Moral and Religious Reasoning in Political Engagement: Learning from Faith Leaders

Public Health Liberation seeks to centrally situate philosophy in public health discourse on accelerating equity. Philosophy is broadly defined as a worldview based on moral, cultural, and religious teachings and standards by which to make sound judgments and to engage in critical analysis. PHL encourages a clear articulation of relevant values as part of a general strategy to accelerate health equity and encourage order in the Public Health Economy. Ethical and religious beliefs benefit public health discourse.

First, they provide transparency and accountability. Because public health realism posits that agents or classes of agents can engage in false speech and actions, placing importance on an ethical framework works to advance alignment of values with the remaining four pillars of PHL - theory, practice, research, and training. As discussed in our inaugural manuscript, “Agents' speech and conduct cannot alone be a reliable source for ascertaining their true self-interest.” When evaluating the ethics of agents’ conduct, agents’ stated values become an invaluable tool for accountability. While so-called values can be misleading, agents’ performance in the public health economy can help to infer their authenticity.

Second, a clearly articulated set of ethics and values encourages wholeness or internal consistency across agents’ conduct. Public health realism recognizes that a barrier to health equity is that, “Each agent can have contradictions and conflicts in moralities and issues.” PHL discourages duplicity and covering. PHL theorizes that eliminating within-agent capacity to engage in contradictory policies can accelerate health equity in the Public Health Economy.

Third, the central tenet of values-driven reasoning is intended to convey complexity and deep thinking in public health discourse. A narrow list of values or ill-conceived “culture” of a group of people risk reducing analytical insight. Such reductionism should be avoided, especially given the hegemonic or outsider role over defining community beliefs and values. Rather, the philosophical demand of this PHL tenet should rely on a highly qualitative and culturally relevant approach, such as our discussion below on faith leaders. Cultural immersion and authenticity are paramount, meaning that members from that community are best positioned to define what counts from their community’s perspective. For example, authors of the inaugural PHL manuscript articulated a worldview derived from emancipatory writings due to being descendants of US enslaved families, Black feminism in community health, and liberation. Their manuscript argued, “We are told in Romans 12:2, ‘Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect’.” The authors also borrowed from sociology, political theory, and environmental health. Views that individual racial groups share a monolithic worldview should be avoided.

We have highlighted statements from faith leaders from the Poor People’s Campaign. These statements were delivered five months ago during a congressional briefing in Washington, DC to encourage equity in US society. We encourage readers to view the video here. Our intent is to highlight the intersection of faith and social justice.

Jewish Faith
“2600 years ago, the prophet Isaiah walked into the capital in Jerusalem and said your rulers are rebels - partners with thieves. They chase after bribes, the widow, and the orphans. Cause does not come before them. We see what happens in Congress and state legislatures and city and county, councils all over. Bribes come in, policy violence comes out. Congress is always so quick to serve the money and so slow to serve the people. It says in Deuteronomy, “Do not take a bribe because bribes blind the eyes of the wise and twist the words of the righteous.”

Congress doesn't see us. Congress doesn't hear us because if Congress did they would do something. We need Congress, we need you to stop being blinded by systemic bribery. We need Congress to see us to hear us and to love us. Perhaps the most central and foundational blessing in the entire Hebrew Bible is the priestly blessing. It asks that God turned God's face toward us with Grace and ask that God's face shine upon us and be merciful to us and make peace. As is noted again and again over thousands of years by every Rabbi everywhere in the world, God's face will only turn to us when we turn toward God and when we turn toward each other. You  cannot turn toward God while turning toward Idols of money and power. You cannot dance around the golden calf and serve the People.

We need Congress to turn away from the Chamber of Commerce and to love the God who declares liberty and jubilee for all the people. We need Congress to turn away from Lockheed and Boeing and War profiteers who plunder our budgets to make war. We need you to turn toward the God who makes peace and loves Justice. We need you to turn away from the hordes of lobbyists and their billionaire backers who every day sacrifice our children on altars of greed and power. We need you to turn toward The God Who commands us to pursue justice so that you may live stop operating by the wrong Golden Rule. Instead of the guy with the gold makes the rules, we need to operate by love your neighbor like you love yourself. We need Congress to legislate like it loves the people.

