Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 2-137 (Apologetics and Social Issues)

MATERIAL, SPIRITUAL AND CIVIC POVERTY ‘A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY ITSELF’, SAYS JIM WALLIS AT EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE’S TEMPLE ADDRESS 2002

‘Faith communities offer a possible solution to the threefold poverty problem’

Poverty, expressed in terms of its material, spiritual and civic manifestations, is now such a debilitating issue in our society that it is ‘a threat to the very essence of democracy’.

This is the keynote conclusion of the Evangelical Alliance’s Temple Address 2002, given on 27 June by leading American preacher, social commentator and author Jim Wallis. The Temple Address, which this year is a central feature of the Alliance’s facevalues initiative, aims to contribute to public debate about values from a Christian perspective.

Jim Wallis started by saying we still don’t understand material poverty very well, that we are often tempted to ignore it – or even deny its very existence. Or we want to blame poor people themselves for their predicament. The systemic causes of poverty and the moral indifference of the affluent are, he stresses, not exactly popular subjects.

Rather than judging a society by its GNP, the well being of the poor must be seen to be key to a society’s health and well-being. And in this context we need a theology of solidarity that will bring us together.

He then identified an apparent paradox: that ‘poverty’ afflicts wealthy people too – as well as entire societies. At an altogether deeper level, an overtly materialistic society like ours fails to recognise its own spiritual poverty. The fact that all our anxious striving has impoverished our souls is a spiritual reality that we are still not quite ready to face yet, at some deep level, most of us know it is true.

Commented Wallis: “I have often underestimated the spiritual consequences of the nervous and shallow existence so many people in the West find themselves trapped in.”

Many people, he said, are searching for meaning and connection in our materialistic society: “This is a sign of our spiritual poverty. It’s a mistake to be so focused on the material poverty of the people at the bottom that we neglect or underestimate the spiritual impoverishment of those in the middle – or even at the top.”

To more and more people in the modern corporate world, both work and consumption feel increasingly meaningless-but there’s no time for anything but work and consumption. And that has serious consequences: anxiety, stress, alienation and emptiness being only the most common.

But it is, says Wallis, worse even than this: “I have come to believe that the breakdown in our public life can also be understood as a form of poverty. The widespread cynicism, the alarming levels of political withdrawal, and the coarsening of our public debate can best be understood as a separate form – civic poverty. The rapid decline of genuine citizen participation and meaningful political discourse is not just a problem for ‘politics’. More, it is a moral and spiritual threat to the very essence of democracy.

“The system within which we live has become so locked into what has become a rigidly polarised political debate that real answers, to real problems, can hardly ever be found. Politicians too often are looking not for solutions, but for people to blame. Winning elections and holding on to political power have clearly become ends in themselves, with many politicians losing their grasp of why they went there in the first place.

“There is a growing public disgust at the nature of the debate itself, and the role of the media in particular. Extreme views virtually control political debate, and more and more people are tired of listening. So they stop.

“Listening to the debate, one might think we are being forced to choose between the strategies of promoting family values or creating good jobs, between protecting the sacredness of life or defending the rights of women, between expanding economic opportunity or securing economic justice.

“One might think that nobody could stand for all of the above, even though many people probably do. This is civic poverty at its most dire.

“What is the solution? We must begin to apply our best moral and religious values to overcome the material, spiritual and civic poverty that today imprisons the bodies and souls of people in the wealthy countries. And this is where faith has a role to play.

“Faith communities offer a possible solution to the threefold poverty problem. They do this by providing a sense of meaning, purpose, and moral value that is increasingly missing in society. They can speak directly to the deep spiritual hunger that so many people experience. They are also best placed to combat the moral and spiritual impoverishment of society, which others seem to accept as inevitable. They can help to re-establish a sense of ethics and values. Faith communities offer people practical opportunities to love their neighbours, serve their communities, contribute to a larger purpose, and make sacrifices for something worth believing in.

“Together, we could also begin to counter our civic poverty by searching for some real answers, instead of just finding more ways to argue over the questions. That will require some soul-searching, because the heart of the matter is that the real issues are spiritual, not merely political. But the best way to find higher ground is to find common ground.”

Joel Edwards, Alliance General Director, said: ” We are most grateful that Jim Wallis has entered the key values debate in such a thought-provoking way.

“facevalues is a co-ordinated UK-wide mission for 2002 which is promoting Christian values in society and supporting churches in reaching out to their communities through evangelism and social action.

“I believe that facevalues will promote awareness of precisely how Christians are addressing the values underpinning our society, and will hear a Christian response to the key issues that Jim Wallis has so cogently and eloquently addressed tonight.”

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Facevalues is a co-ordinated, UK-wide mission in which thousands of churches will simultaneously challenge the values prevalent in modern society.

Facevalues features a national media campaign supporting local mission projects.

Facevalues aims to communicate with millions of people beyond the church about the benefits of the Christian faith and the positive place of Christian values in society today.

For more information email: or log on to http://www.facevalues.org.uk

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The Evangelical Alliance UK was founded in 1846 and today represents over one million evangelical Christians in the UK. The Evangelical Alliance is a founding member of the World Evangelical Alliance, which now has 120 member Alliances, together representing 160 million evangelicals worldwide.

An evangelical is someone who believes that Jesus is both God and man; that the Bible is the ultimate authority in all that it addresses; and that the traditional beliefs of the Church such as the physical resurrection of Jesus are true. An evangelical owns a commitment to Christ as their personal saviour and a desire to live out that faith in the community.

http://www.eauk.org