2001 Leadership Award Remarks by David Beckmann

Fifth Annual Leadership Award
Thursday, March 1, 2001
Remarks of Award Recipient Rev. David Beckmann, President, Bread for the World

It's an honor to follow Art Simon. Indeed, for many years he has been a model for me. Way back, his writings influenced my thinking and shaped my life. When I came to Bread for the World as president, Bread for the World was remarkably healthy, and the decisions that Art and the founders of Bread for the World made in the organization's first few years have proven far-sighted. The basic structure and mission of the organization has been unchanged for 26 years. So it is an honor to share this award with Art and to follow him.

Also, I want to give tribute to the Center for Public Justice. I appreciate especially the fact that they take ideas seriously. They take theology seriously. They take ideas about politics and policy seriously. They approach them with considerable vigor. The work that they have done on Charitable Choice and the role of faith-based organizations vis-a-vis government is pioneering and has been extraordinarily influential, and that influence is only beginning. I'm also pleased to share this night with Community Family Life Services. Just Sunday my wife and I went to the dedication of a new building for Community Family Life Services. This is an exceptional ministry. Tom Knoll has made a huge difference through this fine agency.

I was told that I should talk at some length about the call of God's justice in my life. My first thought was, "Who in the world would want substantive comments at a Capitol Hill reception?" Then I thought, "Oh yes, Jim Skillen is organizing this thing." Only the Center for Public Justice would want to have a substantive presentation at a Capitol Hill reception.

So, you'll need to suffer through a brief account of the story of my life. I'll try to make it as interesting as possible. I'd like to talk briefly about five chapters in my life and how they led me to the work that I'm privileged to do at Bread for the World.

I'll start with my baptism. I was baptized as an infant, and for me that worked. I grew up in a family where I always knew that my parents loved me and loved other people dearly and that their love came from God and Jesus Christ. So infant baptism was real. Before I knew how to talk, I knew about the love of God in Jesus Christ. That emphasis on grace, which is the best thing about the Lutheran tradition, has stood me well. When it comes to social justice, I don't think many of us really care that much. All of us could do a lot more for poor and hungry people.

Yet, God's grace is sufficient. Every morning God says, "Okay, you're my child. You're you, could be better, but you're my child, and I have chosen you to go do this work today." There is a continual renewal, a continual sending out that comes from my baptism and from my ongoing experience of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

A second important chapter of this little life was as a student in the 60s. I grew up in Nebraska, but went to Yale in the 60s. Right then was the time of the anti-war movement. Through a church on the Hill, which was the African-American ghetto not far from Yale, I was exposed to African-Americans in New Haven--at the time of Black Power, when a lot of African-Americans were angry. That moment in American life gave me a sense that there really is injustice. There are good reasons why people could be angry about what our government does vis-a-vis black neighborhoods or vis-a-vis poor countries around the world.

This awareness of injustice sent me off, and I spent a year traveling around the world. I came back and tried to make the revolution in Nebraska; you may not have noticed the effects. But in a way, the rest of my life has been a continuing struggle for justice, very much shaped by my college years. Also, when I was at college, the chaplain at Yale was William Sloan Coffin. He and other people helped me to read those parts of the Bible that have to do with justice and to see their relevance to our wealthy, privileged nation.

I went to seminary, was called by my church to be a missionary economist, and was sent by the Lutheran church to do graduate study in economics. I worked for the Lutheran church in its relief and development program in northwest Bangladesh.

Then I was offered a job at the World Bank. I thought that would be a good place to learn some things about the macro issues that affect poor people and ended up staying a long time. At the World Bank I worked almost entirely on poverty reduction activities. The World Bank's leadership was saying that a big part of its job was to reduce poverty. They now say that the whole job can be defined as reducing poverty. But the World Bank doesn't always do a very good job reducing poverty.

So I worked on reforms. I played a leadership role in helping the World Bank learn about non-governmental organizations and grassroots groups. In retrospect, it's strange that the Bank's intelligent staff just could not see how important churches, mosques, unions, and farm groups are to development. The Bank was structured to work in a Cold War context with most developing countries under dictatorships. So, its staff just couldn't see all of these peoples' organizations and what they were doing.

We made a huge change, in retrospect. Now, working with non-governmental organizations and popular participation is World Bank orthodoxy. It's standard practice. It's now clear that those of us who were trying to get the Bank to pay attention to those things were getting up on a surfboard just before the big wave of global democratization arrived. "Whoosh!"--it became possible to work with grassroots groups in ways that wouldn't have been possible, say, when Marcos was president of the Philippines.

From that whole period of my life I'd draw two lessons. One, reform is very possible. I am convinced by my experience that you can make reforms in big institutions. Two, words are important, as we know from the Bible. When the World Bank's president and board say that their purpose is to reduce poverty, even though what they're doing may not change the next day, that moral word--it's like a word of God--has power. You can call on that word to change the institution.

About 10 years ago, Art Simon decided to step aside from the leadership of Bread for the World. Nobody asked him to so. After 18 years of leadership, he thought that Bread for the World would be well-served by fresh leadership. I felt that this was the job for which God made me. The board eventually overcame its doubts and selected me.

Bread for the World is an extraordinary organization. We are 45,000 members now, about 2,000 of them local churches of all different denominations: Catholics, Protestants, black, white. Very different theologically, but all Christians say the Lord's Prayer, including "give us this day our daily bread." It's pretty hard to read the Bible and not know that hungry people are important for Christians.

