2025 LAMA policy priorities.

Lutheran Advocacy Ministry Arizona’s (LAMA) legislative priorities for 2025 are below:

Each year, the LAMA Policy Council meets to discern what will be LAMA’s policy priorities for the coming year. The committee weighs political and social issues from a faith perspective, bearing in mind LAMA’s mission to “join with the most vulnerable of our society to voice our common needs in the public square, activating our faith in love.”

  1. Food Insecurity

    as it relates to hunger and the root causes of hunger. The ELCA social teachings on hunger and poverty include “Economic Life” and “Homelessness.” The first tells us, “outrage over the plight of people living in poverty is a theme throughout the Bible. The poor are those who live precariously between subsistence and utter deprivation. It is not poor people them selves who are the problem, but their lack of access to the basic necessities of life. Without such, they cannot maintain their human dignity.”

    As we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” we are committed to advocating for policies that helps Arizonans struggling with food insecurity.

  2. Civic Engagement

    as we are called to encourage faithful and nonpartisan voter participation, and understand and speak out about the intersection of voting and elections and racial, gender and economic justice. The ELCA is established to be a “publicly engaged church.” The ELCA social teachings on educating, advocating, and engaging in our political process, including Government and Civic Engagement, Church in Society, the new Social Statement on Civic Life and Faith, and the the ELCAvotes initiatives Called to Be a Public Church, Voting Rights and Racial Justice, Movement into Action speak to this calling.

    • Support for public schools. Martin Luther wrote, “A city’s best and greatest welfare, safety, and strength consist in its having many able, learned, wise, honorable, and well- educated citizens.” Then as now, effective schools are a blessing to society, preparing students for their future callings and responsibilities. LAMA will work to support public schools, acknowledging the many ways that students and families who are underserved benefit through not only an education, but also from food programs such as Healthy School Meals and Sun Bucks, shelter through both heat and air conditioning, and the safety that public schools provide. ELCA Social Statement Our Calling in Education informs this work.

    • Informed Christian engagement. What does it mean to be a Christian living and serving in a complex, diverse, and interdependent global society and to be responsible and civil citizens? What does our faith call us to be engaged in? LAMA seeks to educate, inform and promote healthy dialogue on Christian engagement.

  3. Immigration

    Together with our partners at Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest (LSS-SW), LAMA seeks to support with compassion the dignity of individuals experiencing immigration by working to protect legal pathways to immigration and protecting the civil rights of all in our multicultural society. Exodus 23:9 reads, “Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.” The ELCA Social Message Immigration presents basic themes for discernment on questions of immigration that our society is facing, and the social policy resolution Toward Compassionate, Just, and Wise Immigration Reform will inform this work. LAMA seeks to alleviate misperceptions, separating fact from myth, and will endeavor to educate our network on immigration policy, clarifying what’s at stake.

    + Affordable Housing

    We are pleased to be in collaboration with Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest (LSS-SW), who has committed again in 2025 to advocating in the areas of affordable housing and homelessness. We will partner with LSS-SW in these efforts, and will use the ELCA’s social message, Homeless: A Renewal of Commitment, and its new resource, Housing: A Practical Guide for Learning, Advocating and Building as references.

    To learn more about these issues in our state, click here.

LAMA will monitor all legislation, especially those bills that relate to LAMA’s legislative priorities noted above, and together with friends and partners who share similar priorities, LAMA will work to help shape positive legislation this year. When there is legislative activity of interest to the LAMA community that needs support, LAMA will send Action Alerts.