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Determined Advocates Explore What It Means to Speak for Children

Episcopal News Service. May 8, 1998 [98-2166]

Ruth Nicastro, Canon of the Cathedral Center of St. Paul in Los Angeles and retired missioner for communications in the Diocese of Los Angeles

(ENS) A wide range of advocates involved in defending the nation's children -- especially the 14.5 million who live in poverty -- gathered March 24-25 at the Cathedral Center in the Diocese of Los Angeles to express support for each other and lay strategies for the future.

The participants came to learn from each other and to recommit and rededicate themselves to the arduous task of being "Our Church's Voice for Children."

"The average CEO in this country makes more in two days that one of his workers does in a year," Marian Wright Edelman told the group. "The average CEO of a Fortune 500 company makes $7.8 million per year -- that's more than 226 teachers. There are five times more billionaires in the United States today than there were 15 years ago -- and four million more poor children. What does this say about how well we value our children?"

Edelman is president and founder of the Children's Defense Fund, the nation's largest advocacy group for children, and was in Los Angeles for the organization's annual conference.

"Living in poverty puts children at risk more than any other factor (in their environment),"Edelman said. "Poverty kills," she added. "It kills children. We must excise the tumors of neglect, poverty and violence that are eating away at our nation's soul....If we do not, in this the richest nation on earth, we will have to answer for it to the God that calls us to care for the little ones."

The ultimate moral test

Canon George Regas, rector emeritus of All Saints Church in Pasadena, declared, "The ultimate moral test of a society is the kind of world it creates for its children. The kind of world we have created in America is scandalous to a moral people, and it breaks the heart of God. "

It is up to those within churches who think this is wrong to have the will and determination to change it, Regas said.

Regas is the founder and president of the Coalition for a Nonviolent City, which took shape in 1993 after three Pasadena youngsters were killed as they came home from Halloween trick-or-treating, and a fourth child was killed that night in retaliation. Regas convened a group from the city's churches to see what could be done. Over the years homicides in the city have been cut in half, city ordinances have banned the selling of guns and ammunition, and there is a growing demand for an end "to the insanity of guns" abroad in this country.

Every child is precious in God's sight, Regas reaffirmed. "We must never forget how desperately we need to know how much we are loved," he said. "Our own children need to hear that, the undernourished children of the world desperately cry out for it." The church, where" our love of God causes us to share the pains of God's children," is also the place where every child must hear how precious he or she is," he said.

Yet affirming the value of children is not enough, Regas asserted. It is also essential for well-meaning and well-intentioned church people set about effecting change in public policies that denigrate children's value and increase their pain. As followers of Jesus Christ, church people cannot accept the selfishness reflected in the public policies of the last two decades, he said, and that includes a welfare reform act that will push another million Children into poverty. "A country whose children are its poorest citizens loses every claim to greatness," Regas argued, challenging his listeners to remember that" government is not an alien, disembodied force. You and I are part of that society....(It is up to us) to transform the seedbeds out of which so much violence and despair have come....We must create a new society, one worthy of our children."

Strategies for child advocacy

Similarly stressing the necessity for church people to be the catalysts for social change, the Rev. Eileen Lindner, associate general secretary of the National Council of Churches." She delineated eight strategies for church-related child advocacy.

First, she said, the church must lend its full moral support to the children's cause as it has to other social causes; Second, it must put its infrastructure at the disposal of the children's cause as it did with hunger -- 265 million Christians in identifiable churches in the United States create a powerful force. Third, the church must direct and focus its advocacy, refuse to fight one another because health is one group's emphasis and education another -- "Liberals have a great tendency to form a firing squad in a circle" -- and support each other's efforts.

Fourth, Lindner said, it is up to the churches to educate people about children's poverty -- "get them to consider the security risk of 14.5 million impoverished children. "Fifth, the church must model child safety in its own institutions, which are too often deadly for children. Sixth, be watchful -- tell each other what's hurting our children, and why. Seventh, be prayerful -- ourselves, with each other, with our children. Finally, Lindner said, "We must create a climate in this country and among its churches that seeks a sanctuary for all children, a safe place inside the church and advocacy for a safe place outside....Never forget that the church was created by the most famous poor child in human history."

Watch the seeds grow

It is a long and difficult fight just to get people's attention about the needs of children, much less to get changes made, Edelman acknowledged, "but spiritual success doesn't depend on whether you win. You don't fight because you're going to win. You fight because it is right. Our faith and hope are what keeps moving us forward. And there have been some tremendous gains. We've built a movement with momentum. I just watch the seeds grow, and I'm encouraged."

In between the addresses and services, conferees met in small groups to plan how they would proceed in their work during the coming year. "Think big and act small," was their overriding conclusion. Each person was asked to make a covenant with God, shared with another person, about what he or she would do to be an active force for the betterment of children. These were placed in the offering basket at the Eucharist -- but not before being photocopied. The copies will be mailed back to their originators in six months -- a gentle reminder and encouragement. The presence of children and youth during the meeting underscored the urgency of the task.

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