the long haul

It's been a couple of days now since the MPH march in Edinburgh so I thought I'd better post my thoughts on it.

I'm glad that the family and I went and participated, although like many the queue to actually march was so long that we didn't get to do this. The crowd was in general good natured, and Christians must have made up a significant proportion of the gathering.

I was however uneasy about how serious those who gathered in Edinburgh are about making poverty history. For many this day in Edinburgh will be their contribution to 'the cause'. Maggi expresses well what I had also been thinking. We cannot abdicate our responsibility in all this and expect the 8 men gathering in Gleneagles today to "solve" the problem. We are part of the problem, and unless we resolve to make changes in what we buy and how much we buy, where we travel to and how often we travel, etc. then extreme poverty will remain part of history now. This change will take a paradigm shift in many peoples thinking, away from aspirationalism to being content with what we have, away from consumerism to co-operation.

The other big challenge is that of mobilizing the church in the US in the way that the church here in the UK has been on this issue. The editor of the Herald was on the radio the other day. He noted how the church in the UK had played a significant part both in bringing political pressure to bear on the UK government and in mobilizing people in practical action. He commented that if the USA was going to make significant changes in the areas of more aid, better aid and trade justice then the American church needed to be mobilized in a similar way to the church here in the UK. Bush listens to the church was his comment.

Can the blogshpere help raise the issue of justice and poverty up the agenda of the US church - I hope it can, and that particularly justice for the poor is raised up the political agenda.