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This past Sunday I raised the question as to why hunger in the world is so rampant when our own food supplies here at home seem so abundant. It occurred to me that it might be a good time to follow up on that sermon with some information, so I turned to the United Nations World Food Program and found some pretty striking information. Did you know …

• · that roughly 1 in 6 people doesn’t receive enough food? (1.02 billion)
• · that this number rose by 75 million in 2007 & another 40 million in 2008 due to the rising cost of food?
• · that 65% of the world’s hungry live in 7 countries? (India, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, & Ethiopia)
• · that Vitamin A deficiency due to malnutrition kills a million infants a year?
• · that the World Food Program dewormed 10 million children in 2007? (Yes, that’s the same type of deworming we do for our pets.)

The facts are astounding and saddening – and all of this in spite of the fact that we easily produce much more than our food needs in this country. Perhaps even more saddening, we have the wealth to make a difference in the world, but we regularly choose not to do so. A 1970 UN Resolution pledged the industrialized nations of the world to contributing 0.7% of their national incomes to international aid by 1975. Over the last 35 years, only Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Denmark have consistently met this goal.

While I’m a supporter of international aid (I’ve encouraged you to contact your Senators and Representatives to support U.S. aid to Haiti in the wake of the earthquake), I can’t help but wonder if charity is really the answer. If we are bound by the fear that we live in a world of scarcity, we will undoubtedly horde resources to ensure our own security and survival. However, if we trust the biblical voices who teach about the abundance of God’s provision, then perhaps we are faced with the challenge to change the way we live. If we were to trust God – and I mean to do so in a radical way – then maybe we could afford to live with a few less grocery stores in order to ensure that more U.S. grown food is shared overseas.

I know this issue is much bigger than a single sermon or a newsletter column, but that doesn’t mean it’s too big for us to engage as people of faith. I look forward to spending more time as a community on the challenge of feeding a hungry world and our role in it as followers of the Christ.

Following the winds of Spirit,
Clint

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In case you missed it in worship this past Sunday, we challenged each and every one of you to save a life – and it’s not as difficult as it sounds. In just 14 days, you can make a difference by helping provide a lifetime of clean water for a person who would otherwise take his or her chances with contaminated mud holes and unsafe streams.

Throughout the season of Lent, we are encouraging everyone to get involved in the H20 Project Challenge. It’s a simple challenge: drink only water for the next two weeks. And for every drink you give up, take the money you would have spent and donate it to the cause of clean water. To help you out, you’ll find a collection of scorecards to keep track of your consumption. It’s really that simple.

The original idea is designed to run only two weeks, but we’re going to open up the entire season of Lent. You can take the challenge for two weeks and be done, or you can really brave the season and give up drinks for the entire 46 day journey! For the more adventurous, you can take your two week challenge a step further and recognize how privileged we are in this country by donating double the amount for every drink you decide not to give up and drink anyway. Ultimately, how you participate is up to you, but I invite you to keep in mind that we have a goal. The Outreach Committee has decided that we as a congregation have it in us to raise enough money to provide a community water pump through Church World Services. In order to meet this goal, we need to raise $1,000. I’ve seen the generosity of this congregation in action before, and I know that we can reach this goal and more.

However, before you reach for your checkbook to make a gift, I really want to encourage you to take on the challenge. Try going without anything but tap water for at least one week. Keep track of your money and bring it to participate that following Sunday during our special offering time in the service. Don’t just send your money, but take some time to imagine what it might be like to live without all of the privileges we know here in the U.S. You might find that living differently is every bit as rewarding as the giving itself – and maybe even more!

Walking the journey of Lent,

Clint

I’ve previously written concerning the real nature of Haiti’s “curse” and Christian responsibility in the wake of this disaster, but it’s time for us to move beyond talk and take action.  For everyone who has already become involved, sending recovery kits and making financial contributions, I thank you and commend your actions.  However, as Richard Kim points out, our charity simply isn’t good enough:

But it’s also time to stop having a conversation about charity and start having a conversation about justice–about recovery, responsibility and fairness. What the world should be pondering instead is: What is Haiti owed?

Haiti’s vulnerability to natural disasters, its food shortages, poverty, deforestation and lack of infrastructure, are not accidental. To say that it is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere is to miss the point; Haiti was made poor–by France, the United States, Great Britain, other Western powers and by the IMF and the World Bank.

Our culpability in the repeated failures of the economy and government in Haiti are apparent with only a basic historical knowledge of the country’s two centuries as an independent republic.  Oppressive foreign aid programs, including loans that have lined the pockets of corrupt dictators (a fact we conveniently ignored for the sake of “national interest”), continued to keep Haiti politically and economically impoverished.  Now it appears that our political leaders and bureaucrats are prepared to repeat the same failed policies in the wake of the earthquake.  Kim explains how the International Monetary Fund intends to take a business-as-usual approach to the plight of Haiti:

Now, in its attempts to help Haiti, the IMF is pursuing the same kinds of policies that made Haiti a geography of precariousness even before the quake. To great fanfare, the IMF announced a new $100 million loan to Haiti on Thursday. In one crucial way, the loan is a good thing; Haiti is in dire straits and needs a massive cash infusion. But the new loan was made through the IMF’s extended credit facility, to which Haiti already has $165 million in debt. Debt relief activists tell me that these loans came with conditions, including raising prices for electricity, refusing pay increases to all public employees except those making minimum wage and keeping inflation low. They say that the new loans would impose these same conditions. In other words, in the face of this latest tragedy, the IMF is still using crisis and debt as leverage to compel neoliberal reforms.

