One of Jesus' most in-your-face stories, and a personal favorite of mine, is the Parable of the Dishonest Manager in Luke 16. I would loosely paraphrase its central insight as follows: "If you have the sense God gave a dog, you will realize that you can't hold onto money very long anyway, but you can keep the friends you make by giving it to those in need. You do the math." The passage doesn't say anything about burning sulfur, just about priorities and how to take the long view.

An attractive feature of this parable is that it sets a really low bar for divine commendation. The manager doesn't have sense enough to stay out of trouble to begin with. What's more, even after he has his "friends are friends forever" epiphany, he starts backsliding almost at once: He quickly gives his master's first debtor a 50% markdown, but for debtor number two the manager gets pointlessly stingy and only takes off 20%. He still gets praise for knowing what side his bread is buttered on.

And, because the kingdom of God is so often about taking things way over the top, the final verses go on to radically redefine what honesty and faithfulness are. Good stewardship is supposed to be about accurate accounting and careful saving, right? Not here. Money is inherently "dishonest," and impromptu unauthorized debt forgiveness is "faithfulness." (In fact, the master fires the manager before even seeing his accounting - the grounds for dismissal appear to have been less fiscal irresponsibility and more that he made enemies willing to accuse him).

The Protestant Work Ethic is not invited to this party, and you can virtually hear the groans of the prodigal son's responsible brother if he happens to look ahead from his seat in chapter 15.

Despite this parable, other parts of the Bible suggest to me that it's reasonable to save something for retirement. But I want to combine this conventional form of stewardship with long-view social accounting, which is why I'm excited about the special Web extra to our May issue about faith and finances. In it, my colleague Julie has accumulated a heaping helping of Web sites that can help you figure out how and where to invest retirement savings for the common good (and also where to free your mind with Bible study, teach your teenage kids about money, and plan - and pray over - your household budget).

Check it out – and e-mail it to a friend to share the abundance!

Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.

Recently, both President Bush and an oil company spokesperson, speaking to the rising gas prices, pushed for building more refineries and upping the production of oil here in the States. No mention of exorbitant oil company profits. No mention of our need to drastically reduce use of cars and gasoline, to change lifestyles. No mention of the working poor who are stuck without public transportation to jobs remote from their inner-city or inner-ring suburban homes.

Reducing dependence on the automobile will mean a lot more than raising fuel efficiency standards for cars and buying more efficient automobiles. It will need a change of lifestyle, removing frivolous car trips, using public transportation, and changing the priorities of government transportation funding. Only about 25% of the transportation dollars in most places now support public transportation, and it is hard to find public transportation to many jobs in the suburbs. The highway and automobile lobby have been effective on the national and state level. We've got to change that with loud and strong voices for public transportation.

One has to allow more time to get places using public transportation--perhaps a good thing to slow down our rushing lifestyles and get more exercise getting to and from. My elevated train route is a microcosm of society: suited suburban riders with neighborhood service workers, elderly and young, white and black, Hispanic and Asian. The trains are refreshing "bumping into" places where different people mix and find common ground in talking about the most recent delay, laughing at the antics of a child, and rolling our eyes at some loud cell phone talker.

Would that more sermons, writings, and our voices push elected officials for more and more available public transportation, for the sake of equity, for community, for our health. We would all be the better for it.

In college, I took a cultural exchange trip (read: vacation) to Rome over spring break. Just around the corner from St. Peter's Square, I bought my father, a minister, a crucifix for his office.

Earlier this week, I saw that same souvenir in a report from The National Labor Committee on crucifixes made in Chinese sweatshops.

The report, titled "Today Workers Bear the Cross", documents the oppressive treatment of the workers in the Junxingye factory in Dongguan, China, who make crucifixes and other religious items to be sold to the faithful in the West.

[The] mostly young women—several just 15 and 16 years old—[are] forced to work routine 14 to 15 ½-hour shifts, from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 or 11:30 p.m., seven days a week … and even monthly all-night 22 ½ to 25-hour shifts before shipments must leave for the U.S. …Workers are paid just 26 and a half cents an hour, which is half of China's legal minimum wage (already set at a below-subsistence level) of 55 cents an hour. After fees deducted for room and board, the workers take-home wage can drop to just nine cents an hour … Workers fear that they may be handling toxic chemicals, but they are not told the names of the chemicals and paints, let alone their potential health hazards.

The products are then sold for upwards of $20 in the U.S., in churches like New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral and chains like Family Christian Stores. If God despises praise songs and offerings presented in the absence of justice, as the Hebrew prophets tell us, then crucifixes and plastic Bible covers made on the cheap at the expense of workers must really make God mad.

