“I was Hungry and You . . . Called your Congressman” is a good report from Kristin Rudolph over at the IRD blog. The article covers Bread for the World president David Beckmann’s comments to a group of “emergent Christians” in Washington D.C.
From the piece:
Beckmann lamented that “very little progress has been made against poverty and hunger” in the US over the past few decades. This, he explained, is because ”we haven’t had a president who’s made the effort” to address hunger since President Lyndon Johnson launched the “war on poverty” in the 1960s. Unfortunately, he said, every administration since Johnson has prioritized other issues ahead of solving poverty and hunger. Beckmann admitted: “The federal government can’t solve all the problems,” but it can “provide a framework” for others to follow. Further, he said “the states cannot do it [address poverty] without the federal government. The federal government has real power and authority and we have to use that.”
Rudolph ably addresses many of the problems in Beckmann’s argument. The religious left and its insatiable appetite for more government continues to neglect the underlying issues of poverty.
Bread for the World has been highlighted on the PowerBlog specifically by Jordan Ballor in “The Politics of Hunger.” The appetite to solve hunger will be unfulfilled for any organization where its primary mission is to look towards the federal government. Beckmann, perhaps unknowingly, has made one good point though, government is now such a bloated bureaucracy, it can no longer prioritize or achieve goals.
