Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is America’s time to gather with friends and family to share a delicious feast. It involves giving thanks for having enough food to eat and having people with whom one can share love, reflections and good company.
One would think that in a country of such enormous abundance and wealth that everyone would be able to share and enjoy plenty on this national holiday. But according to these statistics, nearly one out of every six American families have had trouble getting enough food in recent years. While we can certainly attribute this fact to the recent economic downturn and rising unemployment, this study showed that even before the recession began, more than two-thirds of families with children who were defined as “food insecure” under federal guidelines contained one or more full-time workers. Food banks and meal programs are stretching themselves to the limit to serve more people impacted by increasing hunger in America.
For the last three years, the Lutheran Peace Fellowship has been implementing  the "Lutheran Hunger Volunteer Training and Support Project" to help support and train volunteers in U.S. hunger programs. This project has great potential to help by offering effective support, resources, and workshops to strengthen and expand a crucial element in Lutheran hunger programs: the core volunteers and leaders.
LPF’s expertise in these areas has such respect that in 2009 we were awarded a grant from Wheat Ridge Ministries to support the project. But there is much work still to be done. Please consider making a generous donation to LPF to help us keep this vital project going.

LPF offers the following free online resources to raise awareness of and take action to end hunger in America, and throughout the world:

Hunger Resources

Hunger Awareness Meal - This experiential meal illuminates hunger and poverty in the world.

Hunger advocacy: Here´s how you can make yourself heard, and how to send your message to your representative

Hunger and Development Links

Advocacy Alert: 2012 Farm Bill


This Thanksgiving, LPF is thankful as ever to you, our supporters.  We thought of you when we read this interview with Anne Lamott on her new book "Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Survival Prayers," about asking for guidance, offering gratitude and expressing wonder.  We give thanks for God and for you!

World Day of Prayer and Action for Children observed worldwide on November 20

What if all the religions of the world devoted one day a year to prayers and visible actions to promote the well-being of children? It would make an enormous difference for peace, and send a potent message worldwide.

This international movement is already happening! In 2008, Arigatou International launched the World Day of Prayer and Action for Children. Every November 20, people of faith and secular partners organize a community festival at a house of worship or public place. They follow up with a concrete project that will improve the lives of children in their area.

In 2009, more than 9,000 people in 22 countries took part. In 2010, more than 36,500 people joined in from 48 countries! Stopping violence against children was the World Day's campaign for 2011-2013. A guide to positive parenting and non-violent discipline will soon be released. See www.dayofprayerandaction.org for more info.

World Day Convening Chair Kul Gautam gives a video message. He is standing at the UN Assembly Building in New York City, in front of a monument to non-violence donated by Luxembourg.

UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake says, "Peace and security are the foundation of a world fit for children. Wars not only kill children, they breed disease and destroy economic hope. And in the end, real peace is not found in a piece of diplomatic paper. It is found in the secure and healthy lives of girls and boys." Mr. Lake played a key part in shaping policies that led to peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland, among other hotspots. (From

http://www.unicef.org/about/who/index_53462.html.)

World Food Day

World Food Day is celebrated every year around the world on 16 October in honor of the date of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 1945.

LPF Hunger Resources, LPF Hunger and Development Links, LPF Advocacy Alert: 2012 Farm Bill

World Food Day Website
Wikipedia article
World Food Day USA Directory of Organizations
World Food Day Sunday Dinner
Bread for the World
ELCA World Hunger Program
Healthy food and food systems, Vibrant farms and rural communities
"Taking Root" five-part congregation education program on hunger.
Greenhorns - recruit, promote and support the new generation of young American farmers.
Via Campesina - International Peasant's Movement
Food First - Institute for Food and Development Policy

International Day of Prayer for Peace

What do you think could happen if churches everywhere prayed and acted together to nurture lasting peace? . . . among individuals, families, communities and societies? Well, that opportunity is here! And we invite you to join us in this collective effort, now held annually on and around September 21, and this year, emphasizing climate change.

In 2004, the World Council of Churches and the United Nations proposed the idea of an International Day of Prayer for Peace (IDPP) every September 21. Since then, this has become a special day of festive activity in virtually every denomination worldwide. LPF played a special role from the start: LPF leaders wrote the worship resource for the very first IDPP in 2004, used in 10,000 churches across the globe!