The image of women toiling away in sweatshops while handling an icon of the suffering body of Christ is quite striking. It brings to my mind a couple of questions. What might it mean for North American and European Christians to bear the cross—that is, to willingly suffer for the sake of justice—rather than participate in the unjust elements of our global trade system? Is it even possible to practice authentic discipleship within the global economy we're all swept up in? How can we, in even the smallest ways, seek to rid our lives of exploitation and be in solidarity with those who are suffering?

I ask these questions not because I have the answers. (Much of this post was written on a laptop built in, you guessed it, China.) I think I have a small picture, though, of what it might look like:

We'd probably buy more local and union made products, even if they cost more. We'd become pretty comfortable with hand-me-downs, and even looking kind of frumpy sometimes. We'd realize we need less than we thought we did, and go without some things previously thought essential. We'd share a lot more with our neighbors. And we'd demand that unjust structures change. Most of all, we'd need a community—to keep us accountable to countercultural discipleship, to forgive us for the impossibility of living lives free of exploitation, and to remind us it is in God and not the global market that we live, move, and have our being.

I pray that the church would be that sort of community and come together in resistance to our present global economy. Then we could begin to free ourselves (and others, like the women in the Junxingye factory) from its captivity.

Tim Kumfer serves as an assistant at The Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C., and is a former Sojourners intern. He writes occasionally at timkumfer.blogspot.com.

Tuesday marked the beginning of what is likely to be a long and controversial Senate debate on the 2007 Farm Bill. People of faith around the country are waking up to realize how critical this legislation is to our goals of ending hunger and poverty in America and abroad. Unfortunately, Congress has yet to show the leadership to make this goal a reality.

The Farm Bill is a vast piece of legislation - authorizing everything from food stamps to conservation programs, from rural development to our infamous farm subsidy program. This summer the House of Representatives passed its version of the Farm Bill, with little reform to the commodity title that governs farm subsidies. Now it is the Senate's turn, and the bill they are starting with has every indication of ignoring the reform agenda yet again.

Today, I stood with African and U.S. religious leaders at a press conference to call on our senators to be true to their commitments to fighting poverty in Africa by cutting unfair and outdated subsidies in the Farm Bill. The following are my remarks from the event:

An evangelical always has a text so I'll begin with a text this morning. Proverbs 13:23: "A poor person's field may produce abundant food, but injustice sweeps it away."

The question this morning for members of the U.S. Senate is simply this: How long will you postpone justice?

Is there anybody on this hill, in this town, who believes that continuing outdated, outmoded, but enormous subsidies to the world's biggest and richest farmers at the expense of the world's smallest and poorest farmers is fair, is just, or creates global stability? I don't think so. I haven't heard that.

Unfortunately, poor cotton farmers in West Africa don't vote in races for the U.S. Congress. They don't contribute to senatorial campaigns. They have no lobbyists on Capitol Hill except for us - today. They're just too busy trying to make a living to support their families and allow their countries to earn their way out of poverty.

But they have a huge obstacle; they have a huge competitor to their efforts. Their competitor is the U.S. government; their obstacle is the U.S. government.

Everyone knows these inequitable subsidies must end. Everyone knows that by continuing them we put a gigantic obstacle in the way of the sustainable development we say we support - and then block. Everyone knows that these subsidies make a mockery of our rhetoric about caring for what happens to Africa. Everyone knows we are postponing justice again.

Seventy five percent of the world's poorest people support themselves by farming, and we stop them from doing that. Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, has said eloquently and clearly, "a world where a billion people live in extreme poverty is neither just nor secure."

We need to make the reforms in the commodities in the farm bill - now. To not do so is to be guilty of moral shortsightedness and political blindness to the real path for global security. But that moral shortsightedness and political blindness is likely to happen again on the floor of the U.S. Senate unless some senators open their eyes, develop new vision, and find the courage to lead.

The religious community is asking them to do just that.

TAKE ACTION: The Farm Bill debate is typically dominated by big agribusiness and a handful of congressional leaders from farm states. But we can make a difference – Sojourners is asking our supporters to call their senators in support of reforming the commodity title – click here to make your call.

Economists are telling us that people are not spending enough money this Holiday time and thus our economy will suffer. I am reminded of the president's urging after 9/11, to go out and spend money, buy things as the way to make things better. I can't believe we fall for this false assumption of economic well-being: buying things, or things themselves, will bring happiness.

