"How did it happen that the global capitalists who party at Davos share the same fundamental ideology about society's role in economics as the people camping out at Christian anarchist festivals?"

Zack Exley has been thinking hard about Christian activism and the need for organization.

"These days, Christians are asking really enormous questions. They're asking, 'How can we eliminate poverty completely?' and 'How can we stop harming the environment altogether.' What’s so great about them is that their faith in Christ leads them to believe that total redemption is possible. That is the miracle that makes their world irresistible to me.

"But they're attempting to answer these questions almost in complete ignorance of humanity's long history of tackling problems of that scale and scope at the social level, at the level of whole societies."

Comments

[spag]

Well, they better not try to use politics to achieve those goals because that would be forcing their views on others and mixing church and state.

[Ed Cone]

That is an area of possible concern, although I'm not sure Zack's headed in that direction with his organizing plans.

[Jon]

Christian activists should be careful in the arena of politics, because there are plenty of wolves in sheep's clothing, so to speak, willing to take advantage of well-intended, less than discerning people. There are some Christians who would seem to substitute "giving to the poor" via government handouts for individual acts of charity, which is not really Christian charity — it has to be a personal sacrifice for the glory of God, not something done passively through withholdings (Christian conservatives have a much better track record of charitable giving). Given that Jesus himself said that the poor would always be with us, I hope that the activists understand the difference between poverty and poor; we can address the former (not just through government programs, but more importantly through personal charity), but necessarily not the latter.