Seeing the failure of these policies prior to the full force of nature’s destructive power, it is a sign of poor judgment to think that taking the same direction will have any positive effect on Haiti.  Yet, every bit as deplorable is the fact that it’s a sign of complete moral and ethical failure on our part as citizens of the developing world to continue to ignore the real plight of our neighbors as we profit from their misfortune.  It is time for each of us become agents of ethics and work to bring about change.

Right now Congresswomen Maxine Waters (D -CA) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) are circulating a letter that will be presented to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urging him to use the full leverage of the U.S. government to bring about debt cancellation on the part of the IMF and other international agencies carrying outstanding loans to Haiti. Currently over 50 members of Congress have agreed to sign this letter, but you can help by urging your own representative to sign as well.  With the help of the Jubilee USA Network, an outreach of over 75 religious denominations and communities seeking debt relief the underdeveloped nations, you can send an email to your representative urging her/him to join the petition.  While you’re at it, you can also visit here to sign a citizens petition that Jubilee USA will present to Secretary Geithner urging him to support debt cancellation for Haiti.  The deadline for this is February 2, so please consider responding to this action quickly.

And regardless of deadlines, you can offer your voice in support of H.R. 4405, the Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation of 2009.  Sponsored by Congresswoman Waters, this bill is an effort to build on the earlier success of H.R. 2634, which was filed in the previous congress, and passed the House of Representatives before becoming bogged down in the Senate.  (Avelino Maestas offers a more in depth look at these bills at Huffington Post.)   H.R. 4405 has been introduced and currently awaits consideration in the House Committee on Financial Services.  You can help spur this bill to the floor by writing letters or sending emails to committee chair Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) and ranking member Congressman Spencer Bachus (R-AL), as well as other members of the committee.

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It’s time to change the way we behave as citizens of the wealthier minority within or world, and as a nation with a history that is checkered at best.  I’ve made my case for our responsibility to Haiti based on how that checkered past has harmed Haiti over the years.  And while I will be the first to admit that we can’t be held individually responsible for the racism and imperialism of our country’s past, we can become responsible from this moment forward for our country’s just, peaceful, and equitable policies toward our neighbors beyond our borders.  I can’t encourage you enough to join with me in making a difference for our nation and our world.

Cross posted at the Xenia Institute.

From this catastrophe, which follows so many others, we should make sure that it is a chance to get Haiti once and for all out of the curse it seems to have been stuck with for such a long time.

If not Pat Robertson’s absurd theological stretches, then what exactly is this “curse” that haunts Haiti? While Sarkozy’s statement almost comes across sounding like an innocuous little raincloud that hovers over this unassuming island republic, the reality is much more devastating.  To better understand the structural problems that have plagued Haiti, a brief history lesson is in order.  This commentary at the Center for International Policy sheds some light on the early history of the republic:

Economic Justice in Haiti Requires Debt Restitution  |  CIP Americas Program

Haiti won its independence from France in 1804, through a bloody 12-year war, becoming the second independent country in the Americas and the only nation in history born of a successful slave revolt. But world powers forced Haiti to pay a second price for entrance into the international community. They refused to recognize Haiti’s independence, while French warships remained off its coasts, threatening to invade and reinstitute slavery.

After 21 years of resisting, Haiti capitulated to France‘s terms: in exchange for diplomatic recognition, Haiti’s government agreed to compensate French plantation owners for their loss of “property,” including the freed slaves; compensation to be paid with a loan from a designated French bank. The debt was ten times Haiti’s total 1825 revenue and twice what the United States paid France in 1803 for the Louisiana Purchase, which contained seventy-four times more land.

The debt was a crushing burden on Haiti’s economy. The government was forced to redirect all economic activity to repay it. A huge percentage of government revenues—80% in some years—went to debt service, at the expense of investment in education, healthcare, and infrastructure. The tax code and other laws channeled private and public enterprise to export crops such as tropical hardwoods and sugar, which brought in foreign currency for the bank but left the mountainsides barren, the soil depleted, and the population hungry.

While this may allow those of us in the United States to savor the irony of Sarkozy’s statement given France’s role in the economic crippling of the fledgling nation, we would be well reminded of our own interference in the affairs of foreign nations; especially those in the Caribbean which have often been considered playthings in our own private “U.S. lake.”  The Haiti Action Committee reminds us of our own complicity in the destruction of the early Haitian economy:

The United States led a worldwide boycott against Haiti and refused to recognize the new nation until 1864, fearing that its freedom would pose a danger to the U.S. system of slavery.

Instead of playing linguistic games that offhandedly attribute Haiti’s woes to some ambiguous “curse,” it’s time for us living in economically powerful nations to own our role in putting the hex on this underdeveloped and economically declining nation.*  While Sarkozy’s intentions, along with the rest of the industrialized world, are no doubt for the good, the time for addressing the real issue is long overdue.  We are quick to be the saviors of the disaster-ridden, rushing in with our recovery and relief money, but we never pause for a moment to consider how our history of plundering underdeveloped nations has exacerbated the present crisis.  And for all of our hurry to be the heroes today, tomorrow we will forget this sad affair, never addressing the ongoing systemic imperialism and economic oppression that will continue to leave Haiti ripe for the next disaster.  After all, it’s just Haiti’s “curse” …

* According to the CIA World Factbook 80% of Haitians live in poverty, with over half of the population in abject poverty.

Cross posted at the Xenia Institute.