Religious Leaders, Including ELCA Bishop, Hope To Influence G8

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The G8 Summit, underway this week in
Scotland, "is a challenge to the world's leaders to take decisive
action on behalf of those living in extreme poverty," according
to a statement from a forum in London attended by more than 35
religious leaders from throughout the world the last week of
June. Among them was the Rev. Peter Rogness, bishop of the Saint
Paul (Minn.) Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America (ELCA).
Rogness attended "The London Forum" at Lambeth Palace
representing the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, ELCA presiding bishop. The
Rev. David M. Beckmann, an ELCA pastor and president of the Bread
for the World, Washington, D.C., was also in the U.S. delegation.
The forum was hosted by the Most Rev. Rowan Williams,
archbishop of Canterbury, and co-chaired by the Rev. Jim Wallis,
director of Sojourners and Convener of Call to Renewal,
Washington, D.C., and the Rev. David Goodbourn, general
secretary, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland.
The G8 Summit this week in Gleneagles, Scotland, brings
together the presidents and prime ministers of eight of the
world's most industrialized nations -- host Great Britain,
Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United
States. Among the topics the leaders will discuss are global
poverty and debt relief for impoverished countries, many of which
are in Africa.
Before leaving for Great Britain last week, Rogness and the
other U.S. church leaders participated in a news conference at
the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and met with senior
White House advisors.
"As meetings go, this was both highly engaging and highly
significant," Rogness said after returning to the United States.
"It didn't take long for me to recognize that the power of my
presence was to be found in being one of three that filled out
the delegation beyond the Evangelicals, who were key to its
significance."
The fact that both White House officials and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown of Great Britain met
with the religious leaders was important, Rogness said.
"The religious community has the attention of world
leaders," he said. "Our challenge is to mobilize the attention
and moral will of our own people to bring to bear upon those who
make decisions on our behalf. The ball is in our court."

`Political and Moral Will' Needed to Fight Global Poverty,
Leaders Say
"There is no place for apathy in a world which sees 30,000
children die each day because of poverty-related conditions," the
religious leaders' statement said. "The Bible teaches that
whatever we do to the poorest we do also to Jesus. We believe God
judges nations by what they do to the poorest. This means all of
us in the prosperous world, governments, churches, the media and
populations stand under judgment, to the degree that we fail to
respond to such a situation with costly compassion and
generosity, so that we may help in God's name and by God's grace
to secure justice for the poor."
The religious leaders said, for the first time in history,
humanity has the information, knowledge, technology and resources
to bring "the worst" of global poverty virtually to an end.
"What is missing is sufficient political and moral will. As
church leaders from diverse Christian traditions, we recommit
ourselves and our faith communities to help generate that moral
will at this critical historical juncture," they said.
The religious leaders called on U.S. President George W.
Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the other G-8 leaders
"to provide courageous and costly political leadership by
providing the resources and making the structural changes
necessary to eradicate poverty."
The religious leaders noted the progress being made in some
of the world's most impoverished nations on governance issues and
how churches and other faith-based communities in those countries
are helping to sustain and support essential health and education
infrastructures.
The leaders called for the G8 leaders to focus on key goals
to reduce poverty, such as expanding debt cancellation to include
"all multilateral creditors and more impoverished and heavily
indebted nations." They called for "dramatic improvement in the
quantity and quality of aid" from the world's wealthiest nations
to the poorest countries to fight poverty, hunger and disease.
"We are also united in the call for good governance and an end to
the corruption that undermines all nations and people," the
leaders said.
Another goal the religious leaders focused on involved fair
trade policies. "The structural inequities and power imbalances
in trade rules that tilt toward the rich nations at the expense
of impoverished nations must be reformed so that people can earn
a sustainable income and the private sector can generate jobs and
wealth for the common good," they said.
"This is the agenda for young people and old together,"
statement said. "We are all too aware that it is the poor who pay
the greatest price of ecological degradation. It is women and
children who bear the disproportionate costs of poverty while
bearing also the greatest hope as agents for change. This is the
time for change. We trust that by the grace of God we may all
have the courage to change the course of history in favor of the
world's poorest."
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The full text of the religious leaders' statement following
The London Forum is at
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/releases/050629.htm
on the Web.

For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or news@elca.org
http://www.elca.org/news