Christian Social Action: Making a difference where you are

By John Evans

In the U.K. today social action inspired by the desire to act justly and to love mercy is not only a vital part of society but also an aspect of local community life under immense pressure. This up to date book is both a manifesto and a practical handbook for Christian social action for people who believe that they are called, with others in their community, to serve the poor and to advance the cause of justice as part of their mission. It’s for church leaders, trustees and anyone seeking to understand local needs and make a significant and sustainable difference where they are.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781471723513

John Evans

Dr. John Evans was the founding director of the Population, Health, and Nutrition Department of the World Bank; the former chair of the Board of Directors of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1987 to 1995; the founding dean of the McMaster University Medical School; and the president of the University of Toronto from 1972 to 1978. He remains active in work supporting non-governmental organizations in developing countries.

Book preview

Who is this book written for?

This book is written to help a variety of people and organisations, particularly …

Christians who believe that they are called, with others in their community, to serve the poor and to advance the cause of justice as part of their mission.

Churches that share this sense of call but are uncertain how to get started.

Trustees, directors or other leaders who are responsible for small scale projects or programmes, understand growing local needs and who now have the opportunity to expand the work they are doing - but are unsure how to attract more resources.

Social action programme leaders who need help convincing others of the value of their work.

Leaders of social action programmes looking to agree on strategic partnerships with other groups, local authorities or business groups and who need to sharpen their expression of purpose and to be able to quantify what they are achieving.

Trustees and directors of Christian social action programmes whose applications for funding have been unsuccessful because, they have been told, their explanation of the value and/or impact of their work hasn’t been convincing.

A guide to the book

To ensure that you can get the most benefit from the book, the material is arranged in two main sections. The first six Chapters provide a guide to the Christian’s call to serve and will then take you through a step-by-step process, addressing certain foundational questions.

Chapter 1 offers brief portraits of pioneering Christian social action and a short overview of poverty in the U.K. immediately before the pandemic took hold.

Chapter 2 outlines one national church response to growing needs during the initial period of the pandemic, outlines key challenges and typical responses and highlights five questions of vital importance to any local group seeking to engage with or expand their social action.

Chapter 3 introduces two complementary tools that are increasingly being used to secure the foundations of Christian social action. They are designed to help ensure that your intended outcomes will actually occur. The first involves creating your agreed story (or theory) of change and the second concerns your theology of change.

Chapter 4 examines what poverty is; explores U.K. people’s perceptions of poverty; provides examples of the consequences of poverty and examines destitution in the U.K. today. This chapter also looks at how best to communicate about poverty today; comparisons between poverty in the U.K. and in other countries and signposts sources of U.K. regional and local data. 

Chapter 5 will guide you through a process of team decision making that should maximise beneficial impact and minimise any harm that might be caused by what you or the team do.

Chapter 6 will help you to track down potential funders including charities, government grants, trusts and partners.

Chapters 7 - 10 provide resources you will need if you decide to respond to one or more of four significant types of poverty in the U.K. today. These are household debt; food poverty; child poverty and housing poverty. These Chapters include some inspiring current examples of Christian social action.

The Appendix provides guidance on creating a job profile for a Social Action Manager (or similar) job description/role profile.

Because this volume is intended to be both a manifesto and a practical handbook to action you will find, in both the primary text and in the and notes, carefully selected links, highlighted in colour, to a wide range of ‘resource-full’ websites and other sources.

Chapter 1: You are called to take action

The Old Testament book of Micah reproaches unjust leaders and defends the rights of the poor against the rich and powerful. Probably the prophet’s most well-known words are found in Micah 6:8. Here the writer connects our faith with our actions, our care for those in need with our walk with God: 

"He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.

And what does the Lord require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy

and to walk humbly with your God." (NIV)

To "walk humbly with God" is the basis for loving mercy and doing justice. Because of what God has done, we fully invest in healing the world around us through mercy and justice. 

God desires for us to "love mercy," or, in some translations, ‘kindness’. This is the Hebrew word hesed, which can be used to refer to God’s loving-kindness to us. God wants us to be drawn to mercy—having compassion for those in need. As Christians we do not acquiesce with injustice in the world, we determine robustly to oppose it. Why? Because our creator God, whom we are called to follow, is also a God of justice.

Finally, God tells us to "do justice." Perhaps you struggle to know what it means to do justice. How did I do justice this past week? What does it look like? We often define justice by placing it primarily in a political, economic, or judicial realm. However, by doing so this removes doing justice from the familiar experience of most people and can make your contribution appear distant and difficult to imagine. 

However, the late Desmond Tutu was typically clear about the challenge facing the individual. He memorably said:

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

In the Old Testament, there are several commands from the Lord to the people, instructing them to welcome the alien, to care for the orphan and the widow, and to grant a Jubilee¹ to debtors. These commands show that God, while he has a chosen people, is also enthusiastic about including other people, and specifically other disadvantaged people, in his family.

