ONE Lutheran Campaign
The ONE Lutheran Campaign is a collaborative effort with
ONE to rally Lutherans to the cause of ending poverty in our world and achieving the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). ONE is a grassroots campaign backed by more than 2 million people who are committed to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa.
ONE holds world leaders to account for the commitments they've made to fight extreme poverty, and campaigns for better development policies, more effective aid and trade reform. ONE also supports greater democracy, accountability and transparency to ensure policies to beat poverty are implemented effectively. [Learn more about
The ONE Campaign.]
Get Involved in the ONE Lutheran Campaign!
Download and Order Resources
- ONE Lutheran Fact Sheet on Debt
- One Lutheran Fact Sheet on Trade
- ONE Faith Videos featuring Bishop Mark S. Hanson and other religious leaders. For a free copy of this DVD which includes three different videos, e-mail your mailing address to onelutheran@elca.org.
- ELCA Bishops Urge House to Pass AIDS Bill
We write as religious leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) with a special concern and passion for the well being of our brothers and sisters throughout the world).
- ONE Lutheran Sermon Starters
Including background on how they relate to ONE: The Campaign to Make Poverty History, scriptural support, stories, quotations, and hymn suggestions from Evangelical Lutheran Worship (ELW).
- "Called To Be a Public Church: ELCA Voting and Civic Participation Guide"
This guide features a global poverty issue brief that covers the MDGs.
Download | Order from ELCA Resources [800.638.3522 ext. 2580] Item number 9786000220617
- "God's Mission in the World: An Ecumenical Christian Study Guide on Global Poverty and the Millennium Development Goals"
Download | order from ELCA Resources [800.638.3522 ext. 2580]
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Articles, Fact Sheets and Background of the MDGs
- Statement of the Religious Working Group on Water
AUGUST 2007
- U.S. House Passes Fiscal Year 2008 Foreign Operations Appropriations with Historic Increases to Fight Poverty
JUNE 2007
- E-mail Congress: Secure $1 Billion Increase to Fight Poverty and AIDS
JANUARY 9, 2007
Statements
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"That All May Be One"A Joint Pastoral Letter and Reflection on Global Poverty and the Millennium Development Goals“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17: 20-21)
Brothers and Sisters:
Five years ago The Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) entered into a relationship of full communion. As the name of the agreement, Called to Common Mission, makes clear, the unity lived out between our two churches is for the sake of God’s mission in the world. The full flourishing of our world and the human family requires our urgent attention to the fight to end global poverty and build a more peaceful, secure world for all God’s people. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) provide the Church and the world with a clear path to do this.
Extreme poverty binds more than one billion of God’s children, depriving them of the abundant life God intends for all. The
MDGs are a set of eight targets for eradicating global poverty adopted by the 191 member states of the United Nations, including the United States, out of the conviction that humanity can build a better and safer world if it is willing to unite. The Goals reflect the reality that the resources, strategies, and knowledge to end global poverty exist if only the moral and political will can be built. Christians must play a key role building this will and holding governments accountable for promises made.
A world that meets the Goals would have 500 million fewer people living on less than a dollar a day, 70 percent of whom will be women. More than 400 million fewer people will go to bed hungry each night. The lives of 30 million children currently destined to die before their fifth birthday would be saved. The rise of HIV and AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis would be halted, and infection and death rates would begin to decline. The population of orphans in the world – currently numbered at more than 110 million – would begin to decline as well. In short, a world that has achieved the MDGs will be a world that more greatly reflects Christ’s prayer that all be one as he and the Father are one.
This joint pastoral letter comes as the ELCA and The Episcopal Church embark upon new shared commitment to the MDGs, particularly through our collaboration in ONE: The Campaign to Make Poverty History, a large and growing movement of more than 2.3 million Americans working for the end of global poverty. We hope that by reflecting together on the challenge of global poverty, our communities may be called into deeper conversation, collaboration, and advocacy on this urgent topic.
We invite you to consider the four reflections on global poverty that follow, each examining the church’s engagement with the Goals from a different perspective. They need not be read together and, in fact, time between each might invite deeper discernment of God’s calling to the Church at this moment in the life of the world.
As churches that stand in the shadow of the cross – knowing that in God’s kingdom death and sorrow always give way to resurrection and life – we pray that the Spirit may equip us through the deathless love of the Risen Christ for God’s mission of making all things new.
In Christ’s peace,
The Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church
The Rev. Mark S. Hanson
Presiding Bishop
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
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