A consultant in community building was invited by the South Korean government, saying, "We have money and things, but we are not happy." Bill McKibben in Deep Economy indicates the US is producing more, has higher economic incomes and more things than ever before, but we are no happier or satisfied. There is a growing dissatisfaction with all the things, a deep longing for community. Some people are shifting their priorities, working less and spending more time with family and friends.

Bishop Robinson of England, in his 1980's book, Enough is Enough, called us to a "joyful revolution" of people over things, of time spent in community and making a difference over the work-and-spend treadmill. He suggested three maxims to remember as we look at ads, walk through stores, are tempted to add a few more things to our bounty:

1. Who are you kidding?
2. You can't take it with you.
3. The price is too high.

In this season when we wish people Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year, and seek to create some of that happiness in our families and communities, may we prioritize actions that create and sustain life, family and community.

Mary Nelson is president emeritus of Bethel New Life, a faith-based community development corporation on the west side of Chicago. She is also a board member of Sojourners.

Last week I received an interesting package in the mail from Sweet Beginnings LLC, a Chicago-based neighborhood non-profit "committed to training and employing residents who are often locked out of the traditional labor market due to past criminal records and other barriers to employment."

Opening the large cardboard box, I discovered two of their signature "beeline" products: homemade beeswax body cream and lip balm. I met Brenda Palms Barber, the CEO of this remarkable organization, at the Aspen Ideas Festival last month.

The Sweet Beginnings story is one worth sharing—an example of success against some pretty incredible odds.

North Lawndale, a neighborhood on Chicago's west side (where the organization is based), has seen its share of challenging circumstances in decades past. With six in 10 residents having been in trouble with the law and one in four currently unemployed, the community faces some of the most troubling realities confronting urban America.

Experiencing an alarming rate of "white flight" in the years following World War II as government housing policies favoring white Americans incentivized mass migration into new suburban communities, North Lawndale saw its white population drop from 87,000 to 11,000 between 1950 and 1960, while its African American population increased sharply, from 13,000 to over 113,000, during that same time.

Moreover, "the next two decades [saw] a series of economic and social disasters for this increasingly isolated, segregated community. Riots followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, destroying many of the stores … accelerating a decline that lead to a loss of 75 percent of the businesses in the community by 1970," according to the Steans Family Foundation—the Lawndale-focused foundation enabling Sweet Beginnings to get off the ground in 1999.

Confronting the twin challenges of rampant unemployment and the difficulty of finding work for individuals with a criminal record, Sweet Beginnings provides job opportunities for once-incarcerated community members while equipping them with the skills, experiences, and hope necessary to sustain and pursue work in the future.

As I've often said before, "Work works," but only when it empowers people to meet their needs while affirming their dignity as image-bearers of God. When people are given the right information, the right education, and sufficient economic opportunity they are far more likely to make good choices.

For more information, please check out the Sweet Beginnings Web site here.

Additionally, Sweet Beginnings and their Beeline products were featured on the CBS Evening News awhile back. Check out the story here.

In the wake of today’s news that Rupert Murdoch appears to have won his battle to buy The Wall Street Journal, a former Journal columnist expresses his concern that the paper will lose journalistic integrity:

Standards are the lifeblood of WSJ and its related properties. … I remember being told in a meeting that not only were advertising representatives who sold for WSJ.com on a different floor; we weren't even allowed to know their names. That way, ad reps and their clients could never influence a story.

It is hard to imagine that News Corp. — a juggernaut with more than $25 billion in revenue in 2006 — will keep such ideas in place, considered almost relics in a struggling business. Since Murdoch’s bid was announced, The Wall Street Journal has excelled at covering the story about itself. If bad news erupts about News Corp., will Murdoch dare let reporters investigate the problem and potentially scare off advertisers?

This is the second installment in the Rupert Murdoch Cultural Parable Series. Its predecessor was, of course, the Parable of the Fox (Network) and the Hounds, a.k.a. Social Conservatives’ Worst Enemy: Political Conservatives.

Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor for Sojourners.

(Click here to read the first part of this series.)

In my search for an ethically made bra, I came face to face with the two distinct worlds of justice issues. There are those who are passionate about caring for the environment and then there are those who seek justice for people, and it appeared that ne’er the twain shall meet. I found the sites where collective groups of women in Africa made clothing for fair wages, but used cloth made with environmentally unfriendly practices. Or I found clay-dyed organic cotton bras, but had no clue to how they were made. After e-mailing the company, I might hear back that they care about their employees (whatever that means), but there was no concrete certification that fair practices are used.

