Katrina resettlement and min. wage

From NPR's "All Things Considered" comes a report about a New Orleans refugee from Hurricane Katrina, a black woman seeking to start a new life in predominantly-white Siloam Springs, Ark.

Also from Northwest Arkansas and arguably on a related note, Lowell Grisham, an Episcopal priest in Fayetteville, offers in the Northwest Arkansas Times a Biblical view of the rightness of an increase in the minimum wage. Even the Family Council should join in, he says.

Raising the minimum wage ought to be something that Biblical Christians can unite around regardless of denomination or theology. When Jesus pictured the last judgment in Matthew 25, his sole criteria was how we have treated "the least of these" — did we feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and clothing to the naked? The apostle James says, "If a brother or sister is nakedand lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?" These New Testament words reinforce the tradition of prophets like Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah and the obligations of the Torah to advocate on behalf of the poor.

Biblical voices tell us that it is immoral when people are working full-time and living in poverty.