"Churches must move from a position where people serve the structure of the church to a position where its structure serves people's needs."

 C. Gene Wilkes, "Jesus on Leadership"

Dear Senators and Delegates:

As leaders of our faith communities, we call on the Maryland General Assembly to raise the state minimum wage and thereby foster economic recovery for our families, our communities and our state.

An adequate minimum wage is a bedrock moral value. Our diverse faiths all affirm the dignity of the worker and the moral imperative of fair and just wages. A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in poverty. Yet in our own state of Maryland the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, providing only $15,000 a year for a full-time worker, which is not enough to live on.

It is immoral that people work full time, but have to choose between paying the rent and paying for child care. It is immoral to have wages so low that waitresses, cashiers and child care workers depend on food banks and food stamps to help feed their families. It is immoral to have wages so low that housekeepers, health care aides and security guards go to work every day from homeless shelters.

It is immoral that the minimum wage keeps people in poverty instead of out of poverty.

Raising the minimum wage is not only vital for our working families, it is vital for our economy, as workers take their pay increase and spend it on needed goods and services at their corner markets, pharmacies and other local businesses.

In 1968, just days before his murder, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told sanitation workers in Memphis, "It is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis and a full-time job getting part-time income." King said, "We are tired of working our hands off and laboring every day and not even making a wage adequate with daily basic necessities of life."

The real value of the minimum wage is less now, more than 40 years later, than it was when Dr. King spoke those prophetic words. The minimum wage would be about $10 today if it had kept pace with the cost of living.

The Golden Rule teaches us, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." We, faith leaders across the state, urge the Maryland General Assembly to raise the minimum wage to $10 by 2013 and adjust it starting in 2014 to keep up with the cost of living. In raising the minimum wage, we lift our working families and our state.

Sincerely,

Faith leaders -Click here to endorse this letter

If you are not a faith leader (e.g., Reverend, Rabbi, Imam, Director of faith-based program, Religious Social Action Committee Chair, etc.) then please use the General Public sign on instead. Thank you.

The Faith Advocates for Jobs

campaign, in order to combat the

severe unemployment crisis that is

devastating so many of America's working

people and families, and to help rebuild the

foundations of our nation's economy, will:

When there is massive unemployment in the black community, it is called a social problem. But when there is massive unemployment in the white community, it is called a Depression. We look around every day and we see thousands and millions of people making inadequate wages. Not only do they work in our hospitals, they work in our hotels, they work in our laundries, they work in domestic service, they find themselves underemployed. You see, no labor is really menial unless you're not getting adequate wages. People are always talking about menial labor. But if you're getting a good (wage) as I know that through some unions they've brought it up . . . that isn't menial labor. What makes it menial is the income, the wages." 

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

The following is an exerpt from SOCIAL WITNESS, 'PROPHETIC' DISCERNMENT, AND POST-CIVIL RIGHTS ERA CHURCHES. This report was prepared by Dr. R. Drew Smith Spring 2001 

Roundtable participants discussed the extent to which economic development and political economy have emerged as primary emphases among black churches. It was pointed out by several participants that some of the church communions represented around the table had been at the forefront of promoting economic development as the "new black politics." Underlying the emphasis on economic matters was a commitment to community building. And while a number of participants were pleased that new opportunities for public and private sector partnerships around community development were emerging, there was still a conviction among some participants that there is "a role for self-initiative, self-responsibility, and self-funding of these projects." A number of participants shared examples from their own ministries of approaches to economic development, and what is important to note about many of these examples is the emphasis on human development rather than just on physical infrastructure development.

One participant stated:

As our congregation was preparing to initiate a massive building project, God spoke to my heart and said, 'if you build and invest fifteen million dollars here, in fifty years you will have a memorial. But if you invest in the people, in fifty years you will have a legacy.' We found out that it is not important to have fifteen million dollars tied up in a building, if you only have fifteen thousand dollars left at the end of the year to provide programs and services. Instead of building and being extravagant, it took seven or eight years, but now we have a two million-dollar endowment for a Christian school. And we do not have any millionaire members in our congregation. With two million dollars, banks and the city government listen when we talk. We also have seventy-five percent of our members actively involved in outreach.

As empires have done throughout the ages, the Persians co-opted the indigenous religious elite to support the imperial program. Ezra was the Persians' man. They sent him back to Judah with royal silver and gold and imperial authority to rebuild the city in accordance with the Persian plan (Ezra 7.11-26).

Ezra was willing to support the Persian scheme, but he was no fool. He well knew that the prophet Jeremiah had claimed that Jerusalem's destruction by the Babylonians was YHWH's punishment for the elite's reliance on imperial politics rather than on YHWH alone. How was relying now on Persian financing and support for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and its temple any different from what Jeremiah had condemned before the Exile?

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"History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people"

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

"I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

"Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man forgets himself into immortality."

"When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative."

"The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood."

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

"Yes, I see the Church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists."

"There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period when the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators." But they went on with the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment"