Friday Night Theology

Doing Good

27 June 2008

I'm sure somewhere there's a website which captures the stories the mainstream media don't cover. I hope that one of the ones it mentions this week is the National Prayer Breakfast. I had the privilege of attending this event which actually began on Monday evening and stretched through to Tuesday morning.

The theme for the whole event was 'doing good', and in various ways we reflected on the good that Christians are doing throughout the world. On Monday night, the focus was the Micah Challenge campaign which is seeking to hold the international community to account for its delivery on the Millennium Development Goals. The evening began with every guest rolling a dice to see if they would be designated 'poor' or 'rich' for the purposes of the event. I ended up as 'poor' which meant that instead of enjoying canapés and fruit juice, I had bread and water to drink - rationed water at that!

Douglas Alexander, the Secretary of State for International Development, spoke and reminded us of the imperative that exists if together we are going to meet the goal of halving absolute poverty by 2015. The evening also included the launch of the book to accompany the campaign: Micah's Challenge: the church's responsibility to the global poor, foreword by Gordon Brown (edited by Hoek & Thacker, with contributions from Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo & Ron Sider).

While people like me do little but write about why global poverty is our responsibility, on Tuesday morning at the prayer breakfast itself, we focussed on those who actually were doing good in the name of Christ. I was particularly struck by the story of Margaret Gordon, an unassuming Scottish lady who felt called by Christ to serve the homeless in Kyrgyzstan. We saw a video of the way in which she cared for those trapped by alcoholism, drug abuse and poverty - and how in the name of Christ she provided love, care, and practical support. Of course, her example is mirrored by literally thousands upon thousands of Christians throughout the world 'doing good' in the name of Christ.

Yet in the seminar that followed the breakfast, one of the recurring themes was the way in which the media do not highlight this aspect of Christianity. As all of us know, this week has seen acres of coverage given to the problems in the Anglican church, yet almost nothing devoted to the Micah Challenge event, or the National Prayer Breakfast. I once heard a senior journalist ask why it is that all you ever hear the church talking about is sexuality but never the Millennium Development Goals. I reminded him that in fact the church constantly both speaks and acts in relation to global poverty far more than other issues. It's just that the media have no interest in covering it.

So, where does this leave us? On the one hand, it means organisations like my own need to work harder at trying to persuade the media to cover the good work that Christians are doing, and not just the bad. But even if we're unsuccessful, even if the only press we ever get is a bad press, it means we just carry on with the task that Christ has called us to do. For ultimately, we are not doing it in order to get public praise, we are doing it out of faithfulness to Christ and his command to serve the poor.

Justin Thacker, Head of Theology