Disciples of Christ
Individual Action
Who You Are. Why You Care. What You Want.
Your story as one who is directly impacted by policies, who knows and loves affected communities, and who is determined to share stories of your relationships is your most important qualification as an advocate. Developing relationships with policy makers, and your commitment to educating them, are necessary to impacting policy changes. It is important that policy makers understand that their constituents care deeply about, and appreciate the contributions of, the persons impacted by the policies you will discuss.
Collective Action
Advocacy 101
What is Advocacy?
Effective advocacy provides an opportunity to live out our faith and join with the voices of prophets and Jesus to proclaim love for the marginalized. It offers pathways to partner with the poor, seek to transform racist structures, and endeavor to influence hearts and minds by communicating faith values to policy makers and people in power. It provides chances to connect our understanding of scripture with the shaping of society. Advocacy includes activities like public education, relationship-building with policy makers, civic engagement, voter registration, and media outreach. Advocacy can lead to systemic, lasting, positive changes that help all people thrive in their communities. It is critical that we build bipartisan support by working with policy makers from both parties.
Government 101
Engaging Elected Leaders
It is more important than ever to meet with your local, state, and national policy makers to educate them about the vital role affected communities play in your life and in your town and region. Because change takes time, engaging with policy makers should be viewed as part of a continuing process of sharing information, building relationships, and having perspectives of impacted communities genuinely considered when decisions are made that will directly affect their lives.
There are positive proposals that local elected officials can adopt to affirm the importance of the concerns and communities you hold dear. City, municipal, and other local councils and commissions need to hear your values and views. Urge your local leaders to adopt resolutions that communicate your values and care for communities who may have experienced injustice in your community. Raising your voice for the disenfranchised is especially important because Individuals who oppose your views may make their voices heard loudly and frequently to policy makers. Pushing back publicly against injustice is a significant way of demonstrating your commitment to anti-racism.
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Individual Action
As Scripture teaches, faith is active in love, and love calls for justice in the relationships and structures of society. Our grateful response to God’s love and grace motivates us to live lives that demonstrate our responsibility for the well-being of society, communities and the environment. Addressing social concerns as a church involves many dimensions and occurs in many ways, but can be summarized as:
– Supporting the vocation of members in their daily callings and work
– Encouraging learning and moral discernment
– Developing and endorsing social teaching and policy
– Witnessing for social justice as individual Lutheran Christians and as organized faith communities
As individuals and as a faith community — Christ’s church — we live our Christian faith in the thick of life with the concerns and complexities that shape our lives together in God’s creation.
https://www.elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Addressing-Social-Concerns
Collective Action
We are a church that rolls up our sleeves and gets to work. Stand up for policies that create opportunities to overcome poverty, promote peace and dignity, and defend God’s creation.
Advocacy 101
As members of the ELCA, we believe that we are freed in Christ to serve and love our neighbor. God uses our hands, through our direct service work and our voices, through our advocacy efforts, to restore and reconcile our world. Through faithful advocacy the ELCA lives out our Lutheran belief that governments can help advance the common good.
Government 101
Consistent with Lutheran Confessions, the ELCA teaches that civil government is a gift of God for these purposes. Because an effective system of criminal justice is an essential part of any functioning civil government, this church affirms the legitimacy of the U.S. criminal justice system and the fundamental principles to which the U.S. system is committed.
Episcopal
Individual Action
Voting in national, state,Tribal, and local elections. Educating ourselves about candidates and issues voting rights.
For those eligible to vote, casting ballots is a critical way to impact politics.While it may seem counterintuitive, the more local an election, the more important it is to vote!
Prayer
Transforming evil unjust systems to bring about a just and equitable world through private prayer, public worship,
teaching, and preaching.
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/ministries/social-justice-advocacy-engagement/
Collective Action
Jesus worked to restore people to physical and spiritual
health but also to heal and restore communities.We can
learn from Jesus’ actions of reconciliation and
community building.
Jesus of course showed an interest in working at
the personal or individual level to restore people to
physical or spiritual health. However, this work was
always about also restoring people to wholeness in
the community. It was never just about individuals. Using actions such as sit-ins, boycotts, divestment, vigils, marches, and protests to draw attention to an issue or disrupt an unjust system.
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/ministries/social-justice-advocacy-engagement/
Advocacy 101
Getting issues on ballots and before lawmakers,
such as petitions, legislative outreach, and awareness campaigns.
