Global Poverty

Justin Thacker

Description

Christian authors have argued either for a free market solution to global poverty or for a radical reform of global capitalism but the theological underpinnings of such conclusions are noticeable by their absence.Justin Thacker offers a new way forward. He suggests deeply theological answers to questions around the effect of capitalism on global poverty.

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 12 mai 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780334055174
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Global Poverty

© Justin Thacker 2017
Published in 2017 by SCM Press
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The Author has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the Author of this Work
Except where indicated Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations indicated as NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, 2011 edition. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica (formerly International Bible Society). Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, a member of the Hodder Headline Group.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

978 0 334 05515 0

Typeset by Manila Typesetting Company
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd

Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part 1 Creation
1 The image of God and the dignity of humanity
2 The problem of paternalism
3 The nature of poverty
Part 2 Fall
4 The nature, depth and breadth of sin
5 Sin, taxes and debt – who owes whom?
6 Structural sin – are we really guilty?
Part 3 Israel
7 Israel’s mission
8 Exodus
9 Jubilee
10 Laws
11 Prophets
Part 4 Redemption
12 The gospel and salvation
13 Secular theories of development
14 Theologies of development
Part 5 Consummation
15 New heavens and new earth
16 The poor always with you
17 The problem of aid utopianism
18 So why should we bother?
19 Conclusion: the question of equality
Epilogue – What does this mean in practice?
Bibliography
Index of Bible references
Index of names and subjects

Acknowledgements
This book is dedicated to the staff and students of Cliff College, Derbyshire, UK. Portions of the text, especially Part 4, were initially delivered as lectures on my public theology undergraduate course and global justice masters course. I want to thank the students for their input and engagement and for providing me with an opportunity to test out the material prior to publication. I should also thank those students who wrote dissertations in related areas for stimulating my own thinking and pointing me in the direction of blogs and other sources of which I was unaware. Particular thanks go to Tim Taylor and Esther Lindop in this regard. I am also especially grateful to Jack Key for producing the subject index for the book.
Thanks also to Marijke Hoek, Carol Kingston-Smith, Ben Pugh, Ruth Valerio and in particular Jonathan Warner for providing helpful comments on earlier drafts of this work. This published work represents my views, not theirs, and any remaining inaccuracies are my responsibility alone.
I want to thank my family – my wife Cathi and children, Grace, Joel and Alicia –for their undying support during many months of work. I could not have done this without your love.
Finally, in this book I engage with, and to some extent critique, the theologies of some Christian development agencies. Nothing in this book should be taken to suggest that those agencies are not worthy of financial support for the work that they do. My critical comments, such as they are, are levelled at some of their theological musings, not at their practical work itself. In light of this, all royalties from this book will be donated and divided equally between the work of Christian Aid, International Justice Mission and Tearfund – three organizations who undertake exemplary work on behalf of the global poor.










Introduction
They say that you should not judge a book by its cover, but I wonder what you saw in the cover of this book. Perhaps you didn’t look closely and initially thought it was just a pair of hands playing with paint; perhaps you saw a posture of prayer as if the hands were reaching out to God, asking for help for our stricken world; perhaps you imagined the hands belonged to God and this was a picture in which he held the world in his palms; or maybe you saw someone begging, pleading with those of us who are wealthy to help in their distress. My intention behind the cover was none of these. Instead, the reason I chose this image is because it spoke to me of the way in which each one of us holds the world, and in particular the world’s poor, in our hands.
It is a truism that the world we live in is far more connected globally than has ever been the case. Financial transactions in London can reverberate around the world in less than a millisecond, and our consumer and environmental decisions can have literally global impact. I wonder if I asked you to examine every piece of clothing you were wearing right now if you knew its country of origin. You might want to put this book and your cup of coffee down in order to do just this. Look at the labels and see whose labour you are wearing. I have just done the same and found myself wearing clothes from Bangladesh, China, Guatemala and India. As I look at these clothes and the stitched seams, I wonder about the fingers and hands that laboured so that I could be dressed. What were the conditions in which they worked? When was the last time they got a rest, or were fed, or drank water? Were they paid a decent salary for the clothes I now wear on my back? If I asked you about the smartphone in your pocket, would you be aware that the cobalt in its battery might have come from child labour in the Democratic Republic of the Congo? 1 And is the coffee you are drinking fairly traded? Is the light by which you read this book powered from a renewable source? All of this is not to induce guilt, but rather to emphasize the global impact of the decisions that we take.
Indeed, the Amnesty International report that highlights the issue of cobalt mining illustrates the complexity of the challenges we face. Cobalt is used in all kinds of rechargeable batteries, including those used in electric vehicles. For environmental reasons, I drive such a hybrid car myself, but it never occurred to me that the cobalt used in its battery might have come from child labour in the DRC. On the one hand, then, I want to contribute to the reduction of global emissions and therefore the deaths of millions of children in Africa by driving my hybrid (see Chapter 5), but at the same time my well-meaning intentions might well have contributed to the death or at least hardship of other African children. The situation seems so unbelievably complex that too often we give up trying.
And that is the problem?
In his book, Economics of Good and Evil , Tomas Sedlacek provides an analogy of a group of people who find themselves in a completely dark room, unsure how to get out. Into this problematic comes a strong, loud voice: ‘I know where the door is. Hurry after me, follow my voice.’ 2 Of course, in that situation, most people will follow the voice, but what if the voice is evil or simply mistaken and in fact leads the people into a wall or even worse into a hole? Instead, the safer but more time-consuming option is for the people to get down on their hands and knees and slowly but steadily make their way round the room until they find the way out. I tell this story because sometimes our approach to global poverty is like the people in that room: we want the quick, easy fix, especially if it’s coming from someone shouting loudly enough:

‘Just tell me which charity to support, and how much to give.’
‘All of their problems are caused by corruption – we should stop giving them money till they sort their own houses out.’
‘It’s all the fault of the WTO, bring on the revolution!’
‘Capitalism is the only solution that’s been shown to work. They need investment, not aid.’
But often – for the right solution to emerge – what is required is for us to take the slow, painful path. And this is the approach I am taking in this book. Global poverty is complex. It has multiple causes in the present, compounded by multiple antecedents in the past, and if we include the inevitable impact of climate change then multiple sequelae in the future. As well as its multiple causes, how poverty affects individuals varies tremendously from context to context. All of this means that if we are trying to find our way to a solution to poverty, there is no easy path to follow. The voices who shout the loudest – whether they be neoliberal capitalists or development charities – may not necessarily be those that will lead us to the most appropriate exit. We need to do the slow, patient and complex work of thinking about poverty in the round. And that is why I have adopted the approach I have to this book.
In essence, the book is a systematic theology of global poverty. At first sight, that might seem somewhat unusual, but let me explain