The General Assembly leaders meeting to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions of the budget are working with two deeply flawed proposals. As our friend Chris Fitzsimon at NC Policy Watch explains, the plans range from spiteful to dishonest. He writes in part: Senate leaders included breathtakingly bad policy decisions in their budget including one provision taking food benefits fully funded by the federal government away from 133,000 people and another that bans wind farms in the state. The already bad Senate plan was made even worse in…
Now what? Staying Engaged and Grow the Interfaith Climate Movement
We were already living in a time of profound consequence. President Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement means that while the needs of our endangered climate are increasing, the response to global warming is diminishing at the national level. Our actions now, as climate conscious people of faith, matter more than ever. There are a few things you can do right now to help maximize our collective impact as North Carolina’s statewide multi-faith network committed to addressing climate change as a moral issue: Engage your interfaith climate conscious…
2018 Budget Proposal is the Antithesis of our Call
Plenty of analysis is already happening around the 2018 budget proposal out of the White House. The Washington Post provides two helpful graphics here and here. More is being written than most of us can fully absorb, but Politico offers a key observation: On close reading, the budget is less a credible attempt to eliminate, or even pay down, the U.S. debt and more an ideological policy agenda disguised as a program of fiscal responsibility. If the proposal is, as such plans are often described, a place to begin discussion…
For Children, It’s Good News and Bad News from the GA
Last week was a mixed bag for children and youth in terms of activity at the General Assembly. Among accomplishments was further progress on raising the age at which juveniles can be charged as adults in criminal proceedings. North Carolina is the only state where 16- and 17-year-olds are automatically charged as adults. While advocates for children and youth were cheered by the prospect for change in juvenile jurisdiction, the Council and its allies were discouraged and disheartened by a provision in the state Senate’s budget that would cut Supplemental…
Apply for PHW Collaborative by May 31 to be Eligible for June Mini-Grant
The next Partners in Health and Wholeness Mini-grant Cycle will begin June 5. Interested congregations must apply to join the PHW Collaborative (previously PHW Certification) by May 31 to be eligible. Priority is given to projects that address one of PHW’s four cornerstones: healthy eating, physical activity, tobacco prevention and cessation, and mental health. In the past, mini-grants have been used to fund healthy church meals, community garden expansions, cooking demonstrations, exercise classes, supplies for blood pressure checks, and much more. We look forward to hearing all the creative proposals…
Raleigh Report — May 10, 2017
By George Reed, Retired Executive Director [For more information on bills, including committee referrals and re-referrals, texts of bills, procedural histories, and recorded votes, go to the General Assembly website www.ncleg.net.] Newly Introduced Bills EDUCATION Three companion bills would impact food served in schools. H 891, Free Breakfast and Lunch in K-12 Public Schools, would provide funds ($200 million per year) to make free breakfast and free lunch available to all public school students who request it. It would also create a fund to which taxpayers could contribute through a…
Standing on Our Heads
Sermon preached by the Rev. Jennifer Copeland on April 1, 2017 at First United Methodist Church, Mocksville for the Western North Carolina Conference United Methodist Women’s Legislative Day. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the…
If a Budget is a Moral Document, Then What Does this One Preach?
The budget blueprint for 2018 released by President Trump on Thursday cuts a wide swath through programs that serve women, people of color, those of low income (for poor women of color, that would mean the same old same old), the arts, the environment, education, job creation, and science. Couple it with the proposed health plan released by Congress, and it feels like some elected leaders at the federal level want to freeze, starve, poison, under-employ, and un-inspire a significant portion of the country’s population. If a budget is a…
Women and Wages
Remarks delivered by Executive Director Jennifer Copeland at a press conference on fair wages on March 8, 2017. Today is a day without women. Across the world women have been encouraged not to labor, whether for pay or not for pay. We are taking the day off, all on the same day, to demonstrate how much of what happens in the world happens because of women. Several schools have canceled classes because they know their schools cannot function without its women. Good for them, but the truth is, the world…
PHW Launches Collaborative; Certify for 2017
We are pleased to introduce the PHW Collaborative. Mostly, it is a change in the name, so if your congregation has been a part of the Partners in Health and Wholeness Certification Program, you actually already know about the PHW Collaborative. At the heart of it, the program is the same. But words are important. The language we use every day reflects our values and at the North Carolina Council of Churches we make an effort to be very intentional with the language we use. As Partners in Health and Wholeness…
Ethical Debates on Industrial Agriculture
An ethical debate is a bit of a juxtaposition. As we know, ethics are a set of moral principles. It is how we understand right from wrong. So how can what is right and what is wrong be up for debate? In Carl Sigel’s post on the “Caring for Creation” section of the Church of the Nativity webpage he discusses the two main types of ethical practices in the agricultural world. Continuing with the use of Robert Zimdahl’s term “productionist ethic” and Aldo Leopold’s term “land ethic” we place in…
Raleigh Report — February 20, 2017
By George Reed, Retired Executive Director Newly Introduced Bills BUDGET AND TAXES S 75, Constitutional Amendment – Maximum Income Tax Rate of 5.5%. The Constitution currently sets a maximum rate for income tax at 10%. S 75, which would have to be approved by voters, would lower that maximum to 5.5%. (Currently the flat rate for personal income tax is 5.499%.) The practical impact would be to make it virtually impossible, regardless of the state’s financial circumstances, to raise income taxes over the current level or to return to a…
Let’s Keep Marching
At another time in my life, I would not have spent most of Saturday occupying my tiny square of personal space in the heart of Washington DC, literally shoulder to shoulder with a half million others. But there I was, pink hat and all. I chose to be there because my grandmother cleaned other people’s homes and worked in food service in the promise that her two daughters, and then her three granddaughters, would all attend college. I chose to be there because I have raised three brown sons to…
Healthy Churches 2020 National Conference
Pizazz. Laughter. Friends. Singing. These words describe the Healthy Churches 2020 National Conference. But, did you know that a faith and health national conference even exists? Healthy Churches 2020 held its third annual national conference in Charlotte, NC. A Balm in Gilead, a non-profit based out of Virginia organizes this conference. They develop educational and training programs for churches. They mostly meet the needs of African-American and African congregations. Furthermore, they encourage these churches to become community centers. The ultimate goal is to focus on health education and disease prevention….
Pope Francis Advocates for Breastfeeding in Worship
In the past Partners in Health and Wholeness had a program dedicated to helping worshipping communities promote breastfeeding and support breastfeeding mothers. This week, the most prominent religious leader in the world, the Pope, took it a step further. In a homily during a baptism service in the Sistine Chapel, Pope Francis encouraged mothers to feed their babies if they cried, reminding those gathered that Mary would have breastfed Jesus when he was hungry. As a breastfeeding mom and an advocate for health and wholeness, I am excited to see how this pronouncement…