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otherthemes
Poverty and Development Issues for an Interfaith Agenda
World Faiths Development Dialogue
We live in an age in which the number of people living in abject material poverty is growing and the gap between the rich and the poor has never been so great. This is in spite of all the financial, technological and scientific resources at hand. So what is going wrong?
The question of how to organise the running of our globalised world to the benefit of all is a highly complex one which official development agencies, whether those of individual governments or the multilateral ones such as the World Bank, have tended to address mainly in economic terms. The contribution of the different faith traditions of the world is urgently needed to broaden and deepen the debate as well as to demonstrate practical ways of working to improve life for people living in impoverished communities.
Religious communities have networks among the poor and a depth of knowledge of the poor which are shared by few others. They have a long tradition of providing education and health services and are now increasingly promoting programmes to open up economic outlets for peasant farmers, rural and urban artisans, fisher people and traders. But even at this purely practical level, the faith-based groups’ strong sense of community and their vision of the ultimately transcendent reality of life mean that their aims go beyond economic improvement or the delivery of social services. Equally important to them are the generation of spiritual fulfilment and inner contentment and also human qualities such as hope and dignity.
Whether we like it or not, the debate about the kind of development we want for our world is essentially a religious debate, in the sense that at the heart of it lie questions about the nature and purpose of human beings and of life in general. It is thus vital that people from the different religious traditions should make a critique of the dominant economic system and of the values on which it is based.
The present global economic order not only promotes
greed but depends upon it – or at least upon people developing
insatiable needs and desires which bear little or no relation either
to their essential needs or to the fundamental desire for peace and
joy, common to all humanity. Moreover, despite all the talk of capitalism
with a human face, inherent in the system is the notion of competition
and of winners and losers and anyone who cares to look cannot fail to
see that losers are the large majority. Millions of families who are
superfluous to the success of the global economy are being left without
a livelihood or dignity.
We need to play a prophetic role of denunciation but also to energise
people and provide a vision of how the world might be ordered for the
good of all its people, as well as for the environment, on the basis
of restraint, justice, inclusion, generosity and compassion. These are,
after all, the values which the accumulated wisdom of our different
faith communities tells us are necessary for the flourishing of human
societies.
There are three places from which people from faith traditions can confront the world order which maintains and increases the wealth of the rich. We can work alongside the poor, either physically or in other ways in solidarity with them; we can participate in the global development debate (through lobbying and campaigning as well as research and practice) and we can act as catalysts for change within our own religious institutions.
In order to do this, we need to find the spiritual strength to dare to be open to a process of perpetual change and to be humble enough to work both with other faith traditions and with the people from development institutions and governments with whose policies we may disagree. Above all, we need to free ourselves from the illusions about power, money and status fed to us by the consumer society in which we live. Only then shall we be able to come up with authentically alternative ways of living which will include everyone on our planet.
| © International
interfaith organisations network 2003 |