Is any Christian against ending world poverty?

[Ian David]

On a mission to reduce world poverty


The Rev. Ian T. Douglas is to speak at Trinity Church Boston Wednesday.

Is any Christian against ending world poverty? If not, why is the Rev. Ian T. Douglas, a professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, evangelizing about the Christian obligation to help poor countries?

"At some level, it should be a no-brainer," concedes the Rev. William W. Rich, who has arranged for Douglas to speak Wednesday at Trinity Church Boston, where Rich is senior associate rector in charge of adult Christian education.

Douglas, a scholar who has been prominent in the Episcopal Church's governance, is part of Trinity's lecture series on the Millennium Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2000 and reaffirmed in 2005 by President Bush. The eight goals include halving world poverty by 2015, stabilizing the environment, advancing women's rights, and accelerating efforts to eliminate disease.

<snip>

Douglas worries that his church, on the brink of possible schism with its global fellows in the Anglican Communion over gay rights, may need a reminder not to ignore the poor in the heat of its internal debate over "who's in and who's out."

"The devil's not stupid," he says. "And the evil one wants nothing more than for church folk to be so overly consumed with church issues that we hide our light under the bushel."

More:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/03/10/on_a_mission_to_reduce_world_poverty/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+City%2FRegion+News

[Deja Q]

1. No, but Bush doesn't need to kill America like how the Romans killed Christ in the process...

And with 6.5 billion people on the planet, we have plenty of mouths to feed.

Too many.

And what are deemed "welfare mothers" by the corporate sect in America are being REWARDING by doing the same behavior in other countries...

Yet claiming all those un-Christian conditions are immoral here. You know, fornication, premarital sex, children having children, and contracting a deadly disease by choice - which is what AIDS has been painted as.

Not to mention piracy; we lock up people in America yet in countries where piracy is beyond an embarrassment, we send them lots of jobs and give them a middle class on a plate.

You bet I'm confused by the Republicans in power. We are seeing what they define as wrongful acts being rewarded instead of punished. What does God, according to them, say about thieves and fornicators? (uh-oh) So maybe more Americans should do what the rest of the world is doing and we'll get jobs, health care, and other nice things coming back? I'm surprised the freepers haven't had their heads explode in unison!!

Or is what's all going on the Ultimate in terms of "reverse psychology".

Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice. I need a pill. 200mg Ibuprofen...

[NMMNG]

4. Huh?

:shrug:

[rasputin1952]

2. I can't hink, off the top of my head, any religion that has starvation

as one of the tenets of religion.

Alleviating poverty begins with ensuring that people are fed and have the energy to to produce what they need as a society. Ensuring that a population has food and the means to produce their own is the basis for ending poverty.

People can live a very fulfilling lives w/o all of the consumerism we equate with being affluent. Hunger, disease and ignorance are the 3 things that keep some societies in a perpetual state of near destruction; if these are dealt with, we would be making a great stride for humanity. Pick any area iin the world to start, poverty is all around us, while the affluent ignore the chance they have to make a difference.

[cosmik debris]

3. It's all a matter of priorities

Having a well air conditioned sanctuary and padded pews underneath the stained glass windows comes ahead of world hunger, for some anyway.

Edit: If you want to know what they believe, look at where they spent their money.