Christian
“Greetings, my name is Reverend Neal and I stand here on behalf of the 46 million poor and low-income people. I sadly admit that includes for 1.4 million children in the state of Georgia and the varied Faith leaders many represented here today that diligently serve them daily. The Bible says that when the prophet Nehemiah a leader of the Jewish Exile came back to lead the beginning of rebuilding the wall he became extremely angry as they completed and heard the outcrying complaints of his people. What was the outcry that caused his anger, hurt, resentment, and fear in his people? It was their leaders taking advantage of his people.

It was the leaders treating them as if they weren't people at all. It was the leaders causing them pain, not doing the things necessary to take care of them as if they were people at all. In the state of Georgia, we currently rank 34th in all states in the quality of child education. 65 percent of fourth graders are not proficient in reading. 69 percent of 8th graders are not proficient in math 1.7 million people benefit from SNAP. 580,000 children live in food insecure households. Every day children go hungry. The free lunch program has ended. We're not even the first semester in and children are already getting bagged lunches because they can't get a free hot lunch anymore. It is time for you to bring a vote on a living wage, universal health care, voting rights, and reinstating and expanding policies that will help to lift millions of our families out of poverty.

Episcopal
I serve as the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Washington, which encompasses the District of Columbia and whose residents including me yet to have full representation in these Chambers and four of the most populous counties in Maryland. As you know, within this region are some of the most affluent communities in the nation and some of the poorest children who attend the finest schools that money can buy [while] others consigned to those understaffed and woefully under-resourced families that live in luxury. Others live in rest infested apartments or in the rural areas and homes with no running water and electricity. This region boasts of some of the finest restaurants and grocery stores that I dare say every one of us have enjoyed. Yet a growing number of faith communities have ministries that are burgeoning at the seams, trying to address food insecurity. In one such program, out of one of our churches 1100 families depend on weekly distributions of food. In another, in what appears to be an affluent neighborhood, hundreds of people line up every week for an allotment of two grocery bags. Most of these people who seek assistance work two to three jobs and do not earn a living wage. Now every day as Reverend Barber said, we have to decide with whom we will stand in the communities we serve. I know that you know that too. I know that you know that this economic disparity which has shockingly increased over our lifetimes is the root cause of nearly every one of our social ills that we put Band-Aids on trying to address. The result of public policy decisions made under the undue influence of those who stand to benefit most from the disparities we all know and we are not naïve. Those who benefit from these policies as they are would prefer and work very hard to keep those consigned to poverty silenced and invisible, but this movement exists so that they will not be silent. Neither are we. Every day we have to decide whom we will serve and we are here simply to remind you that you do too -  to remind you of your sacred duties elected officials of this democracy and specifically we are here to speak in one voice asking you to take the positions that have been so eloquently described by my colleagues here in this chamber.

Christian Methodist Episcopal
The prophet Zechariah says, “Do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor. Let none of you devise evil against another in your heart. What you've heard thus far from this category of faith leaders and what you will hear after me must not be heard or thought of as merely political discourse, hermeneutical or theological excursus. Our collective aim is to embolden you with a basis of motivation for action. We've come to say America must adopt a holistic commitment to social economic and political justice. For far too long people living in the richest country in the world have been forced to work void of living wages. The right to vote, which was won by blood, sweat, and tears has been eroded. Those policies, which will lift millions of families out of poverty, have not been enacted. We've come to say to you – our lawmakers – it is your responsibility. You, by virtue of your offices, have been gifted and privileged by the voters with the opportunity the purse and the power to affirm all persons dignity the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We've come to advocate for our brothers and sisters who experience firsthand the brutal weight of American Injustice. We've come bearing their concerns, their longings, and their pleadings. These demands must become the bedrock for an America where life liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not just a phrase on the pages of the Declaration of Independence. No, these unalienable rights must truly become the rights given by the Creator to all Americans, so we've come here across the width and breadth of this nation to say we stand for solidarity. We stand for our brothers and sisters. What is our aim? Our aim is that everybody will be able to say this is my country land of my birth. This is my country grandest on Earth. We want to say it. We pledge our allegiance to America. Help us say that.

