In the Media

  • Portland Tribune: Ban on food taxes would be a first, Paris Achen/Capital Bureau June 20, 2018

    Mary King, professor of economics emerita at Portland State University, said the ballot measure is “a massive, unprecedented carve-out for some of the biggest retailers in the world that will apply to far more than just the food they sell.”

    Karen Nettler, board chair of the Oregon Coalition of Christian Voices, said the measure is fueled by corporate greed and “exploits the daily anxieties of vulnerable families when the truth is that this measure would help some of the world’s wealthiest CEOs.”

 

  • Forest Grove’s News Times: Opinion: Tax reform legislation should be moral document, Andy Harris, February 14, 2018
     
    ‘Whatever our political affiliation, we would do well to judge the tax reform law in the context of Jesus’ words.’
     
    Oregon Center for Christian Voices (OCCV) feels compelled to speak out against the deceptive and immoral federal tax reform law. The law includes steeply reduced tax rates for corporations, partnerships, real estate companies and people of wealth and power.

  • OPB: Unchurched, Perhaps, But Religion Still Matters In Oregon, by Julia Silverman OPB Oct. 3, 2013
         Public perception holds that Oregon is among the nation’s most unchurched states, a place where Sundays belong more to college football and brunch than they do to sermons and prayer.
    Karen Nettler, the board chair of the Oregon Center for Christian Voices, which advocates for social justice issues from a Christian perspective, said she thinks the twenty-somethings and young families who have flocked to the state’s metro areas over the last decade are changing the very definition of being religious.
     
    “There is more the feeling of freedom (in Oregon), to not feel like you are abandoning your faith if you are not involved with your church,” Nettler said. “I am aware of alternative communities, people who gather together to find a place or a community where they can express their spirituality.”
     
    Nettler also points out that organized religion has suffered in blue-leaning Oregon as Christianity has become more closely identified _fairly or not _ with conservative political ideology in the last 25 years nationwide. Such doctrines may have led to estrangement between the younger generation of Oregonians and organized religion, she said, while accounting for the rise in those who self-identify as “spiritual,” and retain a belief in a higher power.

     

    1. Christianity Today: Portland’s Quiet Abolitionists: Leading the liberal city’s efforts to halt child trafficking is a network of dedicated Christians. Just don’t go advertising it. , KATELYN BEATY 10.31.11
       
      We’ve had some great press from Christianity Today documenting our work on the Anti-Human Trafficking front firsthand!  The November 2011 issue of the magazine also includes an in-depth article about our efforts to unite forces in Portland.
       
      “When you have this evil—people who enslave another human being’s body and turn it into something sexually exploited on a daily basis for financial gain—this is the antithesis of what God wants. This is the antithesis of a beloved community.
       
      “Yet it is precisely this community that Tama-Sweet—in a network of Christians living in one of the least-churched states—has loved enough to begin transforming. Under Tama-Sweet’s leadership, the Oregon Center for Christian Voices (OCCV) has in four years become Oregon’s flagship nonprofit for passing laws that make it harder to sexually exploit children.

 

  • OCCV’s work on Human Trafficking was featured on page 5 of the May/June 2011 issue of PRISM – published by Evangelicals for Social Action.

 

  • Jamie Bash, OCCV’s intrepid Health Care Committee Chair, testified in Salem in support of the SB 97 a bill that would require Cultural Competency training for medical professionals. May 2011

 

 

  • The Oregonian: Christians Shift Focus to Other Political Ideas; Friday, February 22nd, 2008

 

  • The Oregonian: Putting faith into action for the common good; Sunday, November 4th, 2007

 

  • Leading Oregon organizations urge Congress to enact children’s health bill
    Bend Weekly, December 5th, 2007
     
    For the children of many of these families, hope lies in a strong SCHIP reauthorization bill, according to its backers.
     
    “The Christian community has always considered care for the sick to be a primary social duty,” said Courtney Dillard of the Oregon Center for Christian Values, a group consisting of mainline and evangelical Christians. “We are hopeful that Congress will be faithful to America’s children and enact SCHIP.”