September 29, 2004

CHICAGO/GENEVA - Just a few days before their first televised debate, the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), has written an open letter to United States presidential nominees President George W. Bush and Senator John F. Kerry, urging them to change the tone and content of their campaigns in the run-up to elections in November.

In the letter made public yesterday, Hanson challenged the presidential nominees to answer questions on social concerns such as HIV/AIDS, the environment, the growing gap between wealthy and impoverished people, affordable housing, health care, wages and education.

While Hanson acknowledged that terrorism was an important concern, and terror had to be rejected, he pleaded with the Republican and Democrat nominees that they not "reduce all of the cries of suffering humanity to this single issue." The incumbent Bush and his Democratic challenger Kerry will hold three televised debates - September 30, October 8 and 13 - prior to the November 2 poll.

Hanson asked both candidates to "stop looking back 30 years and challenging each others military service" and instead "provide us with a vision for the next 30 years." He urged both campaigns to "help us see what responsibilities and possibilities come with the privilege of freedom and the abundance of prosperity."

The ELCA presiding bishop said this was not the time for the USA to withdraw from the world or seek to "dominate the world with our economic and military power. We need to hear what it means for our nation to be stewards of that power for the sake of peace and the well-being of all Gods children," he said. "It is time to stand with all who suffer in the world, all who live daily with the reality of violence, and it is time to work together so that all might have daily bread and experience justice, mercy and peace."

He reminded the Democratic and Republican nominees for President that while terrorism "haunts our times," there were other important concerns such as "hunger and poverty, corrupt and brutal political systems, harsh discrimination and social inequalities, civil wars, environmental degradation and epidemic diseases."

"These, too, are sources of insecurity and hopelessness for millions," Hanson said. "They do not belong in a world that is increasingly interconnected. To neglect or to be indifferent to these realities while countering terrorism is both morally wrong and shortsighted."

Hanson leads the nearly 5 million-member ELCA, a member church of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) since 1988. He is president of the Geneva-based LWF, representing around 65 million Lutherans worldwide.

Lutheran World Information