Praying for the Poor

This entry to The Guardian's "Cif ["comment is free"] Belief" blog describes an event that was expected to involve 60 million evangelical Christians around the world praying, on October 10 2010, for justice in the hope of meeting Millennium Development Goal (MDG) #1: abolish extreme poverty. Blogger Andrew Brown characterises this as "an impressive and potentially important ritual, because it marks a turn towards social justice from one of the most traditionally conservative kinds of Christianity."

To further illustrate the move toward greater social responsibility on the part of a religious movement that is described as tending toward extreme fundamentalism, Brown notes that parts of the broad evangelical coalition are even moving towards an acceptance that something must be done about climate change, one of the other issues highlighted by the MDGs (#7). Although one evangelical leader quoted here (Joel Edwards, the organiser of the prayer event described above) notes that climate change is "controversial among scientists", in places like Britain, evangelical charities like Christian Aid and Tear Fund are, in Brown's words, "enthusiastic environmentalists".

"We want to conscientise the church about these promises, about which many Christians are totally ignorant, in order to make it an integral part of civil society." says Edwards.