Christian Mission and Poverty

Introduction

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the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” 4 How do we discern the best responses to poverty? How should we as ministers, church leaders, and businesspeople engage in our communities? What does the Christian faith have to say about poverty? Sometimes it seems that we in the modern American church stand on opposite sides of an impassible gulf as we talk about poverty and justice. Thankfully, there are mothers and fathers of the faith who have thought long and hard about poverty and what Christian mission does and says about it. They are people who, like us, had to figure out how to follow Jesus in their own times and places in regard to these crucial questions. They came to conclusions about poverty and what it means to co-labor with God in God’s mission with the poor. These mothers and fathers can help us break through our contemporary gridlock in conversations related to poverty. Today, North American Christians often get so bogged down in defending our partisan political philosophies that our words are weaponized for purposes of winning arguments. Conservatives make blanket pronouncements against “socialism” while progressives make blanket pronouncements against the “free market.” Christians in both camps claim they are following God’s designs for society. While it is important to have political debates and while we must advocate alongside the poor when governmental or corporate decisions affect them adversely, our arguments about political theory can sometimes stop us from taking concrete and effective action in our

4 Dom Helder Camara and Francis McDonagh, eds. Dom Helder Camara: Essential Writings (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2009), 11.