Friday Night Theology

God and the G20

26 March 2009

"This isn't going to be another Stop the War moment, where a huge march is held, the government ignores it and everyone goes home depressed. And it's not going to be another Make Poverty History, where the rock stars meet the world leaders and everyone makes promises and nothing happens. This is a serious coalition with a serious agenda, and we're in it for the long term."  

So said Nick Dearden from the Jubilee Debt Campaign who was referring to this weekend's 'Put People First' march, which is taking place ahead of the G20 meeting next week in London. The coalition has a wide range of voices from trades unions, through environmental groups, to religious groups, including our own Micah Challenge. Its manifesto is that as the world's richest nations pay attention to the global economic crisis, they must not forget those who wield little political and economic power: the poorest, our children, those without jobs.  

The aims are laudable, and we can only hope and pray that the demonstrations pass off peacefully so that the goals are not undermined by the actions of a few. But the key in what Dearden said was his final comment, "We're in it for the long term". For if we're honest, many of us have been campaigning on issues of global economic justice for years, if not decades. Live Aid was over twenty years ago, and despite the promises of the more recent Millennium Development Goals, little has changed for the poorest in our midst - by which I mean the poorest on our planet.  

Going even further back, the international development industry has been beavering away since the 1950s and yet the plight of the average sub-saharan African has hardly changed. Why is it that despite such massive investment over time, the situation of the poorest is still so dire? It would be easy at this point to simply blame our international institutions, and no doubt they are part of the problem. The Structural Adjustment Programs of the 1980s are widely considered to have been a failure in alleviating actual poverty. But it is not as simple as just blaming wrong policies or lack of political will.  

The causes of poverty are complex and go way beyond our unjust economic system. One of the most interesting findings in the World Bank report 'Voices of the Poor' was the importance of religious faith to those who experience the most extreme poverty. The report interviewed over 60,000 men and women living in poverty and asked them how they defined poverty and well-being.  

What was remarkable - at least for secularists - was that despite the fact that these people were suffering from material, economic and socio-political deprivation, they frequently drew attention, not to those factors, but to their own need for spiritual wealth. Perhaps it is partly for this reason that religious organisations were the most trusted and respected by those who are actually poor, in contrast to those who claim to work on their behalf. The World Bank report states, "In ratings of effectiveness in both urban and in rural areas, religious organizations feature more prominently than any single type of state institution."  

Is it possible, then, that part of the reason why fifty plus years of 'development' on economic grounds has delivered so little is because the relevant politicians and international actors have failed to acknowledge one of the issues that the poor themselves say matters most to them: their spiritual needs? In saying this, I'm not suggesting that a few more evangelists will eliminate global poverty - but I am saying that a too narrow focus on economics alone is not the answer. You would have thought that our current economic crisis has shown that. So, as the coalition says, 'Put People First', and that includes their need for God.

Justin Thacker, Head of Theology

As Chair of the World Evangelical Alliance Theological Commission, Justin Thacker will shortly be leading a major piece of work exploring issues of development and theology, including the implicit theologies that different development agencies use. The aim is to work with these agencies to ensure that they ground their practices in sound theological principles and thereby continue to serve the poor in the most appropriate way possible. If you are interested in this work and/or wish to support it, please email Justin at j.thacker@eauk.org