Advocacy as witness: A voice for common good By Charles Austin
In Washington, D.C., Patricia Kisare, ELCA program
director for international policy advocacy, meets with mem- bers of Congress to present the church’s concerns about foreign aid and U.S. food programs in other countries. Cindy Crane, director of the Lutheran Office for Public
Policy in Wisconsin, meets regularly with the bishops of the six ELCA synods in Wisconsin to discuss state issues needing attention. And at the U.N. headquarters in New York City,
Dennis Frado, director of the Lutheran Office for World Community, talks with ambassadors and national leaders from dozens of countries about hunger, gender justice, refu- gees and humanitarian crises in troubled parts of the world. Kisare, Crane and Frado are part of a network of
“advocates” working on behalf of the ELCA in addressing social problems, legislation and other matters cited in ELCA social statements. “Advocacy is witness,” said Amy Reumann, director of
ELCA Advocacy, Washington, D.C. “It is witness to Christ; it is where my witness to Christ makes me care for my neighbor.” John Johnson, program director for domestic policy in
the D.C. office, said the ELCA social statements, the basis for all the church’s advocacy efforts, “are wonderful in that they focus on the things the ELCA as a public church says Jesus would care about—the hungry, the stranger, the children, the orphan and widow.”
“Public church” is an important phrase for advocacy
workers, for it means making the views of the ELCA public and in places where they can make a difference in what happens in society. ELCA advocacy is a wide-ranging effort, touching on
some very local concerns ranging from food pantries for the poor to complex international issues like migration and climate change. The advocacy networks work with government representatives and members of their staffs, with other churches, nonprofit agencies and other civil society groups to bring the concerns of faith into discussions about social policy. And when a solution seems viable and in line with ELCA concerns, church advocates can help it be enacted into law or applied in public policy. In Wisconsin, Crane conducts workshops for
congregations on advocacy, telling them, “We have a history as Christians and as Lutherans in being a public church.” In Reformation times, she said Martin Luther and his colleagues sought “economic justice, not just charity, by going to courts, to the marketplace and to princes” to bring the voice of faith into public life. “You can’t address the hunger problem all on your
own,” Crane said, echoing the words of others involved in advocacy. “We need to work with governments and corporations and others.”
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