LPF has ideas and resources to help you and your congregation make the most of this occasion to share in meaningful worship, build understanding and encourage action toward planet nurturing. This year, Sept. 21 is:

The global “Day of Prayer for Peace” plus “The Largest Climate March in History," and Nonviolent Actions in over 130 communities that connect reversing climate change with ending war and poverty.

The coming together of these efforts offers a significant opportunity to educate and encourage congregation members, and to energize and strengthen efforts on the crucial issues of climate change and peace.

A good place to start is to invite your pastor or worship committee to include a prayer in the service on the Sunday before or after Sept. 21. There is a wealth of resources to help.

Another possibility is to invite your social justice committee (or a few members with peace and justice interest) to share advocacy materials during the coffee hour after church. Again there are a variety of options. Here are resources and links on all of the above:

• Many groups are offering prayer and worship resources. Here are a few from several religious traditions: Education for Justice, Climate Crisis Coalition, Climate Prayer, Catholic Climate Covenant, Christian Aid, to mention just a few.
• The People's Climate March (billed as the "Largest Climate March in History"): they offer posters and other resources and a long list of supportive groups. For the connection between climate change and peacemaking, here’s a link to LPF’s blog on the subject.
• Campaign Nonviolence members are planning actions that connect reversing climate change with ending war and poverty. “Over 110 nonviolent actions are planned across the country during the week of Sept. 21-27 … and that's just the start!”
• Lutheran advocacy possibilities: We can start with the ELCA's climate change conversation and urge Lutheran institutions to do what other denominations have done, divest from industries responsible for greenhouse gas emissions tied to global warming. We could also call on our leaders to follow the example of these Swedish Lutheran Archbishops, including their first female archbishop. 

We’d be happy to hear from you to discuss this further. And we’d love to hear your ideas and suggestions. This has considerable potential and offers many opportunities. Let’s make the most of it!

From Ferguson to Real Change

There has been a deluge of reporting and commentary on the killing of an unarmed black teen in the Ferguson suburb of St Louis, and on the protests that followed.  Yet the way forward has been clouded by inadequate attention to at least four important issues:

1. Militarization of Police – A growing problem, visible to activists for years, has finally broken through to the media and the public.  Police have been purchasing (and receiving free from a major Pentagon program) large quantities of military style weapons. It’s gear that looks more like a Transformers movie than legitimate police equipment. It ranges from body armor and armored personnel carriers, to sniper rifles and 2nd generation tear gas.  (What Military Gear Your Police Department Bought) 

Such gear separates police from protesters, undercuts legitimate “protect and serve” orientation and programs, and often makes confrontations more lethal. It also equips, emboldens, and legitimizes the Rambo-style officers in most police depts.  Most people are shocked to learn that “roughly 137 times a day, a SWAT team assaults a home and plunges its inhabitants and the surrounding community into terror.”  (One Nation Under SWAT.)

2. Racism – Like minority communities in scores of other cities, Ferguson protests build on the frustration of people of color who have faced decades of poor education, lack of jobs and resources, and discriminatory policies that have been the root of unrest since the 1960's. (See an activist’s view of Unresolved Race and Economic Issues, or the views of this pastor or another activist.) 

One example: Blacks are pulled over by police in far greater numbers and received larger tickets than whites, and are a key reason why US incarceration rates are the highest in the world. (See the middle section of In Ferguson or Exposing the Toolbox of Racist Repression.)

3. Budget Priorities – The huge expense of race- and class-skewed policies cited above siphon money from sorely needed programs that would address underlying problems of prejudice and inequality. The list is familiar and includes greatly expanded jobs, social service, and community-building programs.

Funding for such programs must come from reducing military spending – which like all too many police and urban spending efforts emphasizes violent, 11th hour interventions that are ultimately ineffective, instead of major (but ultimately cheaper) programs to address underlying causes…. Moreover, those problems are at the heart of the ability of radical groups to find recruits.  (See From Gaza to Ferguson or Ferguson, Gaza and Luhansk, or 90-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Arrested in St. Louis.  For clear data on spending, see tables 2 or 7 or use the full LPF Budget Priorities computer-based activity.)

4. The Essential Contribution of Nonviolence – Ferguson also exposes the still rampant illusion that nonviolent responses to conflict are nice but don’t ultimately work: “Real” problems require “real” (violent) responses.  But as Desmond Tutu put it, nonviolence is “a force more powerful” than military  – or militarized police – responses to conflict, as history repeatedly shows in both arenas.  (See LPF Nonviolence resources  from a Shalom discussion essay to an AV-rich Nonviolence Forum.)