Sojourners
I'm the president of Sojourners we're a 50-year-old peace and justice organization work with Christians of all stripes and people of faith and conscience to inspire and mobilize people to put their faith in action for social justice. We're a proud partner of the Poor People's Campaign. I have to admit I first do want to thank you and other members of Congress for some of the progress that we saw particularly around climate change and health care with the Inflation Reduction Act but we are here in a posture of lament. Lament is a major part of our faith tradition. A third of the Psalms are Psalms of Lament. We are here to lament the politics of delay and denial because the politics of the delay is the politics that leads to unnecessary suffering, that leads to unnecessary Injustice, and even to death itself. Universal access to child care and Pre-K, paid family medical leave, renewing and expanding the child tax credit, increasing housing assistance, a $15 living wage and so many other pro-family not the fake pro-family but the real pro-family policies and common good policies are desperately needed right now.

We also know that there is an imperative not just to protect the sacred right to vote but to prevent election subversion. We're grateful that many of you are debating how to reform the Electoral Count Act that's important but it is not nearly enough. Now, is the time to pass legislation to protect the right to vote and to prevent election subversion. What could be more important than the very survival of our democracy itself so I want to be crystal clear that what we are talking about a living wage, voting rights, programs of social uplift, they are a Matthew 25 agenda. They are an Isaiah 58 agenda. They are a Micah 6:8 agenda. Yes, we believe in Imago Dei. If we are followers of a faith that said every people, person is made in the likeness of image of God that means that every people's needs are Holy, so we will continue to demand that Congress treats all people as holy including and particularly the 140 million people that are living in poverty and that are low wealth. Let us work together to affirm a day let us treat people's needs as holy and treat their right to vote holy as well.

National Council of Churches
We are a 67-year-old organization comprising 37 denominations, 30 million people representing 100 000 congregations. Hear the word of the Lord, Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves - for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly defend the rights of the poor. The National Council of churches heeds the call of scripture to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. In the last several years the failure of Congress to renew and extend various legislation has made life harder for individuals and families with children. Children and families are vulnerable. They are vulnerable to poverty, vulnerable due to a lack of proper health care and they are vulnerable due to the lack of adequate resources.

Congress must act now we implore you to enact positive change for the fate of millions of children. Hear the word of the Lord. If anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need yet closes his heart against them how can you say God's love abide in you? Let us not love in word or talk but indeed and in truth. Have you met Michael. Michael is the third grade student in elementary school down the street from the church that I pastored in Baltimore City. Micah would get himself up early in the morning to go to school because that's where his two main meals are and when there is no school there is no meal. Hear the word of the Lord, “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord he will repay him for his deed.” Have you met Carlos and Irma? They stand at the same traffic stop with their infant begging for enough money to spend the night in a motel so they don't have to spend the night under the bridge. Their job disappeared with COVID and their landlord put them out. Have you met Mamie? Mamie, her polling place was moved further away from where she lives. She no longer drives and she's worried about getting to the new polling place standing in line for long hours without food or water so she can take her medication on time. There is power to disrupt poverty for millions of Americans in this room.

There is power in this room to increase their burden. Which path will you take? There is power in this room to disrupt voter suppression and make sure that the elections are safe and fair. There's also power in this room to increase toxic divisive behavior. There is power in this room to be generous to change the narrative and set an example to stand for and stand with those who are suffering from racism, discrimination, and those who have been marginalized, excluded, and exploited by others who have been treated as less than human instead of being embraced as siblings and people of equal dignity and worth. There is power in this room and an opportunity to be a champion of living wage, fair voting laws, children and vulnerable populations. Lord, when did we see you hungry? When did we see you thirsty? When did we see you in prison? When did we see you living out of your car? When did we see you going to church without shoes? When did we see you searching through garbage for food to eat because the school is closed? When did we see you working two or three jobs just to make up one whole paycheck. “As you've done it unto the least of these, you've done it unto me.” The choice is yours. Which way will you use your power? Do what is right, not what is expedient or politics.