Gordon Brown? Hmmm... Who is that? Wasn't he one of the characters in the Milton Bradley board game Clue? I believe he committed the murder in the ballroom with the candlestick...what's that? Oh... he's the new prime minister of Great Britain? And I should care about that because...?That's basically been my reaction to the news that the UK has a new PM. then I got the latest e-mail from Jim Wallis at Sojourners and according to Jim (isn't that a TV show?) Brown is somebody Chritians in the West should get to know. He's the son of a minister who is deeply informed by scripture and its calls for justice, especially when it concerns economic justice between the richest nations and the poorest ones. Here's an excerpt from a recent speech:
... let me say also that in the fourth richest country in the world it is simply wrong – wrong that any child should grow up in poverty. To address this poverty of income and to address also the poverty of aspirations by better parenting, better schools, and more one-to-one support, I want to bring together all the forces of compassion – charities, voluntary sector, local councils, so that at the heart of building a better Britain is the cause of ending child poverty.
And here's another...
Because we all want to address the roots of injustice, I can tell you today that we will strengthen and enhance the work of the department of international development and align aid, debt relief and trade policies to wage an unremitting battle against the poverty, illiteracy, disease and environmental degradation that it has fallen to our generation to eradicate.
Wow, what would it be like for a chief executive of a rich and powerful western nation to operate from a faith perspective that truly believes in using his nation's vast political and material capital to benefit people outside of its own borders? I guess we'll just have to wait and see if faith can actually trump nationalism in the political arena.
Grace and Peace,
Chase
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