Granted, there were a small handful of companies that carried lines of trendy organic fair trade t-shirts designed for the emo crowd. They’re cool, but I needed a bra. Eventually I found a site in the U.K. that carries organic, ethically hand-stitched lingerie. But I needed everyday wear, not five-minutes-in-the-bedroom wear. And I wasn’t willing to pay their $100 price tag either. I knew this endeavor would require more funds than the typical sale bin at the mall, but I had my limits. There has to be a balance between saving a buck at the expense of a worker in a third world nation and throwing one’s money away on luxury items. (And no, I don’t see being an ethical consumer a luxury, just part of living out that whole loving one’s neighbor thing.)

Then finally, after a couple of weeks of fruitless searching, I stumbled across Rawganique.com. It's a business based out of an off-the-grid island in Canada where they grow their own organic food (eaten vegan and raw), power their computers with solar and wind energy, and promote their products as “a quiet, old-fashioned retreat from the hecticness and rampant chemicalization that are characteristic of the modern, conventional world.” It looked promising. As I researched further, I discovered that their clothing met all of my criteria—they care about the environment and people. And they sell bras (which are actually cheaper than those I typically buy at the mall—ethical and affordable!). Mission accomplished: I found my justice bra.

But why, I have to ask, did I have to dig up some hippie commune sort of place in order to find this? It’s great that they are doing this, but with all the attention justice issues are getting these days, one would hope that ethical shopping would have become a bit more mainstream. What’s the deal? Is it just easy to talk about this stuff and never actually live it out? What will it actually take for us to change the injustices in our economic system and shop for a better world? That’s what I want to know.

And in case you were wondering, I really like my new bra.

Julie Clawson is a church planting pastor in the Chicago area and the coordinator of the Emerging Women blog.

(Click here to read the first part of this series.)

I realized the other day that I needed a new bra. Usually I would hop in the car, drive to the nearest Victoria’s Secret, and buy some mass-produced, synthetic hot pink thing that claimed to make me sexy. Easy enough. But I just couldn’t do it this time. My conscience wouldn’t let me.

Over the last few years, my knowledge of justice issues has grown. I can no longer ignore the realities of sweatshops, child labor, toxic pesticides and dyes, and unjust trade laws. Sure, it’s easy to walk into the mall and buy whatever is on sale. It’s easy to not care about where my clothes came from, who made them and under what conditions, and what their long-term effects will be. I buy things without asking those questions all the time—like I’m sure the ad execs want me to. Of course, I’ll buy the fair trade coffee or the organic produce when it’s readily available, but, when it comes to just about everything else, I still know how to mindlessly consume with the best of them.

But not this time. I decided to see if I could find a new bra that was ethically made—just to see if I could do it and to force myself to actually put my money where my mouth is. So as my friends rolled their eyes and offered sarcastic “good lucks,” I began my search for the justice bra. But first I set my criteria.

The bra had to be made from an organically grown material. No synthetics made from petroleum, no pesticides that harm the environment and the farmers, and no unsustainable practices. Since hemp growth is restricted, bamboo isn’t usually sustainably grown (and who would ever want a wool bra?), organic cotton seemed to be my best option. Cotton is the most pesticide-dependent crop in the world, accounting for 25 percent of total pesticide use. Since we don’t eat cotton, the amount and types of chemicals dumped on cotton crops aren’t as restricted as for other crops. These chemicals are taking their toll on the environment as well as on human health. The EPA considers seven of the top 15 pesticides used on cotton as "likely" or "known" human carcinogens. Every t-shirt made of conventional cotton requires a quarter pound of harmful chemicals. I can’t knowingly support that. So to be ethical, it had to be grown using ecologically friendly practices.

It also couldn’t have toxic dyes in the fabric—dyes that hurt the environment and are potential carcinogens. I didn’t want fish to die or metals and chlorines to seep into my skin just so I could have hot pink. Numerous chemicals are used to dye most fabrics and these chemicals generally do not break down in wastewater treatment plants. And often to get the dyes to set heavy metals are used in the process. All of this is in the clothes we wear. It hurts the environment and it’s unhealthy. So standard number two was that the bra had to be free of harmful dyes.