Working at Bread for the World has allowed me to watch a lot of history unfold from the perspective of what's good for poor and hungry people: "What is Congress doing? How's this going to affect hungry people?" That's the way the God of the Bible, the living God, looks at history--with a special concern for poor and hungry people. Poor people themselves don't usually notice what 's going on here in Congress. They're busy with other things. They may not see when Congress makes decisions that are going to make their lives much, much harder. But the Bread for the World perspective gives you a God's-angle-of-vision perspective on history.

It's pretty depressing, because 99% of the decisions that are made here are harsh toward poor people. Poor people are just not on the screen. Most of what goes on here has to do with almost everything else, and poor people are just at the end of the queue. It's not that anybody wants more hungry people, but what's good for hungry kids seldom gets addressed. When Bread for the World works on Africa issues, the problem is not opposition; the problem is getting five minutes of a senator's time. You just can't get your phone calls returned because, as Representative Vern Ehlers said, he's working 90 hours a week under lots of pressures. Most of those pressures are not for poor people.

On the other hand, I am amazed by what God does in this context. First of all, God sustains poor and hungry people. How can it be that year after year after year they are neglected by those of us who have power and money, and yet they are sustained? They pray to God to provide them with food. Partly, the abundance of this earth allows them to get food. The sun shines on poor people. If it were up to people in the Capitol to decide, maybe the sun wouldn't shine on Africa any more. But the sun shines on Africa, so there's fruit. Despite all the oppression and neglect, poor people are sustained by God.

Beyond that, God moves people's hearts so that powerful people say: "Yes, I'll do that." It was not in the interest of Mr. Leach to introduce debt relief or of Mr. Bachus to push debt relief. Why would they do such a thing? But when Mr. Leach agreed to introduce debt relief, the first thing he said was, "I'll do this one for St. Paul," referring to Paul Simon, Art's brother. He said, "Somebody's got to do these things now that Paul Simon's not in Congress any more."

So God moves people in power, and, most importantly, God moves us. In Bread for the World we have 45,000 individuals and churches who together are moved year after year to speak up for poor and hungry people, and we win a lot. Last year we helped to win debt relief for poor countries. It'll be billions of dollars in debt relief, but, more importantly, it's being done in such a way that in some countries it will give power and opportunity to poor people. In several countries it's clearly reducing corruption by giving power and voice to poor communities. Last year we also won two food stamp provisions, and those two provisions by themselves will result in about a billion and a half dollars in groceries for struggling families.

The Center for Public Justice has had a similar experience with Charitable Choice. It's another clear example that we can make a difference. That's the main lesson for me after 10 years of working at Bread for the World: Christian people who are active citizens, who care, who speak up, who try to influence public policy, can make a huge difference.

That's four chapters: baptism, student years, World Bank, Bread for the World.

The last chapter is the newest one, and it began in June 1998, at the Bread for the World board meeting. After a lobby day, we had a reception like this one. Congressman Tony Hall, one of our board members, had come to the reception and he was absolutely depressed. On such occasions, members of Congress typically smile and say, "Oh, we're so glad you're here." Tony was exasperated because he had gone to the House floor to get a little bit of money for food banks. But he arrived at the floor 10 seconds late, and the leadership wouldn't allow him to speak. He also said, "Last week I came back from the Sudan and tried to do a press conference. No journalists came." So at this lobby day reception he was almost ready to cry.

Our board met the next day, and Tony's remarks kept them from going ahead with the prepared agenda. We asked: "How do we respond?" In that conversation the board focused on the fact that in this time of extraordinary blessing, relative peace, relative prosperity, it is quite possible to make dramatic progress against hunger in this country and around the world. Since then we've done estimates: our judgment is that the United States could cut hunger in half in this country within, say, three years and do our part to cut hunger in half in the world in, say, 15 years, for something like $6 billion a year. Six billion dollars a year is 6¢ per American per day. We live in a time when it is possible for us to make dramatic progress against poverty, hunger, and disease in our country and around the world.

This same reality was reflected in President Bush's first speech before Congress. Basically, he told the American people: "You can have it all. We can have increased spending for things that are important to you. We can get rid of a lot of the deficit. We can set aside a trillion dollars for things we haven't thought about, and then we can have a trillion and a half dollars for a tax cut. You can have it all." I'm not sure about the President's arithmetic, but there is truth in what he said about the rich possibilities of this moment. But there was no mention of Africa from President Bush, or from Dick Gephardt or Tom Daschle. What do we imagine we want when we can have so much? There is nothing in our public imagination, as articulated by the leadership of either the Republican or Democratic Party that night, about Africa--and very little about poor people generally.

At Bread for the World this year, our main campaign is an Africa campaign, "Africa: Hunger to Harvest." We're trying to get Congress to commit our nation to do its part to reduce hunger in Africa. If we're serious, it means money. We're asking for a sustained increase of about $1 billion a year in effective, poverty-focused assistance. There are a number of programs that work. There are parts of Africa where you don't have bandit regimes, places like Ghana and Uganda, where people are making progress. There are more democracies in Africa than there used to be, more pragmatic economics than there used to be. The U.S. and the rest of the G8 could certainly help those parts of Africa make progress. If we could get a billion dollars a year and sustain that over 15 years, we could cut world hunger in half. So that's what Bread for the World is trying to start this year.

I would be remiss if I wouldn't ask you to help. You can help in three ways. The first way is to make sure you support the Center for Public Justice. The second way is to join Bread for the World. Join us in speaking to Congress on behalf of hungry people. The third way is to involve your own church in doing an offering of letters to Congress as part of the "Africa: Hunger to Harvest" Campaign.

I'm honored. I hope these remarks have been helpful. I really appreciate this award, Jim. Thank you, everybody.