The other candidates
are the Rev. David McKechnie of Houston, TX, and the Rev. K.C.
Ptomey of Nashville, TN.
“I want to get the message out that there is a world out
there that most of us are unaware of,” Ufford-Chase told
the Presbyterian News Service in a telephone interview.
“And the church has a special responsibility to figure out
how to create a global community that matches the global economy.”
Ufford-Chase said there must be an alternative to displacement
and despair for impoverished workers and families. He said he
believes part of the solution lies in creating links between poor
communities and those of wealth and privilege. And he believes
Presbyterians are called to support marginalized church partners
around the world.
“I believe that we are called to live as Jesus lived,
to risk as Jesus risked, and to care as deeply as Jesus cared,”
Ufford-Chase proclaims at his Web site, www.rickuffordchase.com,
where he details his platform and goals, describes his faith journey
and reflects on the challenges the church faces.
Ufford-Chase has been active in support of besieged communities
in Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico, and of Palestinian Christians
living in Bethlehem and Hebron on the West Bank. He is a co-moderator
of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, and also is active in Christian
Peacemaker Teams, a pacifist group that sends Christians to live
in communities plagued by violence.
Ufford-Chase, who is fluent in Spanish, is a member and elder
at Tucson’s Southside Presbyterian Church, whose pastor
is former PC(USA) Moderator John Fife, and serves as a member
of the Presbytery of de Cristo’s committee for long-range
planning and funds development.
He has been active since 1986 in a number of refugee-support
groups in Tucson, including Humane Borders, a faith-based organization
that maintains water stations in the desert for migrants; The
Samaritans, a desert search-and-rescue group; and the Maquila
Organizing Project, which trains labor leaders to work with Mexican
factory workers.
Ufford-Chase is a Presbyterian “preacher’s kid”
who earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the Colorado
College in Colorado Springs and spent a semester at Princeton
Seminary before leaving in 1986 to become a mission volunteer.
Ufford-Chase said he realized that he was called to run for
moderator while he was leading a group of seminarians in the desert
and hearing migrants’ stories: of a couple who’d left
a 3-year-old daughter behind to seek work in Kansas; a 16-year-old
boy who hoped to find a job in North Carolina; a man trying desperately
to get to New York to find out what happened to a brother and
son who worked in the World Trade Center and haven’t been
heard from since Sept. 11, 2001.
He said he wants to tell their stories, and countless others
like them, to the church.
Taking responsibility for building a more humane global economy
isn’t easy, he said, “but it is no more scary than
it was for people in Jesus’ time … to hear his message.
To take down barriers. And to step out and be with one another.
”
He told PNS: “I see this as an opportunity for our church
to be re-invigorated” and to energize people willing to
“stand against the ‘me-first’ message of the
first world.”
Ufford-Chase and his wife of 12 years, Kitty Ufford, live in
Tucson and have one son, Teo. |
