COFFEE BREAK 203

+ updated at 12:10pm ESDT on Thursday, September 23, 2010

+ The Spirituality and Practice Spiritual Literacy Blog offers "New Census Figures Confirm Rising Poverty, Big Income Gaps." It is extremely important for Christians to expand their efforts on behalf of the poor. Here is the blog post in its entirety:

Writing in Change.org, Kathryn Baer reports that the latest Census Bureau figures show that the poverty rate has increased again — from 13.2 percent in 2008 to 14.3 percent last year. This means that the total number of officially poor people was the largest in the 51 years the government has been publishing figures. The report also contains other shocking statistics including:

• The poverty rate for children increased to 15.5 million
• About 44 percent of the individuals in poverty — somewhat over 19 million — had incomes below 50 percent of the poverty threshold. That's 6.3 percent of the total population.
• We still see a huge income gap between the richest and poorest households. Last year, the bottom fifth had 3.4 of the nation's total money income and the top fifth had about half. And the top five percent of this fortunate fifth had a whooping 21 percent.

Meanwhile, safety net programs are being cut by both the federal and state governments — programs such as health-care for low-income families and children and services for elderly and disabled and child care programs.Oscar Romero once said: "A church that does not join the poor, in order to speak out from the side of the poor against injustices committed against them, is not the true church of Jesus Christ."

It is time for not only churches but synagogues and mosques to take the side of the poor and their plight today in America.

-- Mary Ann and Frederic Brussat

+ The New York Times offers "For Many, Health Care Relief Begins Today" by Kevin Sack. Excerpt: "Sometimes lost in the partisan clamor about the new health care law is the profound relief it is expected to bring to hundreds of thousands of Americans who have been stricken first by disease and then by a Darwinian insurance system."