PHEWA
urges denomination to fight poverty, suffering,
injustice
Conference focuses on poor children living in a
wealthy nation
by Evan Silverstein, PNS
[1-31-01]
| The PHEWA gathering also dealt
with issues like the
current "prioritization" of budget, and more. |
NASHVILLE, TN -- 30-January-2001 -- Katie Donley has
seen the poverty, hunger and destitution that torment so many American
children today.
Donley, a college junior who co-directs a Presbyterian
campus ministry program, wants to do more to improve the lives of needy
children.
That's why she was one of about 210 people who showed
up on Jan. 25 for the start of the four-day 2001 conference of the
Presbyterian Health, Education and Welfare Association (PHEWA), a
45-year-old voluntary organization for Presbyterians that is dedicated
to social justice and the alleviation of poverty.
Donley, who majors in political science and history,
has a special interest in child advocacy. She volunteered recently in a
federal Head Start program that helped feed children in a poor rural
community in the Blue Ridge Mountains in southwestern Virginia.
"I couldn't believe what I saw there, the
poverty," said Donley, 20, who attends Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State University in Blacksburg, VA. "The children,
how much they got out of the program, and how much it meant to them. The
changes that it provided them. It was incredible."
Many of the conference participants were members of
the 10 social-welfare ministry networks that make up PHEWA, which
endeavors to make the Presbyterian Church (USA) more responsive to
people who are suffering. A new group, the Presbyterian Anti-Violence
Network, is coming together now and expects to begin operating soon.
"The children, most of them only have one-parent
families with very, very low paying jobs," Donley said of the kids
in the Head Start program in Shawsville, VA. "Some of them come
from families who abuse them. Some of them have parents in jail. Just
all of these situations that I had never really recognized. ... It
really touched me. I think it's so important."
The people on hand for the biennial conference at
Lowes Vanderbilt Plaza Hotel examined social concerns ranging from
domestic violence to mental illness and AIDS. They did so through
networking, workshops, lectures, mission-site visits and spirited
worship services during the event, whose theme was A Little Child Shall
Lead Them (Isaiah 11:6).
The PHEWA gathering also included a send-off for David
L. Zuverink, associate for the PC(USA) Health Ministries office, who
retires next month; the presentation of the association's two major
awards; a service of remembrance presented by the Presbyterian AIDS
Network; worship with the Rev. Douglas Oldenburg, a former General
Assembly moderator; and the election of new officers to head PHEWA. (See
related story, note 6359.)
"These are folks ... who are out in the trenches,
really doing the work of justice," said the Rev. Nancy K. Troy,
PHEWA's executive director. "This is really an opportunity for them
to greet old friends, to meet new friends and to get a little relaxation
and revitalization for the ministry that they have."
Participants in the conference were both enlightened
and entertained by the Rev. Eugene Lowry, a Methodist minister, who
skillfully moved from conversation to piano as he told the story of
Christianity and Jazz.
"Jazz is the music of freedom," he said,
"because it's caught between pain and grace. Inside you, you can
feel the pain and grace rumbling around. "
The conference theme was chosen in keeping with the
PC(USA)'s Year of the Child emphasis; participants brainstormed for ways
the church could help solve the problems afflicting children today.
PHEWA officials said that 25 percent of U.S. children
were born poor, and 20 percent are poor today. One of every 12 has a
disability. One of every seven has no health insurance. Half live in
single-parent families for at least part of their childhoods. Half are
born to unmarried parents.
Because of these problems, many children find
themselves alone and in trouble.
"Today in America, 4,600 children are going to
sleep in adult prisons," said the plenary speaker, the Rev. Eileen
Lindner, of Tenafly, NJ.
"Why a Year of the Child?" she asked
rhetorically, citing President George W. Bush's education-reform promise
to "Leave No Child Behind."
"Now it is time to measure that goal. Now it is
time to see whether there will be children left behind," said
Lindner, a Presbyterian minister who is a former director of the Child
Advocacy Office of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the
USA.
To take such a measure, Lindner said, one must
"see if more money goes to prenatal care," survey
childhood-education (programs) and the juvenile justice system, look at
teenage pregnancy prevention programs, consider drug abuse and
treatment.
"It is time to measure that resolve and see where
we are," she said. "We have come to the point in our lives,
the longest, strongest economic recovery in national history, and still,
children are getting poorer. So it is time."
Earlier, a large quilt stitched by Indiana
"fabric artist" Penny Sisto had been unveiled. It served as
the official conference banner and as a backdrop for speakers in the
Centennial Ballroom, the event's main venue. The quilt's embroidered
letters spell out: "What Does God Require Of Us?" (Micah 6-8).
Its central figure is a small boy holding in his tiny hands the
"weight of the world." The child is depicted emerging in light
streaming from a sun that shines through storm clouds. Feathers around
the edges represent the outreach of the church to the elderly, the poor,
the newborn, the disabled.
"PHEWA, I think they have a unique place in the
church now," said the Rev. Curtis Kearns Jr., director of PC(USA)'s
National Ministries Division, of which PHEWA is a part. "I don't
know of any other group we have that is specifically concerned with the
social and the welfare issues of the day. I think this is a special
group."
PHEWA also provides support, training and resources to
individuals, congregations and middle governing bodies involved in
social welfare and justice ministries. It is organized into 10 networks,
soon to be 11, -- to accomplish its work.
Among the PHEWA networks are: Community Ministries and
Neighborhood Organizations (COMANO); the Presbyterian Aids Network
(PAN); Presbyterians Affirming Reproductive Options (PARO); the
Presbyterian Child Advocacy Network (PCAN) and the Presbyterian Serious
Mental Illness Network (PSMIN).
"The needs of the people continue," said the
Rev. Syngman Rhee, the General Assembly moderator, who joined Kearns in
addressing the group. "The church's ministry, therefore, is of
continual importance in our personal life, in our society; and that is
certainly part of the ministry in which we belong. The different
programs that are represented at this gathering are therefore an
important part of what churches do ... (and of) who we are as
Presbyterians."
PHEWA has an unquestionable impact on the church,
according to a founding member of the Presbyterian Health Network.
"We're doing so much more than was done
before," said Jack Robertson of Richardson, TX, a physician and
retired Presbyterian minister. "We have a presence in the church
now that we never had before."
Robertson said networks such as PHN, PAN and PARO do a
bang-up job of health advocacy and of providing resources to the church
and encouraging Presbyterians to support healthy lifestyles and health
ministries.
He said a growing system of parish nurses, most of
them volunteers, has helped numerous congregations establish health
ministries, and legislation approved by the GA in the late 1980s has
opened the door to church-wide awareness of health-related issues.
"The church should begin to become a place of
healing," Robertson said. "We used to be, back when medicine
was pretty crude."
Kimberly Cunningham, a Presbyterian from Dubuque, IA,
who said PHEWA-related health ministries and justice programs are
"impressive," pressed for more efforts to get clergy and
congregations to face up to society's ills.
"It's very important for ministers to understand
things like this," said Cunningham, who is active in Habitat for
Humanity and has worked as a volunteer for an Iowa Hospice. "This
is what's happening out in the congregations. This is what these people
sitting in the pews on Sunday mornings are facing. We need to be
sensitive to this. We need to know how to spot it and ... how to respond
when a woman comes in (to church) and says 'I'm being beaten by my
husband, but it looks to me like the Bible says that I'm stuck with
him.' It's very important to be able to identify with that, and know
what to do, and know what to say."
