Information about the 2012 Offering of Letters

As the memory of some of us is long enough to remember, Ardmore Presbyterian Church has a history of fighting hunger, including the work of the Hunger Task Force, going back to the 1970s, and a relationship with Bread for the World, during those years.  This year, the Christian anti-hunger advocacy organization Bread for the World again offers an Offering of Letters topic, about which church members are encouraged to write to Congress, and the topic is to continue to call for a “Circle of Protection” around the vulnerable people who would be most hurt by budget cuts that have been proposed; but it is also a first-year sort of Offering of Letters, as it has four mini-campaigns, in a potentially busy year of Congress:  protecting U.S. nutrition programs; continuing improvements to the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit; protecting food aid to places of extreme need in the world; letting poverty-focused development assistance be effective in developing nations.

With Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania on the Senate Agriculture Committee, we here have a member of Congress, who is in a position to make a difference in a couple of these areas, and we, constituents, have a responsibility to hold him accountable, but we have other members of Congress, too, and we should be encouraged to write to all of them.

Next week [on Sunday, February 5], there will be an Offering of Letters table, here at Ardmore Presbyterian Church, appropriately on Souper Bowl of Caring Sunday, and I am going to suggest that we consider writing letters about federal nutrition programs.  These include SNAP (Food Stamps) and WIC.  These are vital programs, when someone hits a rough patch in their life, such as a job loss.  Think of some of the families that are housed temporarily in the churches of the Main Line IHN, or some of the people who may be served by our church food cupboard.

Our church is already helping, but the work of charitable efforts must be accompanied by federal efforts, as well.  A small cut to SNAP (Food Stamp) benefits would rival the amount of emergency food handled by Feeding America, the nation’s food bank network.

You can write a letter to a Senator or Representative next week [Sunday, February 5], during the soup luncheon after church.  May the letters be an offering to God, not of money, but of our voices.  This is what can make our campaign unique and powerful.  Please join me and other Christians to expand the Circle of Protection around programs that are vital to hungry people at home or abroad.

Rev. Schaunel Steinnagel

Hunger Action Enabler, Philadelphia Presbytery