Prayer vigil planned on federal budget

Prayer vigil planned on federal budget

Ecumenical Advocacy Days March 25-28
By Wayne Rhodes, Editor, Faith in Action

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United Methodist General Board of Church & Society (GBCS) is involved in presentations during the 9th annual Ecumenical Advocacy Days conference for global peace with justice March 25-28. Theme for this year’s event, which starts Friday and ends with visits to members of Congress on Monday, is "Development, Security & Economic Justice: What's Gender Got to Do with It?"

Besides workshops and speakers on advocacy, time has been allotted on Saturday, March 26, for members of denominations to meet over lunch from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m.

A prayer vigil on Capitol Hill is being planned for noon on Monday. Its focus is to implore Congress not to balance the budget on the backs of women and children. Ecumenical Advocacy Days attendees will receive copies of prayers in advance of the vigil.

Maternal health

Members of GBCS’s staff will facilitate a workshop “Maternal Health & Millennium Development Goal #5: How can the church respond?” on Saturday at 10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. The workshop’s featured presenter is Beatrice Gbanga, medical coordinator for the United Methodist Sierra Leone Conference. GBCS staff members Katey Zeh, coordinator of the agency’s Healthy Families, Healthy Planet initiative, and Linda Bales Todd, director of its Louise & Hugh Moore Population Project, will take prominent roles in the workshop.

United Nations Millennium Development Goal #5 to improve maternal health and reduce maternal mortality by 75% is lagging behind, according to the workshop’s description. This workshop will focus on the barriers to achieving better maternal health worldwide and how churches are responding. Participants will hear maternal health stories from the Global South and learn ways to advocate for maternal health in their congregations and denominations.

Gender, Race & Mass Incarceration

GBCS is co-sponsoring a workshop “Gender, Race & Mass Incarceration” that will be Saturday, 2:45 to 4:15 p.m.

African-American women make up the fastest-growing population in the U.S. prison system, which has grown by 600% in the past 30 years. Unjust sentencing policies combined with racial profiling have essentially created a mass incarceration among African Americans. The workshop will examine mass incarceration's impact, and will highlight injustices the U.S. system imposes on too many women of color.

Presenters Kemba Smith Pradia, the Rev. Sala Nolan Gonzalez and Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz will discuss theological and policy justifications for adopting an alternative model, centering on Restorative Justice. A photographic exhibit, “What Will Happen to Me? When a Parent is In Prison” by Howard Zehr and Amstutz will accompany the workshop.

Gonzales, is minister for Criminal Justice & Human Rights, Justice & Witness Ministries, United Church of Christ. Her portfolio addresses human rights and criminal justice issues, including political imprisonment, the death penalty, youth incarceration, reentry from prison to community, and patterns of systemic injustice. Amstutz is co-director of the Office on Crime & Justice for Mennonite Central Committee. She has co-authored a curriculum “Victim Offender Conferencing in Pennsylvania’s Juvenile Justice System,” The Little Book of Restorative Discipline for Schools, and is author of The Little Book of Victim Offender Conferencing.

Pradia received nationwide attention when President Clinton granted her clemency after serving 6.5 years of a 24.5-year sentence as a first-time, non-violent drug offender. Her story has been featured on CNN, Nightline, Court TV, The Early Morning Show and Donahue. She also has been featured in publications such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, Glamour, andPeople.

Biblical witness and shared traditions

More than 700 persons of faith from across the country will visit Capitol Hill for Ecumenical Advocacy Days. Policy makers, expert speakers and representatives from global regions will join church leaders and grassroots activists will lift up vital issues of U.S. and global economic justice, safety and security, and sustainable development.

Ecumenical Advocacy Days is a movement of Christian denominations and more than 40 recognized partners and allies. It is grounded in biblical witness and shared traditions of justice, peace and the integrity of creation. Its goal, through worship, theological reflection and opportunities for learning and witness, is to strengthen the Christian voice of citizens mobilized for advocacy on a wide variety of U.S. domestic and international policy issues.

Registration and more information, such as other speakers and schedule of events, is at Ecumenical Advocacy Days. Student scholarships are available.

Date: 3/9/2011
©2011

Take Action--Oppose Cutting International Family Planning from the 2011 Budget

Your help is needed today! Rep. Latta (R-OH) has proposed an amendment that would eliminate all international family planning funding from the 2011 budget. This extreme measure would would be devastating to the health of women, children, and families around the world. Family planning is a critical, cost-effective health intervention that saves the lives of women and young children.

Take Action!

The House of Representatives is expected to vote on this amendment this week. Contact your representative today to oppose this extreme amendment. The House of Representatives Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.

Here's what to say:

• Family planning saves lives. This cut would result in 12,000 more maternal deaths and 87,000 more infant deaths.
• Family planning is cost-effective. It costs about $2/year to provide a woman with family planning, but the direct and indirect benefits are countless. Women's economic contributions are critical for economic stability in a country.
  
• Family planning is an issue people of faith care about. The United Methodist Church has an historic, strong stance in support of women's health and family planning.

Please share this information with your congregations and networks. Contact Healthy Families, Healthy Planet coordinator Katey Zeh (kateyzeh@gmail.com) with any questions.

Maternal Health Workshop at Ecumenical Advocacy Days

Healthy Families, Healthy Planet will be hosting a workshop on maternal health at the 9th annual Ecumenical Advocacy Days (EAD), which will take place in Washington, DC on March 25-28, 2011. Sponsored by the ecumenical Christian community, EAD brings advocates together to mobilize for action on Capitol Hill. The theme of this year's conference is Development, Security & Economic Justice: What’s Gender Got to Do with It?

