On July 4 Donald Trump signed into law what he labeled the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (HR 1-119th Congress), which is anything but beautiful.

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This Bill threatens the lives and well-being of all Americans -- especially the most vulnerable -- as well as people everywhere. It will add $3 trillion to the national deficit, raise the cost of student loans, slash incentives for conversion to clean energy, make permanent the 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy, and cut $841 billion from Medicaid. Just the cut to Medicaid alone will cause an estimated 10 million of the most vulnerable Americans to lose their health care. This will impact children and people with disabilities, life-threatening illnesses, low incomes, and those who are seniors or pregnant.

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Its potential for harm doesn’t stop there. Disasters from climate change are increasing and yet the Bill cuts funding for agencies formed for environmental stewardship, organizations such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Weather Service (NWS). These cuts add to the burden already faced by these agencies. For instance, in April, the Austin/San Antonio, Texas, weather forecasting office lost its warning-coordination meteorologist and its Science Operations Officer. These are people who would have helped avoid the Camp Mystic tragedy.


We must not remain on the sidelines. We must act on our passion for justice and encourage all people of faith, conscience, and good will to help us promote, maintain, and expand a just, peaceful, and sustainable society.

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We invite you to commit just one hour to participate in a mass online writing event on July 28, using a technology called Synanim. Synanim gathers participants into anonymous small groups to create a consensus document. Participants are asked to state their values as people of faith, conscience, and good will and to use those values to identify a plan for what we must do to challenge the Bill’s most dangerous aspects, as well as naming what we will do for those who are most in danger from its consequences.

The leader of each small group is chosen by all participants through the choices they make in the timed steps of the Synanim process. Leaders are selected for empathy to group values and skill in presenting the best ideas. Each small group leader will be invited to continue in another session with their group’s document to write again with other leaders until one final small group selects the leader for all the contributors. That leader will be invited to read the document to the public at an event in Washington DC, TBD.

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The statement created by the online process will be made available to all participants, as authors of the document, to send to their elected state and national representatives, to use in sermons and liturgies, to post on social media, to organize actions in their local and regional communities, and to study and discuss the ongoing implications of the Bill, and to monitor its implementation to assess further needed action.

We encourage you to invite our ecumenical partners to participate in this event and to use the statement in your work.