In Kuala Lumpur, on May 9th 2001, organisations representing 160 million Christians from over 100 denominations and groups fully supported the church-based, grassroots campaign to cancel unsustainable Third World debt through their delegates to the World Evangelical Fellowship’s 11th General Assembly. They demanded that the leaders of the world’s most industrialized nations due to meet at the G7 summit to be held in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001 fulfil the Jubilee 2000 vision by taking the necessary steps to ‘break the chains of debt and give a new start to the world’s poorest nations.’ A new deal on debt was advocated as a matter of urgency.
Although this is a secular campaign, it is rooted in the teaching of the Bible, and has been taken up with great enthusiasm across a wide spectrum of churches. It is the churches that have provided the backbone for the campaign, forcing the issue on to the politicians’ agenda and providing most of the people turning up to lobby G8 meetings, reminiscent of the great church-based campaigns for reform which arose in the 19th century. The recent ‘Make Poverty History’ and ‘Micah’ campaigns have proved hugely influential, and were fully supported by evangelical Christians and others who targeted the G8 meeting in Gleneagles in the summer of 2005 to galvanize massive popular support for delivery of the Millennium Development Goals.
