Episcopalians Make Strong Showing at Impact Briefing
Episcopal News Service. April 13, 1989 [89069_Z]
Val Hymes
WASHINGTON, D. C. (DPS, Apr. 13) -- Nearly 100 Episcopal lay and clerical leaders, led by Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning, went to the nation's capital on April 2nd to hear what congressional leaders had to say about a number of issues of national concern to the Churches and to lend their voices to those of some 400 other Church leaders from some 24 national religious organizations. Many concerns were on the minds of the religious leaders who went to Washington. They wanted to hear and be heard on the subject of the Middle East peace talks and practical solutions for problems of the nation's poor, among many pressing issues.
The Episcopal and other religious leaders who went to Capitol Hill last week were there to attend the 17th annual briefing (April 25) sponsored by the National Impact Education Fund supported by Protestant, Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and Jewish groups, to provide them with the latest information and sticking points on national and international issues. Over the years, the popular event has come to be known as the Impact Briefing.
Long plenary sessions, issue workshops, working lunches and breakfasts, meetings with members of Congress, and receptions were packed into four exhausting and crowded days and evenings. There was almost total immersion in issues from the waste disposal crisis to the global economy, from the national deficit to military policy, from the homeless and the problems of people living with AIDS, to migrants and hate crime victims.
The Presiding Bishop and Mrs. Browning and Bishop Samir Kafity of Jerusalem met with senators and representatives at an early breakfast on April 3 to urge them to help replace the violence in the West Bank and Gaza with peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. Patti Browning attended a plenary session on the problem later the same day.
Even as they talked, President Bush, Secretary of State James Baker, and Capitol Hill leaders met with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to discuss the same issue.
Browning's Episcopal reception and dinner on the evening of April 3 honored Bishop Kafity and the Rt. Rev. Furman Stough, Senior Executive for Mission Planning at the Episcopal Church Center in New York.
The dinner also marked the first day in the United States for the Rt. Rev. John Brown, Bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf, Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East, who traveled 22 hours to be there. The delegates were also joined by the Rt. Rev. William Black, retired Bishop of Southern Ohio.
Browning talked to his guests about his recent trip to Nicaragua and Panama where he met and prayed with three other Anglican Primates, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of Southern Africa, Archbishop Michael Peers of Canada, and Archbishop Orland Lindsay of the Anglican Church of the Province of the West Indies, about peace in Central America. Browning said that he will travel in May and June to Mozambique and South Africa to try to help "strengthen the Church's solidarity in Africa," and that his wife, Patti, will go back to Jerusalem this spring with representatives from the nine provinces of the Episcopal Church to help spread the dialogue across this Church.
In his remarks, Browning called on the Episcopal delegates to Impact to keep the lines of communication open between Washington and their dioceses. "We have enormous concerns and enormous issues to address," he said. "Your part in your diocese in working for peace is tremendously important."
Browning said he was "deeply grateful" to Jerusalem's bishop for "his ministry and his witness at Lambeth."
"The witness this man makes, in terms of courage, in terms of risk, and in terms of peacemaking," Browning said, "is incredible and one we could barely comprehend. I pray God that this Church in every way possible may show its solidarity as his diocese works through this period in its history."
Responding to Browning's remarks, Kafity said, "We look to the Church to explain the crux of the matter, the truth, to the world. We look to you, to your congressmen, to your President, and to your bishops to help resolve this tragedy."
Several plenary sessions attacked the issue of the widening gap between the national budget and the deficit, the poor and the rich, between health care needs and costs, between the homeless and the housing stock, pesticide use and environmental health.
The underlying message from most speakers was that those economic and political issues must be examined as moral issues as well.
In her theological response to OMB official John Weicher. (who said the public had not defined its priorities between cutting Social Security benefits, programs for the poor, and the national deficit), Sister Amata Miller, scholar in residence for NETWORK, a Roman Catholic social justice lobby, said, "The premises of the budget debate must be challenged on moral grounds!"
She said, "People of faith have no choice but to look at what it means for people, particularly the poor and helpless"; she urged the delegates to "think holistically of the economic issues, by reflecting on our faith traditions, on the Scriptures, and what it means to be a human being."
To applause, Sister Amata asked, "What is there about us that we are unwilling to pay for what we expect for ourselves? Why are we so stingy with the poor? The mortgage for our second house should be on the table with housing assistance for the poor."
The future for affordable health care is bleak, and there is "no longer term care system that works" without bankrupting the elderly, the disabled, and people living with AIDS, the conferees were told.
Speakers at a workshop on AIDS discrimination urged support for the Americans with Disabilities Act, now before Congress, saying it would protect not only people living with AIDS, but those with any physical impairment, against discrimination in employment, public accommodations, public services, and housing.
Speakers on global hunger spoke of misplaced priorities. "How come your generosity is killing us?" asked Dr. Fantu Cheru, who once worked as a shepherd in his native Ethiopia and is now an American University professor of African studies.
"You can't squeeze an ounce of rice out of a tank," Cheru added, noting that African countries are getting four times more in military aid than in health funds from the West.