Finally, the bra had to be fairly made. From the farmers who grew the fibers, to the weavers who spun the fabric, to the tailors who assembled it, each person (adults, not children) along the way had to have been paid a living wage (usually much more than minimum wage), not been coerced to work, and treated humanely. I’ve read the reports of the growing numbers of Indian cotton growers who are committing suicide because under "free trade" agreements they can’t earn enough to survive by growing cotton. They deserve to be fairly compensated for their labor, not cheated because the hypothetical potential of cotton flooding the markets drove down prices. I also didn’t want to support a company that holds women (or children) as virtual slaves in a sweatshop (where often the women also have to perform other “services” for their male employers in order to keep their jobs). Nor did I want to support a company that pays their workers a wage that isn’t sufficient to live on just so the company could make a bigger profit. Whoever made my bra needs to be able to make a living doing so. And not a degrading, oppressive living either, but one that treats them as a real person.

Not too much to ask, just an ethically made bra. I could find that somewhere, right?

Julie Clawson is a church planting pastor in the Chicago area and the coordinator of the Emerging Women blog.

(Check back soon for part two of Julie's search for an ethical bra.)

The New York Times ran two pieces this week that tell us a great deal about where our country is economically. On Sunday's front page, "The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age" told the story of how

many of the nation's very wealthy chief executives, entrepreneurs and financiers echo an earlier era—the Gilded Age before World War I—when powerful enterprises, dominated by men who grew immensely rich, ushered in the industrialization of the United States. The new titans often see themselves as pillars of a similarly prosperous and expansive age, one in which their successes and their philanthropy have made government less important than it once was.

The story noted:

Only twice before over the last century has 5 percent of the national income gone to families in the upper one-one-hundredth of a percent of the income distribution—currently, the almost 15,000 families with incomes of $9.5 million or more a year, according to an analysis of tax returns by the economists Emmanuel Saez at the University of California, Berkeley and Thomas Piketty at the Paris School of Economics. Such concentration at the very top occurred in 1915 and 1916, as the Gilded Age was ending, and again briefly in the late 1920s, before the stock market crash. Now it is back...

As if to prove the scientific law that for every action, there is an opposite reaction, the Monday front page headlined "A New Populism Spurs Democrats on the Economy."

Democrats are talking more and more about the anemic growth in American wages and the negative effects of trade and a globalized economy on American jobs and communities. They deplore what they call a growing gap between the middle class, which is struggling to adjust to a changing job market, and the affluent elites who have prospered in the new economy.

It is indeed time for a new populism, a new progressive era. Charges of class warfare will certainly be raised, and when they are, let us point out that it is indeed—the class warfare of tax cuts and budget priorities that make the rich richer while decimating low-and middle-income families.

When you think of labor unions, do you think of men in coveralls, meeting in dingy buildings late at night, trying to get the public's attention through strikes or maybe a small newspaper clipping? (I'll admit it, I kind of do). Well, it's time to reset that union image—the fight for fair labor practices just got a lot hipper.

They're spoofing the new Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, to raise awareness about the evil practices of Lord Waldemart (aka Wal-Mart).

As the Chicago Tribune reports, Wal-Mart Watch (which is backed by the Service Employees International Union) has released a YouTube video and an accompanying Web site, WaldemartWatch.com, to get its serious message across to a new generation, in a lighter way.

As Andrew Slack, a comedian, activist, and actor in the video says: "I'm a big believer in the power of humor to create social change and get the message out there. … We don't want anyone feeling that they're being lectured at. We want to break away from that to what they're interested in, and humans tend to be interested in laughing."

For those humans who adamantly support Wal-Mart's labor practices, the movie won't likely strike a chord. But for fans of Harry Potter who are indifferent or already see a darker side to Uncle Sam Walton's smiley face, this video is a stunning debut for the latest player in YouTube politics: Big Labor.

Laurel Mathewson is an editorial assistant for Sojourners magazine.

A friend recently brought to my attention the July 8, 2007, column by Rod Dreher in the Dallas Morning News. Dreher, famous as a "Crunchy Con"—a conservative who cares deeply about the environment—provides another excellent example of the important shift taking place on the fault line that for too long has polarized and paralyzed "left" and "right." His title, "Evils of Capitalism," and the subhead, "Big business can be as dangerous a threat as big government," tell you that he defies old binary categories.

The greatest challenge facing American conservatives today, he says, is not liberalism but capitalism, which he says, "in its current form, undermines not only the virtues necessary to the kind of society conservatives claim to want, but ultimately risks subverting itself."

He acknowledges capitalism's strengths, but laments that today's capitalism "is defined not by a producer mentality but by a consumer ethos," evidenced by the fact that personal savings—undercut by credit card debt—have slipped into the negative zone for the first time since 1933.

