ENEJ requests increased resources and increased commitment to assist the Church to rise to the challenge of the current economic crisis. This resolution particularly addresses the rise in poverty and the decrease of economic opportunity in this country.

The Episcopal Network for Economic Justice is a membership organization that arose out of the work that followed the Episcopal Church’s implementation of the 1988 “Michigan Plan”, Taking Action for Economic Justice. The ENEJ consists of individual, congregational and diocesan members. Members work both within the Church and in interfaith coalitions to promote economic justice in their respective communities. The ENEJ, with some support from the national Church, has provided educational materials, technical assistance, and ministry models to Episcopalians engaged in a broad array of economic justice activities. These activities include the formation of credit unions and other wealth-creating programs, organizing and advocating for economic justice, and supporting local worker justice campaigns. Educational materials of the ENEJ include the “Economic Justice How-To Manual” with units on family-friendly public policies, community investment, globalization and the plight of low-wage workers. There are also six educational modules available on various aspects of economic justice, prepared with the assistance of the United for a Fair Economy. The ENEJ materials place major emphasis on the theological and biblical foundation of economic justice ministry.

Impact on God’s vision in the Diocese of Southern Ohio: This resolution is a call to more active engagement in prophetic ministry. It has implications for Christian formation and discipleship and promotes our concern for social justice.

Budget Impact: The resolution calls on the national church to commit $100,000 per year to this ministry.

Program Impact: The program advances the work of the Social Justice/Public Policy Network and would strengthen the work of ECSF and parish outreach.