Washington Post | August 4, 2011 | By Lisa Miller
Excerpt:
Beckmann belongs to a diverse coalition of Christian leaders called Circle of Protection, whose mission is to protect funding for programs that support the poor. On July 20, a group from Circle met with President Obama in the Roosevelt Room. Beckmann wrote in an e-mail that Obama “expressed particular concern about Medicaid. . . . He expressed his strong desire to protect people in need, but also made it clear that the negotiations are tough.” The session ended with a reading from Hebrews by Mark Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering.”
This week, an opposing group of conservative Christian leaders, calling themselves Christians for a Sustainable Economy, sent a letter to the president. All Christians must care for the poor, the letter says, but Circle of Protection doesn’t speak for all Christians: “We do not need to protect programs for the poor. We need to protect the poor themselves. Indeed, sometimes we need to protect them from the very programs that . . . actually demean the poor, undermine their family structures and trap them in poverty, dependency and despair for generations.”
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