Maternal health is crucial component of development. Motherhood is dangerous in the developing world, where every 90 seconds a woman dies of complications during pregnancy or childbirth. That's nearly a thousand women dying every single day. But these deaths are not inevitable. Most of them could be prevented if all women had access to comprehensive medical care and family planning services. Millennium Development Goal #5—to improve maternal health and reduce maternal mortality by 75%--is lagging behind. Both the immediate and rippling effects of these deaths impact not only the health of families, but also the economic health of communities that lose the contributions of these women.

Katey Zeh, coordinator of Healthy Families, Healthy Planet, and Linda Bales Todd, director of the Louise & Hugh Moore Population Project for the General Board of Church & Society, will co-lead the workshop,"Maternal Health and Millennium Development Goal 5: How Can the Church Respond?" The focus will be on identifying the barriers to achieving better maternal health worldwide and how churches are responding. Participants will hear maternal health stories from the Global South and learn ways to advocate for maternal health in their congregations and denominations.

To learn more about Ecumenical Advocacy Days and to register, please visit the EAD website.

Global Maternal Health Writing Contest

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a nonprofit that sponsors and produces award-winning international journalism, launched a new interactive site focused on maternal mortality issues, Dying for Life. The Center is partnering with the writers' site Helium to host a writing contest about maternal health. The deadline for the Global Maternal Health Writing Contest is Thursday June 24. The Pulitzer Center Global Issues/Citizen Voices Award in this contest will be announced on Wednesday July 7.

A Mother's Day Homily

Healthy Mothers, Healthy Families, Healthy Planet

Katey Zeh

May 5, 2010

General Board of Church & Society

A reading from the Gospel of John 10:10: “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

“These are free?!” I heard this hundreds of times last week at the United Methodist Women’s Assembly. Literally thousands of women walked by my booth in the exhibit hall, some who merely wanted a piece of free candy or to add a Healthy Families, Healthy Planet button to their pin collection. They were very welcome to do so. Some genuinely wanted to talk about the state of the world for mothers. But many of them were there for these—our original “Healthy Mother’s Day cards,” an idea of mine that Michelle helped make a truly beautiful reality. Women would admire one of the cards, and ask “How much is this?” I was delighted to tell them that there was no charge and to please take one. They were shocked! Some would ask if they could make a donation, and I would say, ‘Would you write your member of Congress about the importance of family planning?”

But not everyone was so eager to take a card. Many of the women would say sadly, “But I don’t have a mother.” My general response was to ask them to think more broadly—did they have daughters, daughters-in-law, sisters, church members? “Oh yes, I think I’ll take one.” It was such fun, handing out these beautiful cards and thinking that on this Mother’s Day women all over the country will be getting “Healthy Mother’s Day” cards and perhaps for just a moment will be thinking of women for whom it is not a safe, healthy world to be a mother.

But that response haunted me, “I don’t have a mother.” I heard this over and over, some women who clearly lost their mom years ago. But for others the wound was fresh. It pained them to say it. I felt their abandonment, their deep sense of loss, even their anger. Even though I’ve been working on the issue of maternal mortality for months, it had not struck me in this deep way until then. I began to question the cards. Were they insensitive? These women were here for joy, and here I was, reminding them of what they didn’t have.

In the face of pain, the impulse to flee is a strong one, isn’t it? I hated the idea that something as beautiful as this card could cause so much pain. And rather than experience the discomfort of meeting these women in their grief, there was part of me that really wanted to get rid of the source of it.

I don’t have a mother. More than 1 million children this year will join that wailing chorus of the motherless. Their mothers will die giving birth, usually from preventable causes, and these children will have to face the harsh reality of this cruel world without her protection and love, for many with no memory of her at all.

“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.” That song kept running through my head.

I remember the first time I heard the image of God as a Mother. It made me uncomfortable. Even though I was a full-blown feminist at that point, I couldn’t get past the masculine language for God. It wasn’t until I began reading the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich and her understanding of Christ as mother that it began to really resonate with me. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. What more beautifully embodies the sacrament of the Eucharist, of Christ’s offering of himself, than of a mother giving birth, her giving of her blood to bring new life? Of a mother nursing her infant, sharing of her own body to nourish and protect that life? “Take and eat, this is my body, given for you.”

We ought to be in awe of mothers. Few things in this world are as sacred as this.

In my thinking about maternal health and the church, I initially had trouble with connecting it biblically, perhaps because I was looking for something more literal. Mothers in the bible are often nameless and for the most part disregarded, known only for the men whom they gave birth to. But as I began to think of women, how they are struggling to survive, how no matter where they live, they have the same desires for healthy lives for their families and themselves, that they weren’t simply wombs that need tending to, I thought of Jesus talking about abundant life. Jesus did not come only so we could survive, but that we might thrive, flourish, bloom. God wants more for this world than families who can remain alive; God’s desire is for families that can sustain themselves and grow and persevere. To have abundant lives.

The motherless women I encountered last week had something profound to show me. Through their own pain and loss, they perhaps are the ones who can truly identify with the motherless children of the world. They are the ones who can value and honor mothers in a way that I cannot. This Mother’s Day may we remember the motherless children, old and young, privileged and marginalized. And let us give thanks and pray to the God who mothers us all for a world full of healthy mothers, healthy families, and a healthy planet. Amen.

Welcome!

The Healthy Families, Healthy Planet initiative, funded by a grant from the United Nations Foundation, works to educate and mobilize United Methodists in the U.S. on the importance of maternal health and international family planning. Through grassroots education with targeted annual conferences and advocacy efforts with policy makers, the goal of the project is to achieve higher levels of foreign aid for international family planning through the U.S. government.

This blog will be an interactive hub for advocates for maternal health issues. More information will be added in the coming weeks. Feel free to explore the site and learn more about this important program.