VOICE Public Action Makes News in Canada!

Excerpts from an October 7th article by Olivia Ward, Foreign Affairs Reporter, in the Toronto (Canada) Star newspaper:

Dumfries, Va. - The parking lots were overflowing, and the large church hall packed with rapt listeners: women in bright African dress, robed Catholic monks, Hispanic families and white Middle Americans.

Eyes shining with purpose, they were looking for a new world that would bring the power of their faith to the capital of America, and beyond.

But the hundreds of diverse churchgoers and clergy who thronged the spacious First Mount Zion Baptist Church in this historic Virginia town Sunday were a different breed of believer...They had come to found a new activist organization, VOICE - Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement - working against poverty and homelessness in a traditionally wealthy state where both are growing at unsettling rates.

"Our church has (free) dinners once a week," said Cindy Ellmore of the St. Paul Methodist Church, attending with her husband Bill. "But it's getting to the point where the need is so great we can't handle it. We came because something has to be done."...

"We're motivated to live out the gospel in our daily lives," said Tim Devine, a member of the Rising Hope Methodist Church...Added fellow Methodist Jamecia Willis, "you can pray for change but you also have to work for it."...

"Unity is the key to solving these problems," said Arnie Grant, a national staffer of the Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation, which helped to launch the interfaith coalition, and builds activist umbrella groups to fight for social and economic rights.

"If you look around you, you'll see that it's not true that Christians can't talk to Muslims and Jews, and blacks, Asians and Latinos can't work together."

In Virginia, he said, "people have been very separate and fragmented,. Now we're building something that cuts across all religions and communities. It's something politicians can't ignore."...

For the full article go to www.thestar.com/article/512899