Action on MLK Day

I have spent my whole life working in soup kitchens and food pantries, building houses for Habitat for Humanity, running tutoring programs, and volunteering at homeless shelters. There is no question that Jesus asks us to care for the most vulnerable among us and so I respond. Even as I do the work, however, I always pray for the day when charity will end. Charity will end when - as an American people - we finally choose to take responsibility for the poor, the sick, and mentally ill in ways that accord full respect to the basic needs and human dignity of all people.
On Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Day - January 21 - I want to encourage you to resist the pleas to do charitable service and take up the banner of action instead. King was not an advocate for more feeding programs. He worked tirelessly for changes to our laws that would create a more just order where feeding programs would not be so necessary. He worked to created the conditions where all people could exercise self-determination and self-sufficiency, for themselves, their families, and their neighborhoods.

This is why St. Martin’s is inviting our members to participate in actions on King Day that look forward to a future of economic justice. You will see the invitation below. I encourage you to begin with worship at the Unitarian Society of Germantown. Worshipping together with people from across the Northwest is an action that speaks of solidarity and equality. Recently I worshipped on Christmas morning with my wife’s congregation which is from all over the world - Africa, Asia, Latin America, India, Europe, and North America. I was inspired to see the real complexion of Christ’s diverse body and reminded of the poverty of worshipping only in a homogenous group.

Next you will have a chance to join me at the McDonald’s near Chelten and Germantown Avenue to advocate for a living wage in the state of Pennsylvania. Structurally, our economy will never reach full employment, and left to itself it will not produce enough living-wage jobs. We must intervene as citizens for a more equal distribution of wages.
Finally, you are invited to a People’s Assembly with POWER to discuss and vote on an agenda for social justice for our region. We will gather as citizens and people of faith to advance a vision of a more just order in education, environment, economic dignity, and racial justice. Our Beloved Community work calls us to cross racial divides, shed our white privilege, and engage with our neighbors on an equal footing. POWER assemblies provide the rare place of that engagement. I encourage you to attend.

Blessings,
The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Rector

MONDAY, JANUARY 21- MLK DAY OF ACTION

Partnering with POWER Philadelphia

We encourage you to choose one or all of these events to attend.

9 a.m. - Sermon by the Rev. Greg Holston
Germantown Unitarian Society, 6511 Lincoln Drive, Philadelphia
This is a non-denominational worship service focusing on Rev. Dr. King’s life and accomplishments led by the Rev. Kent Matthies with preaching by the Rev. Greg Holston, Executive Director of POWER. The service will be held at Unitarian Society of Germantown, 6511 Lincoln Drive. The parking lot GPS address is 359 W Johnson Street Coffee and bagels will be served beginning at 8:00. They expect a crowd, so get there early to get a seat.

11:30 a.m. - Raise the Wage rally
Outside of McDonald’s located at 29 E. Chelten Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19144
Last year a rally was held in front of CVS on MLK Day. This was one of the actions that led CVS to increase wages to $11 an hour in April 2018. St. Martin’s Deacon, Carol Duncan is particularly interested in this action. Fast food workers are often vulnerable to poor working conditions. Their hard work is often unrecognized and little rewarded. The rally is organized by Economic Dignity team of POWER with Sen. Art Haywood and Rev. Kent Matthies. It’s really POWER’s Northwest community’s MLK Day expression. You will hear that PA has the lowest possible minimum wage, and that ALL surrounding states have a higher wage. This is an action to respect the dignity of the workers and show them their neighbors support their efforts to improve their lives.Learn more, get updates, and share.

1:00 p.m. - MLK Day Teach-In & Rally
Bible Way Baptist Church, 1323 N. 52nd St., Philadelphia, PA
This is the main POWER event of the day, the People’s Platform event. Attenders will contribute to an electoral platform that will build a better Philadelphia and hold our elected officials accountable. Get directions. Learn more, get updates, and share.

Associate Rector's Note: Sustained Advocacy Training

On Saturday October 13^th, we are sponsoring a Sustained Advocacy Training day here at St. Martin’s. Spearheaded by the Climate Action Team in partnership with Pennsylvania Interfaith Power & Light, this is an opportunity to learn how to become active in advocating for social justice issues. While this session is dedicated to climate change, the tips and teachings can be utilized for any issue that you feel strongly about but aren’t sure how to become involved in making a difference.

When we care about something deeply but feel unable to act, we can become despondent or depressed. Many people find that even small actions help them engage with the world in a more positive manner because they are acting rather than sitting by silently (or not so silently).

