WASHINGTON — Faith-based organizations are teaming up to speak up at the “One Nation Working Together” rally this weekend.
While social justice and labor groups make up the foundation for the event, which is slated for Saturday on the National Mall, faith organizations like Pax Christi USA and the Sikh Coalition will join in to show how belief-based coalitions can also help put a focus on jobs, justice and education.
“All of these core principles are consistent with the core principles of the United Methodist Church,” said Wayne Rhodes, the communications director for the General Board of Church and Society.
The church holds a general conference each year and elects officials to address many of the same issues that the rally upholds.
“If an issue is approved, then it goes into the Book of Discipline—a description of how our church works,” Rhodes said.
The rally comes one month before the midterm elections. Some groups see that timing as key to helping politicians understand priorities.
The Quaker group American Friends Service Committee, for instance, would like to see the government work to better answer basic humanitarian issues. They group will use the rally to express the opinions of what Alexis Moore, its media relations coordinator, called “unheard voices.”
“The government should redirect billions of dollars that are allocated for the war and spend it to meet human needs in Afghanistan and at home,” said Moore.
Pax Christi USA holds a similar view on the cost of waging a faraway war. Amy Watts, a program associate, said that cutting the military budget could fund jobs and education initiatives.
Some groups like Pax Christi are purposefully setting out to build bridges between their organization and others regardless of their different faith affiliations.
“At the core of this rally is a message of human dignity,” Watts said.
According to a federal budget trade-off calculator on the National Priorities Project website, the $4.6 billion proposed to be spent on the war in Afghanistan for fiscal year 2011 could go towards one year of education for almost 483,000 Ohio university students or been given in the form of low-income health care to 980,000 people living in Pennsylvania.