ELCA Public Policy Directors Discuss Health, Government, Poverty

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- Directors of state public policy advocacy offices of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) held their annual meeting here Oct. 12-14 to catch up on recent developments in the church's advocacy efforts, plan, share experiences and engage in discussions on three major topics -- health care, church-state issues and poverty.
"The role of the state public policy directors is to take the statements and public policy positions developed by the ELCA -- through churchwide assembly resolutions, social statements and so on -- and to translate those into actual public policy on the state level," said the Rev. Daniel J. Schwick, director of the Lutheran Advocacy Network of Illinois. Schwick chaired the meeting's planning committee.
Kay S. Dowhower, director for advocacy, Division for Church in Society, Washington, D.C., coordinates the ELCA's work in the state offices, as well as in the Lutheran Office for Governmental Affairs, Washington, D.C., and the Lutheran Office for World Community, United Nations, New York.
The directors saw an unofficial first draft of a possible social statement on health and health care, which the Division for Church in Society is developing for the ELCA's consideration.
The directors were able to share their perspectives with those drafting the social statement, said Schwick. They also discussed ways "to mobilize folks in our respective states to study the draft and to give some feedback through the hearing process in which the ELCA engages," he said.
"The ELCA process for establishing social statements is a very deliberative process. It takes four years and two churchwide assemblies and whole slew of hearings across the country before the ELCA takes a major position crafted in a social statement," said Schwick. He said the social statement process is the way Lutherans participate in laying the groundwork for the church's public policy advocacy.
The directors worked through a series of church-and-state issues -- from President Bush's faith-based initiative and charitable choice to the possibility of states taxing religious organizations, said Schwick. "We had quite a bit of focus on both the merits and the hazards of church and state cooperation," he said.
Schwick said the directors kept coming back to a section of the ELCA Constitution that said, to achieve the purposes of the church, the ELCA will "work with civil authorities in areas of mutual endeavor, maintaining institutional separation of church and state in a relation of functional interaction."
State and federal governments are responding to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, while dealing with a downturn in the economy, said Schwick. "Money available to services for people in need -- for homeless people, for frail elderly people, people with disabilities -- will be more limited in the next year or two," he said.
The directors expressed concern about "what strategies our state governments will use to try to move resources around within a much smaller pie. We are afraid that human services will be one of those areas that will suffer the most in this new environment," said Schwick.
The Rev. E. Roy Riley, bishop of the ELCA's New Jersey Synod, Trenton, presented the work of the ELCA Conference of Bishops' standing committee on ministry among people in poverty. The ELCA is organized into 65 synods, each headed by a bishop. The Conference of Bishops includes the synod bishops, as well as the ELCA presiding bishop and secretary.
The bishops are working together and with their public policy directors to involve Lutherans in local and state settings "to address the concerns of poverty that continue to plague the United States," said Schwick.
The public policy advocacy offices lobby state governments on behalf of the ELCA, its social ministry organizations and the people they serve. Many of the ELCA's synods support offices directly.
These offices advocate for issues and not for or against particular candidates. About 32 percent of their work is directed to hunger-related causes such as food and nutrition, shelter and affordable housing, environmental stewardship and justice, employment and income, and access to preventative and primary health care.
The ELCA has public policy advocacy offices in the capitals of 18 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin. They work closely with ecumenical public policy offices in Montana and Virginia and with the federal public policy office of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.
The ELCA North Carolina Synod will open a public policy advocacy office in Raleigh next year. The South Carolina Synod and Lutheran Family Services in the Carolinas are also opening an office in Columbia. The ELCA is developing offices in Georgia and South Dakota. -- -- --
The Division for Church in Society maintains information about the state public policy advocacy offices at http://www.elca.org/dcs/state.html on the ELCA Web site.

For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or NEWS@ELCA.ORG
http://listserv.elca.org/archives/elcanews.html