The Christian Century

I should have seen my road to Damascus moment approaching. I’d been warned.

Members of President Obama’s domestic team addressed more than 1,000 Christian progressives at an antipoverty meeting in Washington, asking for their help to accomplish the president’s agenda.

The global financial crisis makes it even more urgent that the United States not only take care of its own economy but also redouble efforts to aid the world’s poorest, according to a new report and several development experts.

Nine faith leaders have joined to urge senators Barack Obama and John McCain to present a ten-year plan to combat poverty at their nominating conventions.

Dramatic increases in food and gas prices are leaving some religious hunger-relief groups praying for relief.

Problems were already apparent in 2006, but U.S. churches now report increased difficulty getting meals to people who need them. Food distributors see a perfect storm: a huge jump in requests from new clients, along with decreased donations and a thinning food supply.

Rosalie Higgins has had a hardscrabble life. She didn’t make it into the air force and she couldn’t complete nursing school. The jobs she was able to get with the computer skills that she picked up in trade school paid no better than $6.50 an hour. At age 66, she lives on her Social Security check of $623 a month, which is less than the rent for a one-bedroom apartment.

A majority of American cities participating in a recent survey have seen an increase in the number of requests for emergency food assistance, the U.S. Conference of Mayors reports.

Last month marked the tenth anniversary of President Clinton’s welfare reform law, which imposed time limits for receiving cash assistance and required welfare recipients—including single mothers with young children—to work. Highly controversial at the time, the measure has become so much a part of the political landscape that welfare now hardly figures as an election-year issue.

When Tim King organized a sleep-out in Chicago last year, 300 students from across the Midwest came to raise awareness of homelessness by gathering signatures for a petition, holding up signs and even “sleeping out” on the Magnificent Mile.