He calls the mentality promoted by consumerism "childishness," quoting Benjamin Barber's recent release, Consumed. When big business promotes consumerism by inhibiting adult judgment and self-discipline, Dreher says, it works against the very family values conservatives cherish, making them "prisoners of their own cravings."

"Childishness" sounds like the mentality that has been reinforced by our political and corporate titans. On one hand, we hear warnings that inspire fear, and then on the other, we hear a lot of "Trust me and don't ask questions." These titans profit if the rest of us act like children, trusting and submitting without thinking and making mature decisions with foresight, self-discipline, and concern for the common good.

Rod Dreher is so right. Consumerism, whether in government or business, sucks.

Read the full entry »

Don’t think the farm bill (currently up for its 5-year revamp) affects you? As this handy article by Michael Pollan points out, the farm bill is really an eater’s bill, and the current setup is fanning the flames of the country’s high-fructose obesity epidemic. It’s also an environmental bill, driving what happens to almost half of the privately owned land in America. And it’s an immigration bill, as it pushes down the price of U.S. farm products, driving small farmers in Mexico and elsewhere off their land (and, often, across the border into the U.S.). So, if you think that the price of Twinkies should not be so, well, artificially low in comparison to vegetables, or if you’re concerned with whether or not factory farms are pouring chemicals into our land or water, check out Pollan’s article.

Then go to Bread for the World to read about how the farm bill - as-usual - is no picnic for U.S. farmers either. (And for a view on how trade organizations and agreements - such as the WTO and CAFTA - affect farmers in other countries, see World Market 101 in this month’s Sojourners.)

Elizabeth Palmberg is Assistant Editor of Sojourners magazine.

I come from South Africa. I’m working for the Economic Justice Network, which is a network of church organizations in 11 countries. We are working on debt, development, aid, and trade. This year is going to be a special year for us because it’s seven years after the Jubilee [movement] was formed; for us it’s a Sabbath year whereby we want to renew our commitment to fighting for debt cancellation.

Debt is one of the biggest problems in southern Africa. There are some countries that are paying up to 50% of their budget just to service foreign debt. There are other countries that have received debt relief, and some have received 100% debt cancellation. But we still see that there are problems, and fundamental questions that we need to answer. And as churches, we need to bring in more values from the churches about the whole issue of debt.

Why are we fighting for debt cancellation? We are fighting for debt cancellation because we want to free that money so that it can be injected into the social welfare of the people. There are so many children dying of malaria; so many children who cannot access ARVs [antiretroviral AIDS medicines]. There are so many people who are HIV positive. Money, if it is freed from debt service, can be injected into health, education, agriculture, and other useful things.

You want to give a free start to these highly indebted countries. Let them use that money to develop their own countries, to promote the welfare of their own people.

And therefore debt is, for us, a moral issue - we don’t want to see countries be enslaved perpetually. No, every seventh year, according to the Bible, the land is supposed to be given time to [lie] fallow. People are supposed to be given new life, the chance to begin again.

We are also trying to link the debt issue to trade. In trade we have policies that are not conducive for the well-being of people in Africa. At the same time they have got this huge foreign debt that they have to service. We see trade as a means - not as an end - so that money can be used for development.

On the other side, too, we are connecting debt, trade, and aid. If you look at the Millennium Development Goals for 2015, the need for reform is apparent — countries will not be able to achieve the MDGs because they are using money to service debt. On the other hand, they are not getting a good deal from trade. At the same time, aid they are getting has many conditionalities attached. So if you combine the three things, it's a big problem for southern Africa; it compromises the region's ability to make a leap forward. And that’s why we at the Economic Justice Network are fighting for fair trade, debt cancellation, and meaningful aid.


Francis Ng’ambi is an economist who is the Budget Monitoring Officer at the Economic Justice Network of the Fellowship of Christian Councils in Southern Africa. Sojourners spoke with him in March at Ecumenical Advocacy Days.

+ Learn more about trade justice in Sojourners' new special issue

The International Monetary Fund, whose board will meet this weekend in Washington, D.C., continues to use its role as a gatekeeper for rich country aid to impose questionable, and often downright harmful, conditions onto poor countries. For example, the IMF has often imposed “wage bill ceilings” that limit how much money a government can spend on salaries – sometimes even when that money comes from foreign aid offered to help fight poverty or the AIDS epidemic – because the IMF is concerned that paying too many salaries could cause inflation to rise a few percent. As South African economist Francis Ng’ambi points out, IMF “conditionality” threatens to counteract some of the benefits won by Jubilee debt campaigners. Sojourners spoke with him in March at Ecumenical Advocacy Days.

