Convocation on Hunger

The Washington National Cathedral was full on a Monday night. More than 1,000 people of faith had gathered for a convocation focused on the world's hungry people - at home and around the globe - sponsored by America's Second Harvest, Bread for the World, Call to Renewal, and the Interfaith Anti-Hunger Coordinators. An amazing procession of religious leaders from almost every major faith tradition in America led the service. Evangelical leaders stood beside heads of mainline Protestant denominations, a Catholic cardinal, bishops from the historic Black churches, Jewish rabbis, and Muslim imams. The main homilist, Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town, South Africa, noted the moral convergence of such a wide spectrum of American religious life and pronounced this a "kairos" moment - when regular time ("kronos") gives way to a spirit-filled moment in history and a new sense of time takes over.

The massive reality of global hunger and poverty has revealed our own spiritual poverty and is bringing us together. The religious leaders gathered at Washington's National Cathedral also have different political views. But maybe soon overcoming poverty could become a bipartisan issue and a nonpartisan cause. That same day, I received a powerfully persuasive message from evangelical leader Rick Warren, who urged his entire e-mail list to join the 800,000 people who have signed on to the ONE campaign to overcome poverty, alongside sponsors such as World Vision, Bread for the World, Sojourners, and U2's Bono.

The next day, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was in Washington, D.C., to meet with President George W. Bush, primarily to discuss the goals for the upcoming G8 meeting for heads of state planned for Gleneagles, Scotland, in early July. During his packed one-day schedule, Blair asked to meet with a small group of religious leaders to discuss the issues involved in the G8 Summit, especially with regard to Africa - which he has described as "the fundamental moral challenge of our time." Some of the same people from the night before gathered again for the hour-long meeting with the British leader whose country will be hosting the crucial international gathering in just three weeks.

We noted the diversity of religious leaders and traditions sitting around the table, including Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago, Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of the Catholic Bishops Conference, Bishop John Chane of the Episcopal Church, and Bob Edgar of the National Council of Churches. From the Southern Baptist leader to the Muslim imam, we each expressed a real hope that something very new and powerful might come out of our common resolve.

We spoke of how for the first time the world has the knowledge, information, technology, and resources to substantially end extreme poverty as we know it, but that what is still lacking is the moral and political will to do so. And we agreed that to generate such moral will is part of the job of the religious community. We thanked Mr. Blair for the leadership that the British government, under he and British Chancellor Gordon Brown, is taking and offered both our support and readiness to say to ourselves and all our political leaders that in light of the growing crises of global poverty, disease, and conflict, we all must do much more.

The goals for the G8 Summit are clear: to come to an agreement on 100% debt cancellation for as many of the world's poorest nations as possible, and to substantially increase the wealthy nations' contribution to relieving the crises of hunger and disease, especially HIV/AIDS, and most urgently in Africa. Movement toward fair and just trade to allow poor nations to better lift themselves out of poverty is also a goal for many. News reports indicated that Mr. Blair was in Washington to encourage the Bush administration to take a stronger leadership role in accomplishing these goals.

The day after the Blair meeting, Sojourners' organizer Adam Taylor left for London to finish planning for a church leaders forum we are co-sponsoring with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who will host the day-long gathering for U.S. and U.K. church and agency leaders at Lambeth Palace on the eve of the critical G8 meeting. In September, more plans are under way for religious leaders and congregations across the nation to focus on an important U.N. Special Session to assess the progress of the Millennium Development Goals, which have been signed by 147 countries (including the U.S.) and aim to cut extreme poverty by half over 15 years.

All these efforts are being undertaken to bring the religious community's moral energy and agency to bear on the world's pre-eminent moral issue. Despite our many deep and sometimes painful divisions, the growing crisis of the world's most vulnerable people is serving to bring many of us together. And that is a sign of hope in a world that desperately needs some right now.