2001 Leadership Award Remarks by James Skillen

It is an exciting moment in our year when we can present the annual leadership award on a festive occasion like this. The Center for Public Justice is convinced that the kind of civic responsibility America needs requires personal illustration and demonstration. It requires leaders who are willing to think new thoughts and take strong stands, to think globally and not only nationally, to lobby for others and not just for themselves.

We are not embarrassed to say that we are trying to develop a Christian approach to political responsibility because we mean by that an approach that seeks justice for all, not special privileges for Christians. Moreover, we will never claim that our philosophy or policy proposals are God's will; we claim only that we are seeking to respond in obedience to God's call to do justice to all our neighbors.

Next year, the Center will celebrate its 25th anniversary, and one of our earliest advisers and encouragers was the Rev. Art Simon, whom we first heard about, just as many others did, as the founder of a new organization called Bread for the World. At first hearing, we imagined that it must be an organization that distributes food to the hungry. But we soon found out that it was an organization of Christian citizens working to influence Congress and American foreign policy for the benefit of hungry people the world over. A year or two before I moved to Washington in 1982 to become the Center's director, I remember going to New York to meet Art Simon and to ask for his advice. From that day until now, Art has been an unselfish friend, adviser, prayer warrior, and supporter of the Center.

An ordained Lutheran minister, who was pastoring in New York City when he founded Bread for the World in 1974, Art went on to write several books on hunger and politics while building the organization to its 40,000-plus membership and eventually moved it to Washington, D.C. He remains active today as board member, promoter, and author.

I first met David Beckmann about 12 to 13 years ago, when we were drawn into a regular monthly meeting of Christians involved in public service in and around Washington. David, also an ordained Lutheran minister, spent years helping to bring a Christian perspective to the workings of the World Bank. He is a graduate of both Yale University and the London School of Economics. He is a careful, thorough, and persistent man who puts these talents to work now as the president of Bread for the World.

In honoring both Art Simon and David Beckmann tonight, we want to call special attention to the fact that unlike many organizations that never survive or grow beyond their visionary founder, Bread for the World has made a solid and successful transition to the second generation of leadership. This says something about the quality of Art's leadership and the spirit he has given to the organization. It also says something about David's humility and commitment to the vision and mission of Bread. Each of these men is worthy of the Center's leadership award; together, they have shown how to keep a vision alive and to extend the mission into a new era.

Art and David's teamwork is illustrated very concretely in the book they co-authored, published in 1999: Grace at the Table: Ending Hunger in God's World (Paulist Press). Let me read just two short sentences from it: "Saying Yes! to God's call for justice becomes a celebration of God's grace toward us and toward others. We are not saved by the work of justice, but we are created in Christ Jesus for that purpose, along with other works of love, and therefore it is the way of joy."

"Hunger, poverty, malnutrition, lives cut short----these are tragedies that bring no joy. Working to meet the needs of those who suffer under these conditions is, however, the way of joy; it is bread for those whom God empowers with the bread of eternal life."

This is the kind of Christian leadership, teamwork, and mission-oriented public service to God and neighbor that the Center for Public Justice lifts up and for which we ask you to join us in thanking God tonight.

The Center for Public Justice has as its purpose to SERVE GOD, ADVANCE JUSTICE, and TRANSFORM PUBLIC LIFE. And our mission, in fulfillment of that vision, is threefold: to EQUIP CITIZENS through various kinds of civic education and training, to DEVELOP LEADERS both by teaching and lifting up examples as we are doing tonight, and to SHAPE POLICY by thorough public-policy research and practical engagement. Politics and government should be driven by more than interest-group brokering, by something other than the kind of partisanship that forces government into the service of politics rather than politics into the service of government. We believe, with Bread for the World, that governments have been ordained by God to do justice to all and to uphold the common good. But in order for politics to serve the interest of justice, a growing movement of citizens will have to learn how to approach political life with a different attitude than is usual. Different habits, grounded in the conviction that government has an important and high calling, must be nurtured among us.

We are thankful that Bread for the World does so much to promote citizenship on behalf of the hungry. By congratulating Art and David tonight, we want each of you to take notice and to take courage to keep on keeping on in the pursuit of justice.

The text of the awards follows: