alabama possible from the alabama poverty project

Nick Foster

Special contributor to the Mobile Press-Register

April 6, 2008

Can there really be an end to poverty in the state of Alabama? Could that actually happen?

“You always have the poor with you.” So said Jesus, according to the Bible. People of all kinds of faith, as well as people who do not practice religion, remember this statement well. Jesus is quoted often in response to my opening question here.

It’s as though folks want to protest, “But we’ll always have poor people with us! Even Jesus said so!”

But to hear Jesus’ words in this way is to misunderstand them. He wasn’t making some kind of prophetic prediction. Rather, he was taking notice of a simple fact: We always have opportunity to help the poor, because they are always around.

But it doesn’t have to always be that way.

Bringing an end to poverty means first having a determination that all of God’s children can have enough to eat and to make for themselves successful lives. We just have to care enough to respond to a vision – in particular, a vision of faith – that this can become reality.

In Alabama, the kinds of people who understand this are perhaps most likely to be found within the state’s faith communities. These folks understand something about vision.

And they know about caring. Visit churches, synagogues, mosques and other houses of worship across our state and you will find that pretty much all of them reach out to the poor in very tangible, helpful and caring ways.

From clothes closets to canned food drives to special offerings, people of faith express a faith that calls on them to care.

But it’s not enough.

“Charity is good. Justice is better.” So says Wayne Flynt, distinguished university professor emeritus at Auburn University as well as a weekly Sunday School teacher and noted expert on poverty in Alabama.

What Dr. Flynt means is that we do well to offer direct services to the hungry, cold and homeless, but that we also need to address the more deeply seated, sys- temic matters that keep people in poverty.

For instance, in Alabama those families who are found in the lowest 20 percent of income-earners pay between 10 percent and 11 percent of their income in local and state taxes. For those in the top 1 percent of earners, the cost is less than 4 percent of income.

That’s wrong by anyone’s standards, but people of faith will recognize it as unjust, offensive to their understanding of how the most vulnerable should be treated.

Faith plays a powerful role in day-to-day Alabama life. If poverty is to be ended here, those who live by faith will have to step up, learn the truth and then act.

With that in mind, the Alabama Poverty Project will offer a forum for clergy and other faith leaders in Mobile on Thursday at Spring Hill College. Wayne Flynt, a co-founder of the Alabama Poverty Project, will speak to these issues, and re- sources will be provided. (More information and registration are is available at www.alabamapoverty.org/MobileSymposium.html).

The idea is that these leaders will return to their congregations better prepared to inform their flocks, and lead them to act. Information leads to knowledge. Knowledge leads to understanding. Understanding leads to action.

And action on the part of Alabama people of faith will bring an end to poverty in our state.

Nick Foster is an ordained Baptist minister and executive director of the Alabama Poverty Project. His e-mail address is director@alabamapoverty.org.