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Rev. David Beckmann, president of the Bread for the World Institute, addresses Morning Star Holy Church in Axton on Sunday. (Contributed photo) |
Monday, November 23, 2009
By GINNY WRAY - Bulletin Staff Writer
Ending hunger in this country and around the world will take a commitment on a personal level as well as the federal government level, according to the president of the Bread for the World Institute.
That was the message the Rev. David Beckmann, a Lutheran minister from Alexandria and president of Bread for the World Institute, brought to Morning Star Holy Church in Axton on Sunday.
“For Christians who care, because God does, it is not enough to support a local food bank, as important as that is. We have to let Congress know we care about” hunger on a larger scale, Beckmann said.
Fifth District U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Albemarle County, is a co-sponsor of foreign aid reform legislation to relieve hunger and poverty, but neither of Virginia’s senators, Jim Webb and Mark Warner, are co-sponsors, Beckmann said.
He urged those present Sunday to write to Webb and Warner and encourage them to support the legislation to help reduce hunger and poverty. Bread for the World is targeting Webb especially because he is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Beckmann said.
According to the Bread For the World Web site, the “Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act of 2009” would strengthen the capacity, transparency and accountability of United States’ foreign assistance programs to adapt and respond to challenges of the 21st century. It includes a statement on the reduction of poverty and hunger as U.S. policy.
Beckmann and Perriello were to appear together Sunday afternoon at Bethel United Way of the Cross Church in Danville.
“Perriello’s visit is powerful,” Beckmann said. “He cares about hunger and poverty” and through events such as Sunday’s, “he sees that local people care about it. To have a big church of voters who care about hunger and poverty is a way of reaffirming his own commitment to leadership on these issues.”
Bread for the World is a lobbying group with a “collective Christian voice” that urges the nation’s decision makers to end hunger, Beckmann said. It is a network of 100,000 people in 4,000 congregations, with leader activists in all the congressional districts, he said.
It targets the issue on the federal level because “if people learn how to change Congress, they can figure out how to change city council,” Beckmann said.
Morning Star Holy Church has been involved with Bread for the World for several years, and its pastor, the Rev. Tyler Millner, is one of the leader activists, Beckmann said.
Still, Beckmann said he was pleasantly surprised when he asked the congregation Sunday how many of them had written to their congressmen about hunger issues and about one-third of the 100 people present raised their hands. Typically, he said, nine out of 10 people have helped a food charity but only one out of 20 write to their legislators.
“Hunger is not distant” here, he said, explaining people’s concern about the issue. “People know what it is like to be hungry” or they have relatives or neighbors who have been hungry.
“They get it,” Beckmann said of his message on the need for reform. “So when we’re talking about how can we change things, they don’t think there are easy solutions. They get that if there is going to be change, they have to get government to do its part. … We need structural solutions, including the federal government.”
Hunger had declined for several decades when the country focused on it, such as in the 1960s and 1970s when there was economic growth and President Lyndon Johnson declared the war on poverty, Beckmann said.
But that has not been sustained, and with the recession hunger and poverty have increased, he said. Bread for the World is releasing a report today showing that one in five children is in a home that struggles to put food on the table, he said.
“Over the last decade, Bread for the World members in the country have helped double government support for hungry families through federal food programs such as food stamps, school lunch programs and WIC (the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children). Especially now in the recession, these programs are a lifeline for a lot of families,” Beckmann said. “All the food banks and soup kitchens in the country provide only one-tenth as much as those programs.”
That is why it is important to get the federal government involved in reform, Beckmann said.
“In my sermon this morning, I talked about how overcoming hunger needs to start with our own efforts to live responsibly, to get jobs and put food on the table,” he said. It also involves helping others in the community and getting the government to do its part, he said.
“When we make real progress against hunger, it is a combination of our own lives and leadership from the federal government,” he added. |
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