Ng’ambi: Malawi just got its debt cancellation a few months ago, late last year. And people now are happy, but the biggest thing they are asking themselves is, “How do we make the maximum benefit out of the debt cancellation?” Already the money that has been freed is going to promote access to education by children, students. They are going to hire doctors, they are going to hire nurses - if that will be allowed by the conditionalities set by the IMF.

Because the IMF says, for example, do not employ new personnel, do not increase the [government’s] wage bill. Now the people in Malawi - that is, government, civil society, donors, and especially the churches - have to come in to support the government on how make sure that this money is budgeted properly.

Sojourners: So there is an ongoing threat that the IMF program officer to Malawi might say “no, your budget is too large”?

Ng’ambi: Yes, because these things were signed in what they call the “letter of intent.” It was signed there [recently]. After 1980, when you have been going through the conditionalities, people have seen on the ground that conditionalities have not been good. They have always brought negative impact. So that means now with the money freed [by debt cancellation], the civil society, the government, have to approach the IMF, and discuss with them to say, how can we now use this money to inject into education, health, and agriculture? They must enter some form of dialogue, looking at the conditionalities set, because we need nurses, we need medical doctors.

I think many of our readers will be shocked that there even has to be a dialogue with the IMF - that although a country has the money and wants to spend it on teachers, you have to argue the IMF into letting you hire them.

Yes, that’s the fact in southern Africa, most of the national budgets in southern Africa have to have some form of approval of the IMF. And even sometimes it’s even prior to the parliament discussing that particular budget. Why? Because they have to look at some of the macro conditionalities.

You know, it’s a big problem. It dehumanizes, it actually leaves the government powerless, because they cannot make decisions in the way they want. They always have to go back to the drawing table. A budget is supposed to be an internal issue, not necessarily involving other people outside. But because of the conditionalities, the macro-policies … development in our countries has been left in the hands of the IMF and the World Bank. And that is not right in any way.

What gives you hope for the future?

There’s a lot of hope. First of all, what gives us hope is that we are not fighting on our own, southern countries only. We have got like-minded people in the north who are thinking like us. And that is a very powerful tool to use, because you are in a better position whereby you can lobby governments in the north.

Secondly, we are hopeful because the world is becoming smaller and smaller. Problems in the south are being heard in the north. Civil society in the south is being linked to civil society in the north. We can exchange views, we can exchange ideas, we can even share strategy on how to actually solve something. Another thing is that we are now one big Christian community. We pray together.

The body of Christ.

The body of Christ. In the south we are praying, in the north we are praying. So all over, we are praying over the same issue, and that gives us hope.


Francis Ng’ambi is Budget Monitoring Officer at the Economic Justice Network of the Fellowship of Christian Councils in Southern Africa.

Last week I watched The Passion of the Christ - it was my third time watching the film. Each time I watch the film a different facet of the suffering of Christ is revealed to me. This time I watched it in the context of Zimbabwe, a country that is being beaten and brutalized by its leaders in their quest for ultimate power.

What more can one say in the face of ongoing suppression of opposition, harassment, and violent treatment of those who seek justice and a collapse of the economy with an inflation of 2700%? Every item of news and story feels like a lashing and beating and it just goes on and on. As I watched the film, the suffering of Jesus merged with the sufferings in Zimbabwe, and then when all seemed lost and hopeless, the resurrection brought in the first sign of hope against all probabilities.

After the film, we discussed hope as something that does not ignore suffering but arises in the midst of suffering. It is clear to all that the current government is responsible for the crisis in the country and that for progress there needs to be democracy, free elections, and new leadership - but the journey to this is not clear. However, we know from history, especially in Africa, that replacing leaders is no guarantee of democracy. What is next for us?

There are many who are doing their part, faithfully working here in South Africa and sending their earnings to Zimbabwe to support families. Others are involved in civic societies to bring awareness. Others are giving to those in need, and some are praying. Many have accused Zimbabweans of apathy, but I have yet to meet anyone who is not doing something to help their relatives or involved in some form of justice-making. Yet these good works are limited by the lack of a "clearly defined and articulated unifying dream," and leadership that grips the soul and imaginations of people and inspires hope and justice for a truly new Zimbabwe for all.

Pray for us that we as Christians, the people of the resurrection, may participate in the creation of new thoughts, dreams, and visions for Zimbabwe.


Nontando Hadebe, a former Sojourners intern, is originally from Zimbabwe and is now pursuing graduate studies in theology in South Africa.