Those thoughts were echoed in a plenary session on alternatives in keeping the peace. In this session, both the conservative and liberal speakers said they were seeing more moderation and reasonable discussion on the armament issues; the Congressional Black Caucus is preparing a "Quality of Life Budget," said Democratic Congressman Ron Dellums (CA), "that in three years can save $108 billion dollars," mainly in arms cuts.
Toxic and solid waste and nuclear hazard discussions were dominated by suggestions for rethinking individual buying habits and for more contact with local and state governments and private industry for long-range planning.
It was not all advice -- there were some plaudits for people running programs, valuable programs, around the country.
The Rev. Robert J. Brooks, who, with Dr. Betty Coats runs the Episcopal Church's Washington Office, told them, "You are constituents. You have access to the members of Congress that Church officers can only dream about."
Members of Congress want to know how their constituents feel. "They have their feelers out," said Brooks, "trying to find out how people really feel."
"Religious groups have had a major impact on many fronts," said Ed Snyder, Friends Committee on National Legislation. He cited human rights in the Third World, Central America, nuclear deterrents, the poor, and other issues on which he felt religious groups had impact..
"Effective actions are grounded in the biblical concepts of reconciliation, justice, and peace," Brooks said. "We must be revolutionaries for the City of God. We must build kinder and more gentle communities with decent housing. We must replace greed with compassion."
"There is more than a breeze of reconciliation," Bishop Kafity told legislators, speaking of the stalemate between Palestinian representatives and Israel, at an early morning Capitol Hill breakfast meeting hosted by.Bishop Browning.
"But we are all troubled, " Kafity said, "because people forget there are two sides to this issues; that there are two systems. The fact that I am Palestinian is torture for me," he added; the harassment he receives and the suspicion he senses from the Israelis make his role as a peacemaker very difficult.
"Although the Israelis say they have a democracy," said Kafity, "we Palestinians are both present and absent. We are present for paying taxes, but absent when we want to own property."
Kafity urged the members of Congress to speak to the President and to Secretary of State James Baker about the need for a dialogue, for the recognition of a Palestinian state, for an "even-handed policy."
"We believe the cards are in the hands of this great country," Kafity said of the United States.
The response to Kafity's remarks by legislators who were present was positive, yet troubled.
"Sometimes I wonder if I will see peace before I leave Congress," said Rep. Mervyn M. Dymally (D-Cal).
"We care," said Wyoming Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R). "Tell me what you expect of me."
"We'll do our best," said Rhode Island Sen. Claiborne Pell (D), echoing the words of representatives G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery (DMiss) and Benjamin A. Gilman (R-NY), all of whom serve on or lead key congressional committees.
"We're all hoping for and looking for a greater understanding," said Browning, indicating that there is a desire among the Anglican Communion to play an active role in the search for peace throughout the world.
"After years of political deadlock, there is movement of more moderate and temperate tones," Dr. Charles Kimball, director of the Middle East Office of the National Council of Churches (NCC), told the interfaith participants.
However, it will not be easy, according to Kimball and Henry Siegman, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, because of a basic "suspicion" and "bitter history."
Said Kimball, "Christians sitting comfortably in the West should understand that people beset with insecurity for millenniums are slow to trust."
Siegman added, "We remember the days when many Church organizations were unmoved by Israel's plight...Only when we showed strength did the Churches find their voices."
The Israelis want peace as much as do the Palestinians," said Siegman, but "there is a sort of primal scream within every Israeli Jew and probably Jews everywhere, that you come to us with unclean hands, that what was done haunts each of us alive, and what was not done by you, does not haunt you. We do not trust you," said Siegman, but, he added, "that haunting spectre of the Holocaust should never hinder the dialogue."
Kimball said that he sees "a consensus emerging" in the Palestinian territories -- and in the new administration in Washington. He added that "the PLO and the Palestinians have pulled up a chair to the negotiating table... and the Soviet Union should be affirmed for its role in encouraging the PLO to recognize Israel."
It is a crucial time for the Churches to act, to press the super powers to work together and meet for talks, and to stop the "flooding of arms into the Middle East," said Kimball. "If ever the time is right, it is now," he added.
Patti, wife of the Presiding Bishop, and representatives of the nine provinces of the Episcopal Church have scheduled a mission to Jerusalem on (April 24 - May 2), a mission for peace and an end to the violence between the Israelis and Palestinians.
As she listened to a discussion of the issues on Capitol Hill, Patti Browning said she hoped her traveling companions would take back home "where they have credibility" the sense of urgency she feels, and a message that will galvanize others to speak to their representatives.
"Apparently we are the country that holds the key to end this tragedy," Patti Browning said. "We have to go there as Christians to make these leaders understand how we feel and what the reality of the situation is -- that little Jewish children and little Palestinian children are growing up in hate and violence."
Patti Browning called the congressional breakfast hosted by the Presiding Bishop and his Washington representatives "the beginning of something, an opportunity for those in key positions to hear the Church's position."
Mrs. Browning said she has found that the perception of the Middle East is not of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish people, but of "terrorists."
Patti Browning, who first visited Jerusalem in 1962, and has returned many times, said, "We are not advocates of a policy or a principle. We are advocates for truth, peace, and justice."