By Michael Motes

“Our churches have forgotten that poor people not only have the right to make decisions about their lives and to be involved in making decisions with the middle class systems that control our churches. The church has forgotten how to reach out to the whole community and in many instances it does not want to.”

Addressing more than 100 church representatives and welfare reform advocates, Mary Ellen Lloyd, Director of the National Council of Churches (NCC) Working Group on Domestic Hunger and Poverty, drew enthusiastic support as she launched into the need for national welfare reform and its implication for the religious community.

Mrs. Lloyd was in Atlanta at the invitation of the Georgia Interchurch Association, sponsor of the day long program at First Presbyterian Church May 8 focusing on “Welfare Reform: Enough To Live On.” Father John Mulroy, pastor of Holy Family Church in East Marietta and Priest Secretary for the Archdiocesan Commission on Religious Unity, was general chairman for the forum.

Mrs. Lloyd began her address by explaining that she had been the recipient of “a special kind of welfare” since the days of her childhood in rural Ohio.

“I was born to a special kind of welfare -- white, girl child, middle class,” she said. “As I grew up in the ‘30s and ‘40s, I wasn’t aware of unemployment in my own town. But unemployment was some 20 miles away in the county seat and it became very apparent to me as a little girl, when I rode to town with my mother to buy a few groceries or to go visit my grandparents.”

It was not until she had become the wife of a Presbyterian minister and was living in Philadelphia that she took an active role in advocating changes in welfare programs. Her initial work was with food assistance programs and, she told the audience, “I was often challenged as a racist do-gooder because of my church relationship, my manner, the color of my skin, and the fact that I wanted to expand food programs.”

Mrs. Lloyd believes that “the Church is fragmented by the difference of income that sets our churches and congregations in certain neighborhoods in our cities and counties. We have developed an economic prejudice that keeps us separated from one another. And our community of believers is all one kind of people in each place. Our church community is not whole and supportive.”

She attributes ambivalence in the church to the lack of welfare reform, stating, “There has not been real welfare reform in this country because the church community is so ambivalent about its position on the need, or the reasons, or the way, or the theological basis, or whatever, for welfare reform.”

“Pastors are ordained to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but that doesn’t have anything to do with welfare because they really believe that welfare recipients are lazy and just don’t want to work. They don’t say that, they just don’t come to meetings or go to the state capital with the poor people on issues. However, on paper the church makes wonderful pronouncements!”

“Congregation after congregation across the country will contribute to food cupboards and pack Thanksgiving baskets and will pray for the poor, but will NEVER take time to do the homework to understand WHY there are poor families and WHY they need food.”

Misunderstanding abut who receives Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) is an issue that greatly incenses the NCC official, who is “weary of the racist white persons in this country who equate welfare with poor blacks, when a little bit of homework shows the welfare program to have a majority of white recipients.”

Mrs. Lloyd told her supportive audience, “...I have become deeply angry at the people who feel that AFDC mothers are women who are consistently pregnant, in order that the government will take care of them! Who wants to be on food stamps and stand in the grocery store lines and hear comments about what is in your shopping cart as you pay your bill? Only a woman who knows she must suffer social ridicule in order to feed her children will submit herself to such harassment.”

Mrs. Lloyd also stressed the need to study local legislation and voice strong support through representatives of AFDC related bills. “You must plan well and consistently and at the end of 1979 be able to say, ‘I’ve won,’” she said. “And you do that by making linkages of voting networks across the country.”

In summary, she challenged church leaders “to stand up and be counted” in working for welfare reform. “Your first decision is whether you as pastors and church members are going to work together with the poor. I am convinced that the church must become directly involved in the total welfare program of this country and unless it does the church as a witness in society may as well close its doors.”

State Senator Julie Bond also addressed those attending the welfare reform forum, attacking the Georgia General Assembly’s refusal to approve Governor George Busbee’s $10 million welfare package as “added evidence of the state’s unwillingness to care for those who cannot care for themselves.”

Like Mrs. Lloyd, Bond also cited misconceptions about welfare recipients, saying that those on welfare are generally thought to be “21 year old men who are as strong as anyone, who turn down jobs by the hour, who father a child every nine months and then drive to the welfare office and pick up a huge check in a big Cadillac, cash it at the liquor store, get drunk and wait around until another check comes the next month.”

Bond then cited statistics showing that there are more white AFDC recipients in Georgia and that total figures include a majority of small children.

The Reverend Austin Ford of Emmaus House served as consultant for the seminar, which concluded with workshops on Publicity and Media, Consciousness Raising in the Church, Legislative Action on Welfare Issues and Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Organizing Local and Network Efforts and Information on State Welfare Programs.

A panel discussion on Welfare and the Church was introduced by Douglas Skelton, Georgia Commissioner of Human Resources, and moderated by Bishop Joseph C. Coles of the Christian Methodist-Episcopal Church.

Others participating in workshops or group discussions included Patricia Johnson, Director Division of Family and Children Services, Georgia Department of Human Resources; Mrs. Linda Berry, Director, Christians Against Hunger in Georgia; Mrs. Frances Kennedy, President, Church Women United of Georgia, and Mrs. Frances Pauley, Director, Georgia Poverty Rights Organization.

Participating ministers included the Reverends Sammy Clark, Trinity United Methodist Church; Joe Harvard, North Decatur Presbyterian Church; Tim McDonald, Ebenezer Baptist Church and Janice Hume, Peachtree Christian Church.

Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan gave the invocation at lunch and attended the afternoon session of the meeting.