This morning, March 24th, hundreds of Christian advocates are
converging on Capitol Hill as part of Ecumenical
Advocacy Days’ Lobby Day to bring a message to Congress promoting policies
that make for a more peaceful world, including efforts to end gun violence and
promote poverty reduction. The conference theme, Jesus Weeps, was centered on Luke 19:41-42, where Jesus weeps over Jerusalem for not knowing the things that make for peace.
Even if you didn’t get a chance to come to Ecumenical
Advocacy Days or our PC(USA) pre-event, Compassion, Peace and Justice Training
Day, you
can still join in Lobby Day. Click
here to send a message to your members of Congress that challenges
our culture of violence and seeks to build nonviolence and peace.
Our nation can and must do more to nurture a culture of
peace. We call for policies that:
- Reduce acquisition and use of guns for purposes that cause harm; and
- Rebalance funding priorities away from out-sized military spending to focus more resources on preventing violence and enhancing human security.
Neither Ecumenical Advocacy Days nor the PC(USA) Office of
Public Witness is advocating that all guns be banned. Rather, we
support legislation that will make it harder for people with hostile intentions
to buy guns and easier for the community stakeholders to adequately prevent
them from doing harm.
Further, Pentagon and war spending currently account for 57%
of the federal discretionary budget. This means that every other priority
included in the discretionary part of the budget must vie for tiny pieces of
the remaining 43%. Research has indicated that investing in conflict prevention
is 60 times more cost effective than intervening after violence has begun. We
can, if we choose, invest in a different way of relating and interacting with
our brothers and sisters here and around the world. We should be making budget
decisions that promote policies that reduce violence, including right sizing
military spending and focusing on efforts to end poverty and other causes of
violence.
To read more details about these policy recommendations, see
the Ecumenical
Advocacy Days Ask.
