Breach of Promise urges us to see poverty for what it is - and isn't. Visiting communities across north America, a thought-provoking reporter listens to poor people, sets the background perspectives and draws a set of caring portraits.
We discover that to lose one's job, pay rent rather than buy food, bring up children on a minimum-wage income or see the farm auctioned off is to be counted sometimes as a statistic but seldom as a person. Int he midst of societies that exalt "the good life," poverty means feeling invisible to the powers that be while standing out far too starkly in the food pantry line.
As we meet real people chapter by chapter, we will learn to look beyond our fears and prejudices about poverty. we will gain insights about our responsibilities as Christians to keep God's covenant and as citizens to fulfill our nations' promises of equality and freedom. Framing the portraits, meditations on Bible passages remind us that God intends a covenant people to include orphans, debtors, strangers and hired hands as well as those who prosper in the land.
As we join with the poor in our midst to assist a church member facing unemployment, to change the face of a neighborhood or to push for a new policy at city hall, Breach of Promise will be required reading all the way.