Global crisis requires global response

When One Part Suffers, The U.S. Looks Away Adam Russell Taylor Pope Francis has a penchant for impeccable, maybe even providential timing. His encyclical Laudato Si’ came out just months before the 2015 Paris climate summit and played a key role in influencing public opinion and galvanizing political will behind bolder climate action to protect “our common home.” Now, less than a month before the most consequential U.S. election in generations, the pope’s new encyclical provides a powerful rebuke to a politics of division, fear, and hate while also casting a vision for the human family that is deeply relevant to applying our faith to U.S. leadership in the world. Fratelli Tutti  (on “universal fraternity and social friendship”) takes its title from St. Francis of Assisi and is inspired by his “fraternal openness,” which, the pope said, calls on people “to acknowledge, appreciate and love each person, regardless of physical proximity, regardless of where he or she was born or lives.” The encyclical also references and was inspired by a document on human fraternity and interreligious dialogue that Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb, grand imam of al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, Egypt, signed in 2019. As E.J. Dionne writes, “We are not accustomed to hearing from a pope, a month before Election Day, who criticizes ‘myopic, extremist, resentful and aggressive nationalism,’ and castigates those who, through their actions, cast immigrants as ‘less worthy, less important, less human.’” Human rights and international aid and cooperation rarely, if ever, make headlines in national politics or elections. But from a faith perspective, they should. They factor into our discernment both as Christians and Americans because our moral obligations and concerns cannot be confined to our borders. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been particularly devastating to the world’s efforts to combat extreme poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and child mortality. The World Bank reports that COVID-19 has dealt an unprecedented setback to the worldwide effort to end extreme poverty, raise median incomes, and create shared prosperity. The World Bank’s new poverty projections suggest that by 2021, an additional 110 to 150 million people will have fallen into extreme poverty. This means that the pandemic and global recession may push 1.4 percent of the world’s population into extreme poverty. And since the outbreak, more than 1.6 billion children in developing countries have been out of school, implying a potential loss of as much as $10 trillion in lifetime earnings for these students. Making matters worse, gender-based violence is on the rise, and early estimates suggest a potential increase of up to 45 percent in child mortality because of health-service shortfalls and reductions in access to food. I have spent his career advocating for greater global leadership to end the dehumanizing impacts of extreme poverty; these trends are heartbreaking. READ THE FULL ARTICLE Forward Share

ADVERTISEMENT

Our Latest Knowledge Is Dangerous to Institutionalized Power (by Whitney Parnell) Understanding Trump's executive order on critical race theory. Covid Exposed Christian Ableism. What Happens When Churches Reopen? (by Miriam Spies) “Is God really calling us to recreate what we were doing before?” How to Pray When Your Enemy Gets Sick (by Greg Jarrell) This is a specific prayer for specific types of circumstances, namely, travesties of justice.

ADVERTISEMENT

From the Magazine This is Not the Year for a Protest Vote (by Jim Rice) Or apathy.

ADVERTISEMENTS

Webinar Series: Religious Resolve Join the Freedom Forum, Oct. 11 at 3 p.m. Eastern for the fifth program of the Religious Resolve series, Presbyterian Rev. Francis Grimké and His Quaker Half-Sisters Speak Out on Faith, Race and Civil Rights. This series is made possible by generous support from The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. Broken Signposts by N.T. Wright In this follow-up to Simply Christian, N.T. Wright argues that every world view must explain seven “signposts,” indicators inherent to humanity: Justice, Spirituality, Relationships, Beauty, Freedom, Truth, and Power. Using the Gospel of John to address each “signpost,” Wright reveals how Christianity still presents a relevant explanation for our world.