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/ministries/social-justice-advocacy-engagement/
Government 101
Jesus worked to protect communities from structural injustice.When Jesus kicks the money changers out of the temple, he shows us that worship of God cannot take place alongside economic exploitation.Throughout the Gospel, Jesus teaches that social justice is the Good News. Everything Jesus does enacts liberation. Just as Jesus liberated people by exorcising demons, Jesus worked to liberate communities from the evils of hunger, prejudice, and oppression.
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/ministries/social-justice-advocacy-engagement/
Presbyterian Church USA
Individual Action
Our lawmakers’ votes are influenced by their personal views, their party’s positions, the advice of staff and friends, and lobbyists. But the single most important influence should be yours. Members of Congress rely on the letters, phone calls, emails, visits, print media, and even social media engagement to gauge how the voters in their districts are thinking.
Collective Action
People of faith are joining together and calling for immigration reform and the full recognition of immigrants’ rights. They are doing this, in big and small ways, because of a shared faith in Jesus Christ who spent his ministry at the margins of society and because of the call to remember that they were once strangers/immigrants in Egypt. The rediscovery of our individual immigration story and true identity as immigrants gives people of faith a fresh perspective.
Advocacy 101
Local advocacy is key in fostering and developing personal relationships and community support. Local advocacy is the way a community learns from those affected about what they need and provides direct support to address the effects that certain policies have had on their lives.
https://oga.pcusa.org/section/mid-council-ministries/immigration/advocacy/
Government 101
Facilitate the democratic process
The tasks are practical:
1 Help register voters
2 Help voters get the required ID
3 Publicize information about polling locations
4 Provide transportation for members of your congregation and the communities in which you live. Ensure that seniors and others are able to get to the polls or to vote by absentee ballot.
5 “Lift Every Voice”, the resolution from the 218th General Assembly to affirm the 1965 Voting Rights Act, calls upon Presbyterians to volunteer to be poll watchers. A poll watcher is instructed on how to monitor activities at a local polling station to ensure the electoral process is fair and open to all registered to vote at that station.
The General Assembly has encouraged presbytery and synod representatives in their own areas to monitor local and state election laws, registration laws, and the use of voting machines to help ensure free, fair elections for all.
https://www.presbyterianmission.org/resource/voter-suppression-discussion-guide/
Quakers
Individual Action
As with everything related to Quakerism, however, the peace testimony is a matter of individual conscience. The earliest Friends insisted on “seeking the good…and doing that which tends to the peace of all;” for some Friends, in some conflicts, that has meant taking up arms against tyranny and in defense of its victims. Also, Quakers aren’t saints: We can lose our tempers and lash out at others with unkind words or actions as easily as anybody else.
If we had to generalize, perhaps we could say this: All Quakers recognize peace as a worthy ideal, and do our best, guided by our consciences day by day, to make that dream a reality.
Collective Action
We recognize that we exist in relationship to all of humanity, and we strive therefore to live in “right relationship,” knowing that our happiness and well-being is ultimately bound with the happiness and well-being of everyone else. This holds true not just spiritually, but economically and politically—Quakers understand that when one of us is in chains, as the song says, none of us are free.
Advocacy 101
We haven’t always lived up to the ideal, that we exist in relationship to all of humanity, of course. In the United States, for example, many Quakers are taking a second look at the Society’s historical relationship with Black and Native people, acknowledging the ways in which our predecessors failed to honor that of God within them, which we discuss in more detail in the next section. We cannot change our past, of course, but by acknowledging it, we can begin to take steps towards repairing the harm we have done and establishing more equal and equitable communities in our meetinghouses, in our neighborhoods, and on a global level.
