The Circle of Protection is calling 2016 presidential candidates to “give focused attention to poverty in their campaigns.”
This alliance of Christian ministers who oppose budget cuts that negatively impact society’s most vulnerable groups will hold a press conference at 9 a.m. (ET) Jan. 15 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
The conference is designed to call attention to hunger and poverty in the U.S. and to ask presidential candidates to present their views on this topic in video format.
The video messages would then be disseminated to the general public in order to “elevate hunger and poverty as an election issue.”
“Budgets are moral documents, and how we reduce future deficits are historic and defining moral choices,” the organization maintains. “As Christian leaders, we urge Congress and the administration to give moral priority to programs that protect the life and dignity of poor and vulnerable people in these difficult times, our broken economy and our wounded world.”
One of the Circle of Protection signatories, Robert Parham, executive editor of EthicsDaily.com, said, “The biblical witness is abundantly clear about our moral responsibility to speak up for the poor and powerless. Asking the powerful–presidential candidates–to focus on lifting up to vulnerable is a straight forward initiative.”
Speakers at the press conference will be: David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World; Galen Carey, vice president of government relations for the National Association of Evangelicals; Sèkinah Hamlin, director of the Ecumenical Poverty Initiative; Carlos Malavè, executive director of Christian Churches Together; Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA; and Jim Wallis, president and founder of Sojourners.
Additional information can be found on the organization’s website and by following the Twitter hashtag #CircleofProtection.