The last few weeks, our lectionary reading cycle has taken us on a journey through the book of James. As I reread the book, this verse stood out to me, “You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works,” (2:22). James is referencing the story of Abraham obeying God’s command to take his son Isaac up the mountain and sacrifice him.

What is the relationship between faith and works that James is referencing? The apostle Paul also addressed faith and works, but he did so in the context of obeying Jewish law. James is focusing on everyday interactions rather than the legal requirements of religious tradition.

If we go back to the verse above, I begin to wonder, does this mean that faith can only be complete when works happen? The integration of our faith with our actions is an essential step in our journey of faith. In the education world we would call this praxis. No matter how much time we spend talking, writing, thinking, about our faith, praxis is the key to truly learning. There is a Chinese proverb that I used to reference when I was working the in the experiential education field: “I hear, and I forget/I see, and I remember/I do, and I understand.” Maybe James would modify it to be, “I hear and I forget, I see, and I remember, I do and my faith is complete.”

The question I ask is: what does it take for us to act on our faith? What is the catalyst? For each and every one of us, it will be different. Perhaps it is day-to-day interactions that are the focal point, or perhaps there is a Chinook wind that sweeps in one day, pushing us forward into a new way of being. Regardless of what the catalyst may be James is teaching us that we must be intentional about living out our faith through our actions.

God calls us to create God’s kingdom here on this earth, in the here and the now. In what way do you see yourself advocating for this kingdom? Perhaps it is climate change or refugee resettlement or food access or education. 

This advocacy training is a wonderful opportunity to learn the tools to put your faith in action. I’ll be there on October 13^th. Join me!

Blessings,
The Rev. Anne Thatcher

Celebrating Success, Deepening Faith

One phrase stood out for me at POWER’s celebration of the passage of Issue 1. Bishop Royster, reflecting on what we had accomplished, said “Every phone number dialed, every door knocked was a prayer for the well-being of the city.” That helped me make faith-sense of the work we have done. It felt like one wrong number after another, but it resulted in making a real change in the city.

Councilman Goode spoke at the celebration about the campaign as an expression of his faith life. His family had been sharecroppers, he told us, and since that beginning he has wanted to lift all people out of grinding poverty. In 2000, he was (and still is) the youngest council-at-large representative on city council. He has worked toward raising the minimum wage from his first months in office. The arrest of a cousin on a drug charge deepened his resolve to improve living conditions. He told us when police informed him in 2005 they were arresting his cousin, he shut himself away for two weeks until he had framed a resolution about raising the minimum wage for city workers. He returned to council and introduced the bill without consulting any other council members. When the resolution passed unanimously he interpreted it as a sign he was doing God’s will. He first aligned with Acorn to support the effort, but they fell away. He has not felt so sustained and strengthened until POWER backed his work. It has been a faith journey for him, he said, as though he were just realizing it.

POWER has become a significant part of my faith journey also. Discovering and building relationships with people from many denominations and faiths has deepened and inspired my experience of worship. I have learned to address God, at least in spoken prayer, as Holy One or Creator God. God is One and is known to all participants in POWER. Also POWER worship tends to be joyous and responsive more than formal and reserved. Plus it is strongly incarnational. We did an exercise to discover our own strength by being invited by Bishop Royster – who is a very substantial man – to join together to physically move him from his chosen position. It took probably 15 of us to move him, showing the difficulty but also the possibility to make change. Coming to know people across so many boundaries enriches my life and my faith. POWER’s mode of operation is to help all its participants strengthen their leadership abilities. POWER staff and colleagues support and encourage us to take the next step, dare the next challenge. We learn community organizing as relationship building. Jarrett points out that God, by God’s own triune nature, is relational. We are imitators of God in POWER, although I’ve never heard anyone express it that way.

I hope all who joined in the campaign to pass Issue 1 had something of this experience. The next step is to achieve a full, fair funding formula for all public schools in the state. We will be partnering with other organizations, researching what other states have done, learning about how schools function now and how they can improve. I invite anyone interested in children and education to join us after SUPPER at St. Martin's on June 25 to talk about your POWER experience in the Voter Engagement Project and to hear what is happening next.

- The Rev. Carol Duncan

Read about the May 20, 2014 Ballot Question #1

Learn more about POWER's Education Funding plan

Catching Up with POWER

On October 9th, St. Martin's hosted three “house meetings” to explain the current priorities of POWER – Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower, and Rebuild. All POWER congregations are holding house meetings in October, most in members’ homes. We decided to make the gatherings easier by holding them after one of our wonderful SUPPERs.