Government 101
Most Quaker involvement in politics over the centuries has taken forms other than running for or holding political office, such as advocacy. Public statements and wider campaigning are key aspects. Friends in many countries make public statements on issues of the day, from a Quaker perspective, with a view to influencing political decisions and policies. Many do this individually, but often these statements have an ‘official’ status, as they have been developed by, and on behalf of, Quakers in the country or region in question.
https://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/89/Politics
United Church of Christ
Individual Action
Politics is often taken to be a dirty word, but political processes are simply the way communities organize their common life. For people of faith, public policy is never merely politics. It is a way of living out the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves. It is fitting for local congregations and church structures across the country to develop nonpartisan programs to help the faith community reflect upon the political order.
https://new.uccfiles.com/pdf/Public-Policy-Advocacy-Guide-2017
Collective Action
“Whereas many people have committed to memory John 3:16 – ‘For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only begotten child,’ and though this verse has become one of the best-known and often-quoted verses in the Scripture, we have failed to take cognizance of one of the key elements of this verse – ‘world’. We have believed, rather, that God so loved the church, or the well-behaved people or the Christians, but not really the world; i.e. the whole people. The church is people, people who are called in every time and every place to the task of continuing the essential ministry of Christ. We in the UCC
need to understand that ministry and responsibly appropriate it in the world… Therefore, the 11th General Synod calls upon the United Christ of Christ to marshal and utilize its resources to help equip our churches to fully and actively engage a prophetic ministry in political education and sensitivity including: a) citizen education, and registration efforts; b) political organizing and training workshops; c) public hearings on policy formulation; d) encourage participation in the political process.
— Resolution on Political Education and Sensitivity, General Synod 11, 1977
https://new.uccfiles.com/pdf/Public-Policy-Advocacy-Guide-2017
Advocacy 101
Why Does it Matter?
For people of faith, public policy decision-making is never merely politics. It is a way of living out the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves. In responding faithfully to God’s call for abundant life for all people, a common life where no one is left behind, we are drawn inevi- tably to engage in public policy advocacy and decision-making. As people of faith, we bring the gift and responsibility of holding true to a vision of right relationship in human community that goes beyond any singular party, ideology or platform.
https://new.uccfiles.com/pdf/Public-Policy-Advocacy-Guide-2017
Government 101
While public discussion of political issues has the potential to bring out the best in us – by surfacing creative new ideas or developing effective problem-solving strate- gies – more often than not in our public dialogue about the issues of the day the opposite seems to be happening. From the national dialogue about health care to the passionate discussion of immigration reform this year, it is all too easy for anger and frustration to get the best of us. Whether around the offi ce water cooler or the extended family dinner table, reasoned conversation is taking a back seat to personal attacks and replayed sound bites. Because we avoid these conversations, we miss out on deeper understanding. As people of faith participating in the public square, we are called to a higher standard of engagement and interaction with our neighbors – even and perhaps especially those with whom we may disagree on an issue. Our faith provides us with spiritual resources to take the conversation to a different level. We can choose respect and hope over animosity and bitterness. We can choose to listen and learn rather than attack and insult. We can choose to have civic discussions in civil tones. We do not have to avoid the hard issues. We can prepare ourselves for a better conversation by thinking about some of the following ideas to shape our conversation on diffi cult and emotion-fi lled issues of the day.
https://new.uccfiles.com/pdf/Public-Policy-Advocacy-Guide-2017
United Methodist Church
Individual Action
Recognizing that simply changing our personal habits will not be enough to reverse decades of environmental damage, the church supports local, regional, national, and international cooperative efforts aimed at redressing the ecological harms humans have wreaked on a global scale. Such cooperative efforts must include the development and enforcement of policies and practices that protect all sentient beings, and the promotion of sustainable economic development. We also encourage responsible consumption and urgent action against global warming and climate change.
Collective Action
While we do not believe churches should affiliate with particular political parties, we do encourage churches to speak out boldly on social issues from a Gospel perspective. We further believe churches have a right and a responsibility to educate and equip their members to be effective advocates for justice in the wider world.
Advocacy 101
We urge individuals, congregations, and other church bodies to advocate vigorously not only for their own rights, but also for the rights of those who are voiceless or whose voices are unheard in society. Governments must be held responsible for guaranteeing human rights and liberties; such responsibilities include ensuring that all people have access to affordable, high-quality education, regardless of age, 35 REVISED SOCIAL PRINCIPLES gender, ethnicity, economic status or any other divisive marker.
Government 101
We affirm that every form of government stands under God’s judgment and must therefore be held accountable for protecting the innocent, guaranteeing basic freedoms and liberties, protecting the natural world, and establishing just, equitable, and sustainable economies.
While we do not believe churches should affiliate with particular political parties, we do encourage churches to speak out boldly on social issues from a Gospel perspective. We further believe churches have a right and a responsibility to educate and equip their members to be effective advocates for justice in the wider world.