Ecumenical Advocacy Days 2014 Lobby Day
Ecumenical Advocacy Days is a movement of the ecumenical Christian community, and its recognized partners and allies, grounded in biblical witness and our shared traditions of justice, peace and the integrity of creation. Our goal, through worship, theological reflection and opportunities for learning and witness, is to strengthen our Christian voice and to mobilize for advocacy on a wide variety of U.S. domestic and international policy issues.
You may also download a copy of EAD’s 2014 social media guide for participants.
Our 2014 National Gathering focused on the theme of “Resisting Violence, Building Peace,” and the Gospel call to “confront and imagine how to transform the violence in our world, and together will seek a vision of peace in the community, peace among the peoples, peace in the marketplace, and peace with the earth.”
Read more in our theme backgrounder.
Lobby Day Ask 2014 Backgrounder
On Monday, March 24 hundreds of Christian advocates converged on Capitol Hill to bring a message to Congress promoting policies that make for a more peaceful world, including efforts to end gun violence and promote poverty reduction.
Our Nation can and must do more to nurture a culture of peace. We call for policies that:
- Reduce acquisition and use of guns for purposes that cause harm; and
- Rebalance funding priorities away from out-sized military spending to focus more resources on preventing violence and enhancing human security.
Ecumenical Advocacy Days is not advocating that all guns be banned. Rather, we support legislation that will make it harder for people with hostile intentions to buy guns and easier for the community stakeholders to adequately prevent them from doing harm.
Pentagon and war spending currently account for 57% of the federal discretionary budget. This means that every other priority included in the discretionary part of the budget must vie for tiny pieces of the remaining 43%. Research has indicated that investing in conflict prevention is 60 times more cost effective than intervening after violence has begun. We can, if we so choose, invest in a different way of relating and interacting with our brothers and sisters here and around the world by promoting policies that reduce violence, including right sizing military spending and focusing on efforts to end poverty and other causes of violence.
Read our entire Lobby Day Ask and Talking Points document by clicking below.