July 7, 2005

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."

The full text of the religious leaders' statement following The London Forum is at http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/releases/050629.htm on the Web.

ELCA News Service