But Ferguson also reveals inadequacies of efforts to organize and deploy nonviolence campaigns.  Activist groups have been too complacent and isolated from younger generations who lack experience with the power of nonviolent responses to conflict.  Ferguson must be a wake-up call to activist groups as well as police forces, urban planners, state and federal budget officials. (See In Ferguson, young demonstrators are finding it’s not their grandparents’ protest  and Nonviolent Protest and Accountability in Ferguson.  All this points to the importance of efforts like Campaign Nonviolence - LPF is a member - which is highlighting over 125 nonviolent actions around the US in the week following Sept. 21, the ”International Day of Prayer for Peace” – see our next blog post.  And consider participating! )

August 6 - Hiroshima Day

On this day we remember the anniversary of the atomic the bombing of Hiroshima, August 6, 1945.
We invite Christians to pray for peace.

From the LPF Archives

For People of Faith: AN URGENT CALL (2003)

Hiroshima-Nagasaki Day of Prayer for Peace, Bulletin Insert (2005)

Other Resources
Global Zero – A World Without Nuclear Weapons

Countdown to Zero

Animation of Nuclear History

Advocacy Alert: Renewed Fighting in Israel-Palestine

The news media in recent days has been awash with stories about teen killings and military action in Israel-Palestine. Media coverage has often been sensationalist, one-sided, or superficial. We've heard from LPF members asking for help in moving beyond those depictions, to connect with root causes, and explore options for both de-escalation and lasting solutions.

In fact, this crisis urgently calls for a response from us – in particular, it is important for us to reach out to others, both those who are active on such issues, and those on the sidelines or who haven’t known how they might actually help in such a complex situation. (The basics are straightforward. As one commentator put it, "you can't bomb your way to peace.")

The best of our sister organization agree that a crucial need is for us to share information that would "change the public discourse on the conflict."

We can also be calling for specific responses including disinvestment to put pressure on the Israeli government -- a strategy which played an important role in ending apartheid in South Africa. The World Council of Churches has announced its support for divestment from corporations responsible for global warming. We can be asking our church leaders to take such a stand on this issue.

Our own government needs more encouragement to play a positive role. The message can be quite simple. As Rabbi Michael Lerner of the Jewish group Tikkun puts it "My fervent prayer: Stop all the violence, end the occupation, and create a lasting peace and a reconciliation of the heart." Challenging the enormous US subsidies for Israel gives us tremendous leverage. The threat of significant reductions could make a big difference.

Below are links to several sources of reliable and balanced information, from Lutheran and other sources. They can help us explore – and share with others – how the current struggle fits into the continuing spiral of violence, key underlying causes, and what the US can do to help move things in a positive direction.

We are called to respond and to encourage others to do so. Please don’t let this one pass by! Here are some good links to help us deepen our understanding of those crucial underlying issues, help others do so, and do our part to address this important challenge:

Tikkun: "End the Violence in Israel/Palestine: Cease Fire NOW!"
http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/end-the-violence-in-israelpalestine-cease-fire-now

American Friends Service Committee: "Ending oppression to end violence: The Gaza escalation in context"
http://afsc.org/story/ending-oppression-end-violence-gaza-escalation-context
*also the source of the image used above

Lutheran World Federation: "Israel-Palestine Peace Agreement Would Be a Sign of Hope to the World"
http://www.lutheranworld.org/news/israel-palestine-peace-agreement-would-be-sign-hope-world

Democracy Now!:
"After Palestinian Unity Deal, Did Israel Spark Violence to Prevent a New "Peace Offensive"?"
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/15/after_palestinian_unity_deal_did_israel
"Pressuring Israel, Presbyterian Church Divests from Firms Tied to Occupation of Palestinian Land"

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/23/pressuring_israel_presbyterian_church_divests_from

LPF's Holy Land Resources (dozens of more links)
http://lutheran_peace.tripod.com/holyland.html

Jewish Voice for Peace
http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

ELCA campaign working for justice and peace in Palestine and Israel: http://www.elca.org/Resources/Peace-Not-Walls

Please share this alert and links with friends and congregation members by email and printed copies. The situation is urgent, and it also offers an opening to help break through the misinformation and stereotypes, better understand the issues, and advocate for responsible U.S. action.