Evangelicals, Poverty and Gay Marriage

To most people, it seems that the mainstream evangelical movement has mostly focused only on opposing abortion and gay marriage. But I happily read an article about a group of evangelicals trying to prioritize a broader range of issues including poverty. They also intend to address other social problems such as healthcare, global warming, and the war in Iraq.

One of the organizers, Jim Wallis, said, “A whole generation of young evangelicals believes that Jesus would probably care more about the 30,000 children who died again today – as they did yesterday and they will tomorrow – from preventable disease than he would about passing a gay-marriage amendment in Ohio.”

I agree! I am not a religious person, but I agree with many of the secular teachings of Jesus. I also believe that Jesus and other caring people would worry much more about issues such as poverty, healthcare, education and the enviornment than about gay marriage.

Regardless of how they feel about gay marriage, I do not understand how anyone could think of it as more important to stop gays from marrying than to alleviate poverty and fix the healthcare crisis. Poverty kills children; gay marriage does not.