Personal tragedy and a global setback

When we talk about poverty and the poor there is a tendency to give the impression that poverty is a condition that is experienced only by some people and not by others. In fact, sudden illness, a change in a person’s ability to work, redundancy, unforeseen war or natural disaster, and accident, becoming the victim of crime, changes in the economy, the collapse of a marriage, the onset of a long-term disability or the failure of a business - all of these can propel people towards the experience of unexpected and devastating poverty. Struggles that can lead to people experiencing poverty can happen to anyone at any time. Those who seek to work with people experiencing poverty now may have lived through this experience themselves or face this challenge in the future. This realisation can and should have a profound impact upon the way in which we respond to poverty.

Alongside these many personal challenges and tragedies, we have also just begun to experience a global setback of huge proportions. For almost 25 years extreme poverty was steadily declining across the globe. Now, for the first time in a generation, the quest to end global poverty has suffered a major setback. Global extreme poverty rose in 2020 for the first time in over 20 years as the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic compounded the forces of conflict and climate change, which were already slowing poverty reduction progress. 

According to the World Bank about 100 million additional people are living in poverty as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 40 percent of the global poor live in economies affected by fragility, conflict and violence, and that number is expected to rise to 67 percent in the next decade. About 132 million of the global poor live in areas with high flood risk.

World Bank research indicates that these new poor of the 2020s probably will:

Be more urban than the chronic poor.

Be more engaged in informal services and manufacturing and less in agriculture.

Live in congested urban settings and work in the sectors most affected by lockdowns and mobility restrictions.

New research estimates that global climate change will drive 68 million to 132 million into poverty by 2030.

Without an adequate global response, the cumulative effects of the pandemic and its economic fallout, armed conflict², and climate change³ will exact high human and economic costs well into the future. The goal of bringing the global absolute poverty rate to less than 3 percent by 2030, which was already at risk before the COVID-19 crisis, is now beyond reach without swift, significant, and substantial policy action according to The World Bank⁴.

Pioneering social action 

For inspiration to action in this time of crisis we do not need to look far down the annals of history to find countless examples of Christian faith powering social action. The enduring impact of these pioneers has been phenomenal. Today we can be inspired by those whose lives have been captivated by a vision of God’s kingdom on earth. God calls us to fuel our vision with holy imagination because gazing on God always propels us into the world to be ambassadors of the eternal kingdom. This book is intended, partly, to inform and guide the practical outworking of this type of vision.

Sadly, much of the pioneering work summarised below⁵ has not become redundant but is in fact growing in importance as needs multiply in our country today.

Child Protection: The NSPCC was founded in 1889 by a Yorkshireman, Rev. Benjamin Waugh, who saw first-hand the suffering of children in his work as a Christian minister in London's East End. 

He married Sarah Boothroyd in 1865 and later moved to the Independent Chapel at East Greenwich, London. Working in the slums exposed him to the conditions and cruelties suffered by the poor. He created a flourishing church, founded a Society for Temporary Relief in Poverty and Sickness and set up a day home where working mothers left their children. As a Congregationalist minister in the slums of London, Waugh was appalled at the deprivations and cruelties suffered, particularly by workhouse children.

Waugh had been elected to the London School Board where he heard parents making excuses for not sending their children to school. That became the basis for his focus on establishing a society benefiting children and their needs. At the time the rights of parents were sacrosanct and they were the sole arbiters in respect of the health of their child.

In 1873, Waugh wrote ‘The Gaol Cradle: Who Rocks It?’ in which he outlined the trials of many children aged from six to 14 for the most trivial of offences: at that time taking bread, sweets or fruit or letting off fireworks meant a jail sentence. In 1875 there were 7,173 children in prison in England and Wales. of which 927 were under 12.

The London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was set up in 1884 after a visit by Thomas Frederick Agnew, founder of The Liverpool Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (LSPCC).

Waugh knew that the reformers should speak for the whole country, not for individual towns, before the government would act and it took another five years before the society became the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). Queen Victoria was its first patron and Waugh was its director.

The NSPCC lobbied to create the Children's Charter, which made harming a child an offence.

In 1885 The Criminal Law Amendment Act was passed, giving rights to children, and Waugh secured the insertion of a clause giving magistrates the power to take the evidence of children too young to understand the nature of an oath.

Working for the London School Board, Waugh had a role in selecting and training school inspectors. For this he had a basic tenet: "Think only of the child! He confronted officialdom in matters of injustice to children and when he did so, his supporters would say he was on the Waugh-path". 

By 1889, the NSPCC had 30 inspectors looking out for children suffering neglect and abuse. In the society’s first five years it helped nearly 4,000 children. The NSPCC received 4,735 calls about child sexual abuse or exploitation during the six months to October 2021 - up 36% compared with the same period in the previous year. Experts fear that the risk of abuse has risen since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Homes for Children: In 1869, Rev. Thomas Bowman Stephenson saw some children living rough under the arches of Waterloo Station, London. Instead of walking by, he stopped to listen to their stories. Then he worked out the most practical way to help. Stephenson was a Methodist minister from the North East of England. He was also passionate about social justice. So, when he moved to London, he challenged the Methodist Church to take action to help children living on the streets.

Schools and orphaned children: Thomas John Barnardo was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1845. As a young man, he moved to London to train as a doctor. When he arrived, he was shocked to find children living in terrible conditions, with no access to education. Poverty and disease were so widespread that one in five children died before their fifth