President Bush is finishing a trip to Latin America - a trip that the White House has billed as advancing "the cause of social justice in Latin America."

From the rhetoric, you'd think that the president has finally recognized that poverty and inequality are the central issues in Latin America; that it is not free trade that we should be concerned about, nor Hugo Chavez, nor coca eradication, but rather the poverty that has persisted through more than a decade of "Washington Consensus" economic policies.

These economic policies, promoted by successive U.S. administrations, and by the World Bank and other lending institutions, focused on expanding markets, reducing the role of the state in the economy, encouraging exports, and opening Latin American economies to U.S. imports. Unfortunately, these policies have had almost no impact on poverty or the unequal distribution of wealth.

Latin American social movements, and governments throughout the region, have rejected these policies and have begun to explore other approaches. Their ideas vary - from the modest reforms of Michelle Bachelet in Chile to the "21st Century Socialism” of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez - but all these parties and social movements are trying to find new ways to address the problems of poverty and inequality.

Concerned that the region is turning away from the United States, the president has now jumped on the bandwagon, at least rhetorically.

But there's less here than meets the eye. The Bush administration hopes to woo the people and governments of Latin America with sweet talk, but with little change in its policies. The president visited Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico with very little to offer to advance social justice. His budget for fiscal year 2008 cut development assistance and child survival and health funds, while maintaining high spending military and security levels for countries like Colombia. He argued that free trade agreements were the best way to reduce poverty. His new initiatives - sending a medical ship to offer some free treatment, providing scholarships for Latin American students - are nice gestures, but don't involve substantial amounts of money.

If the United States really wants to rebuild its relationship with Latin America, it will have to take some serious steps to address Latin America's real problems, not just offer old policies in new rhetorical boxes.

Geoff Thale is program director and senior associate for Cuba and Central America for the Washington Office on Latin America.

In a meeting of religious leaders this week with a number of U.S. senators, one senator opened the meeting by saying, we agree with you that budgets are moral documents, and that’s what we want to talk about today.

As Congress begins this year’s budget debate, we reminded the senators that for years the faith community has fought bad budget priorities, trying to preserve commitments to the poorest. We know that what is needed is a vast re-prioritization of people, especially poor and working families, children, and the elderly. We need bold leadership and an agenda that sets clear priorities and seeks to empower families. We need to protect critical programs and increase aid, but also recommit ourselves to the notion of the common good.

Our country is off track, and security – national and economic – is in jeopardy. President Bush seems not to be paying attention. By ignoring the common good, his fiscal year 2008 budget misses an opportunity to correct the course. The new Democratic leadership in Congress has its chance to create a budget that redefines notions of opportunity, fairness, and security. This requires protecting existing supports, but also linking those commitments to a vision for more just public policy goals. A moral budget is the first step, one that should be followed by bold legislative agendas.

President Bush’s budget seeks more tax cuts for the rich. This represents misguided priorities, but also missed opportunities to help the working poor. When the minimum wage is increased that will be one step toward making work “work.” But low-income tax policies (increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), expanding the Child Care Tax Credit) will help working families even more. Our nation needs a commitment to a living family income, in which a combination of a family's earnings and supports for basic needs provide a decent standard of living. Those unable to work should be supported with dignity.

President Bush’s budget ignores the energy and creative thinking in the states about child health care and universal care. Instead of cutting Medicaid and Medicare, these supports should be strengthened. Further, child health care should be expanded to reach all eligible children as step one of a bold commitment to reduce child poverty by half over the next 10 years.

And how can the president propose to cut food stamps yet again when it is one of the most important and efficient tools for supporting low-income children, working families, the elderly, and the disabled? Congress should improve the food stamp program as part of the Farm Bill so that all eligible families receive increased support.

Many of President Bush’s programs to reduce international hunger and poverty should be supported. And Congress can help the common good more by reauthorizing the Farm Bill to uphold fair international trade rules and improve nutrition supports. Support for the Millennium Development Goals is also critical. These are down payments on eliminating extreme global poverty.

Our nation needs the affirmation that budgets are moral documents, but also that leaders are willing to commit to a vision of recovering some of our nation’s greatness. We must hear the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967, and think about the realities and ramifications of the war in Iraq: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

We need moral budgets, and we need vision for economic justice. We call on the new Congress to change course. Show that you care about people in this country by securing priorities and pursuing vision. Let your actions speak as loud as your words, and the faith community will stand with you – and help hold you accountable.