The President's Prayer Breakfast

Like many of you perhaps, last month I watched the CBS News special "People Like Us." In it, Bill Moyers offered personal looks at four families adversely affected by the Reagan budget cuts. The very human stories of these people told it all, without the need for mountains of facts and statistics. Here were people who, "except for accident of birth," said Moyers, "are just like us."

Our community watched the show together that night, and I noticed some tears around the room. The people Bill Moyers introduced to us are much like people with whom we live and work in Washington, D.C.

The stories of ordinary people in the Moyers special made clear what is often hidden in the rhetoric of budget debates: those paying the highest price for this administration's economic plan are poor people. While the administration attacks cheating in the welfare system, Moyers pointed out that in 1981 the Senate Finance Committee reported that the U.S. government lost $95 billion in revenue due to taxpayers under-reporting their income. That figure is seven times larger than the entire welfare budget for the year.

But it is the welfare system and not the military budget or the subsidies and tax advantages for large corporations and the rich that the government chooses to focus on. When the government tightens its belt, it does so around the necks of the poor.

A few months ago I was invited to a meeting on what the church should do to help the poor in this crisis, held on the day of the annual President's Prayer Breakfast (an occasion which I have religiously avoided). Against my better judgment, but out of a favor to a friend, I decided to go.

On hand were assorted Christian leaders who that morning had attended the breakfast, which has become a time to honor the president and give him a chance to justify in religious terms what he is doing. I once wrote to the organizers of the breakfast that when the president meets with Christian leaders it ought to be a time for biblical accountability and prophetic witness, not mutual affirmation. So far, that advice has never been taken.

The meeting to talk about the poor was held where the prayer breakfast had been, at the Sheraton Washington Hotel in a chandeliered, carpeted ballroom. No poor people were there. The last time I had been to that hotel I was arrested for a nuclear protest and sentenced to 30 days in the D.C. jail. So I was a little uncomfortable. I soon became even more so.

Two members of the White House staff showed up for the meeting. They were, of course, born-again Christians like all the rest of us and were simply there as "brothers." It was pretty clear to me that someone had a plan, and that we were all about to be invited to become a part of it. The dialogue, or rather monologue, from the Reagan administration evangelicals which followed was extraordinary and bears a public retelling. To the best of my recollection, here is how it went.

One of the two began, "Now that the government is getting out of providing welfare for the poor, which it never should have done anyway, the churches can get involved, which they should have been doing all along. We have a tremendous opportunity here. Ronald Reagan has cleared the way for the church to take up the challenge.

"You remember the biblical pattern of the prophet speaking to the king. Well, now the king has a word for the prophets. If we could just unite the efforts of the churches with those of our major corporations, it could be the greatest example of voluntarism we've ever seen" (I knew someone would use that word).

More followed: "We need a spiritual revival in this country. If that revival happens, we are prepared to coordinate things through the White House Task Force on Private Initiative. The president is prepared to put the moral authority of the presidency behind this effort."

And: "I want you to know the president really cares about poor people. He actually can't sleep at night for fear that some people might fall through the safety net. This president cares. Now, the poor don't realize that he cares. That's why it's our job to convince them that he really does care. If people would just not be so critical of the president and what he is trying to do, if people would just give him some praise for his efforts, it would make a lot of difference. For example, if Sojourners would just not be so negative about our policies and offer some real support..."

The White House representative finished talking and said he was sorry to leave so quickly but he had another appointment.

Had this conversation taken place in our neighborhood on 14th Street, it would have been a bad joke. Meetings like this can only happen in nice hotels far removed from the people who are the subject of the conversation. With very high-sounding words, the poor were patronized, the government let off the hook, and the rich and powerful upheld as the saviors of the unfortunate. The churches were being invited to join with the nation's business leaders to solve "the problem of the poor." The meeting itself was a classic example of why the poor have problems.

I was almost overwhelmed with anger, though I felt more like crying than cursing. All I could do was repeat the words of Mary's "Magnificat" from Luke 1 to remind the other representative from the Reagan administration that if a revival does happen in this country the people now in control will be put out of power, the lowly will be lifted up, the hungry filled with good things, and the rich sent empty away.

The meeting ended in disarray. I don't know if there have been any more meetings. I haven't been invited.

Jim Wallis was editor-in-chief of Sojourners when this article appeared.