Friday, November 23, 2007

Another Inconvenient Truth...

There is another inconvenient truth that people ought to be concerned about in the next Presidential election, but probably won't be.

This week's edition of Newsweek is a tale of two columns. The first column is a political strategy written by Karl Rove. His column is on how to beat Hillary. He lays out a carefully thought out approach and makes sure to alert the reader that Hillary is, in his words, 'hard and brittle.' He tells the candidate that everyone knows Hillary, hint, hint, hint, and needs to portray himself as, well, not her. One ought never underestimate Karl Rove. No one has been a more efficient and effective character assassin as he.

The other column is written by Anna Quindlen and she makes people painfully aware of another inconvenient truth. Hunger and poverty are national problems----but not really issues.

She speaks of a soup kitchen line at a church in New York City. The church operates a soup kitchen every day and they feed close to 1000 people each and every day. It has become a struggle because food donations are down.

Actually, what she writes, is painfully real. In New Albany, Interfaith's food pantry has been hit hard and has suffered from a falling inventory. In the downtown a series of churches provide meals each day. At St. Marks, we have our soup kitchen on Saturdays at noon. We used to feed 35-40 people. We now consistently feed around 80. Cuts in government spending on feeding the poor are impacting not only those who are poor, but those who are committed to feeding the poor.

It has become fashionable for people of faith to speak about values issues. The values issues generally boil down to abortion and gay marriage.

Sadly, rarely does poverty get a mention. Rarely does hunger get a mention. Churches are failing, frankly, in making Jesus' highest ethical priority, their ethical priority.

Meanwhile, those looking to become President are laying out strategies of victory. They will chart out how to portray themselves. How do vilify their opponents. And what issues will play in Peoria...

Sadly, the inconvenient truth of hunger and poverty will go unaddressed and ultimately not care for.

1 comment:

Christine said...

And at a very basic level, it is so easy to feed those who need it. It's amazing that people aren't helping others - too much of the current state of mind?