We began by showing this video created by POWER to illustrate its analysis of the state of the city. That video can be seen on St. Martin’s website in case you missed it. However, the video throws out so many statistics in a rushed voice that it is hard to catch. Here is a recap.

A prevalent myth is that Philadelphia and PA are broke, forcing us to close schools and pay poverty wages. However, tax breaks for corporations operating in PA have more than tripled, from $850,000 in 2003 to $3,200,000,000 in 2013. In 2010, 73% of corporations paid no corporate income tax. A good example is Comcast. After spending $140,789 in lobbying efforts in Philadelphia, Comcast received $30,000,000 of property tax abatements over five years, in addition to $42,750,000 in state grants and assistance. In 2011, Comcast made $55,000,000,000 in profits.

At the Philadelphia Airport, where POWER concentrated its efforts all last year, US Airways paid $166,485 in lobbying efforts while its earnings jumped to $637 million in 2012. The CEO of US Airways received a 44 percent increase in compensation to $5.5 million last year. Meanwhile, more than 20% of US Airways staff at the airport reported going hungry within the last year. 75% had difficulty paying bills. 97% received no paid sick days. A significant number rely on food stamps.

The number of Philadelphians at or below the poverty line is 40%; a doubling in the last six years. Philadelphia has the highest level of severe poverty among the nation’s ten largest cities. Poverty-wage jobs often lack basic support structures like paid sick leave, time off, and health benefits. Among workers of color, the rate of poverty is twice as high. Even in the suburbs, poverty rates have grown by 40% in the last decade. For these reasons, creating jobs with a living wage is one of POWER’s two main concerns.

POWER's other main goal is improving public education. Lawmakers, lobbied by corporations, have consistently underfunded Pennsylvania’s schools. We are one of only three states that lack a fair funding formula. An article about this was written in The Atlantic, and can be read here or on St. Martin's Facebook page.  476 of 500 school districts in Pennsylvania were underfunded in 2006 even before Governor Corbett cut $1,000,000,000 from the education budget.  While education is reduced, the prison budget has doubled over the last decade. A good example is $400,000,000 for a new prison just outside the city.

Jim Wallace of Sojourners magazine asserts that public budgets are moral documents. We, the tax payers, are complicit in what these budgets say. The city owns the airport and all its public projects. The city allows subcontracted labor on city projects to be paid lower than the minimum wage without benefits.

POWER is working on a campaign to pass an initiative on the May ballot to correct this practice. POWER is also working to achieve a fair funding formula for our schools. Watch the video on the website. Help POWER accomplish its goals.

- The Rev. Carol Duncan

Christianity and the Economy

After many years of thought and reflection about the matter I have come down to the following beliefs about the economy based on my faith, experience, and reason.  Our members often look for guidance on issues of economic justice and this is a distillation of my position.

1. Capitalism is both extremely productive and destructive at the same time.
2. It is also the best system we have. Command and control economies just don't work, suffering from both political evils and deadly hubris.
3. Human dignity requires freedom, risk, reward and consequences which are virtues that capitalism supports.
4. Human dignity requires community as well. Unrestrained capitalism is corrosive of community and heedless of the common good.
5. Racism, historic and current, has created systemic disadvantages for people of color.  This injustice requires rectification and sacrifice on the part of people of class and race privilege.
6. If we accept the benefits of capitalism we must also accept responsibility for its permanent downside - unemployment never below 5% (and often much higher), massive displacement, destruction and transition of the workforce on a regular basis, and growing income inequality.
7. Therefore our Government - because charity at 2% of GDP cannot even approach its ability to aggregate resources - must work to restrain our worst impulses and moderate the effects of capitalism for the unemployed and the unemployable. A goal should be a broad and stable middle class of folks earning between $50k and $120 per year to ensure a stable democracy and general prosperity.
8. Therefore those with more than enough must give more to rectify the imbalance through taxes,  and charitable gifts of money, skills and time.
9. If your 'more than enough', seems like 'never enough', get your house in order.

To see an excellent treatment of this topic read "The Life You Can Save" by Peter Singer.

Also, in preparation for my Sunday forum: 1% Revolution, check out these videos on YouTube by Peter Singer and Dan Pallotta. They're too long to share in whole at forum, but well worth the watch for sake of discussion.

Thanks for watching!

- The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel