Late last October, just before the mid-term elections, the United Church of Christ's Justice and Witness Ministries issued an "Action Alert" calling for the U.N. to send Peace Keepers to Sudan by encouraging people to pressure the U.S. government via an email. The logic? According to the alert, "It is time for the United States to take the lead in pressuring the Sudanese government to end the violence and allow desperately needed humanitarian aid to reach civilians."
Today, the U.N. Human Rights Council rejected a proposal to hold the Sudanese government responsible for halting atrocities in Darfur. As the Associated Press reports, "the council, which took over from the discredited U.N. Human Rights Commission June, is dominated by African and Muslim countries that have sided with China, Cuba and other countries in preventing criticism of any government but Israel."
Make a mental note of that: China and Cuba, not the U.S., prevented the resolution from going forward. Instead of actually doing the right thing by leveraging the resources of the National Council of Churches and our ecumenical partners overseas to apply pressure to the countries blocking progress on the Sudan crisis, the UCC chose to play politics just before an election by suggesting that the U.S. was not taking the lead on Sudan.
OK, we get it. The UCC's Justice and Witness Ministries doesn't like the Bush administration... but is that worth dangling the lives of hundreds of thousands of people? As UCC members, do we really want to support these games?
The UCC's "Action Alert makes it clear that neither Justice and Witness Ministries nor it's Executive Minister, Linda Jaramillo, is really being serious about Sudan. Justice and Witness Ministries exists, in great part, by money raised by Our Churches Wider Ministries (OCWM) which receives it's resources from the generosity of UCC members. It would be too easy to tell other UCC members not to contribute money, but most churches barely contribute today. By the UCC's own numbers, less than 1% of churches give 10% or more of their current operating expenses to Our Church’s Wider Mission Basic Support. Encouraging people not to contribute to OCWM would literally be "preaching to the choir".
So what should you do?
Talk about it with other church members and educate them about the difference between political games and the real work of justice.
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