The old saying ‘to a hammer, everything is a nail’ rings true for my interest in theology. I work in the faith-based development sector, and I’ve been particularly fascinated by the theologies that are unstated but evidenced by the way we operate. What we say we believe, and what our actions show we really believe are at times quite different. For example, what do our strategic plans and the way we develop and implement them declare about our understanding of God and the Spirit’s role in addressing injustice? What do the poverty-alleviation programs and projects we choose to fund declare about what we really believe is the good life? Our communications to supporters, the way we collect and share stories about our work, the parts of people’s stories we share and those we leave out – what do they really say about our view of this person, God, and ourselves?
To this wannabe theologian, everything is theological.
A particular interest of mine is around the historical movement from charity to justice in faith-based development. While many Christians (and others!) have long cared for the poor and marginalised, it was only in the post-World War period that poverty alleviation began developing as a professional sector. As with most changes there was a mix of wins and losses, but one positive outcome was increased theological reflection on poverty, its causes, and its remedies. This was partly due to the heavy lifting that missionary agencies did in the early days of development work, raising questions around the role of faith for poverty alleviation and where it fitted with evangelism: is it a side note—a way to access a community so the ‘real’ gospel could be shared—or an integral part of the gospel?
A key shift during this time was a movement from viewing poverty alleviation through a charity lens to one that was justice-oriented. As faith-based development organisations gathered and reflected biblically on their work, they began concluding that a biblically grounded response to poverty needed to go beyond charity—the giving of excess to help those with less—to justice, recognising the structural nature of poverty and working to undo the webs that contribute to keeping poor people poor.
A dilemma
I admire the evangelical spirit behind this movement: we will search the Scriptures and, wherever the biblical narrative guides us, we will bravely go. But moving from charity to justice created a dilemma that was perhaps overlooked and unweighed in the thrill of exegesis (we’ve all experienced that, right?). A movement from charity to justice looked great when thinking about poor people and how to best assist them, but as the process of mapping injustices began, the needle kept pointing north to the very same sources that faith-based development organisations relied on for funding.
Many organisations were understandably cautious about biting the hand that fed them, and they responded in a variety of ways. Some began using—and still use—the term ‘justice’ where it is beneficial for marketing purposes while never engaging with their supporters about the impact of their lifestyles for addressing or perpetuating poverty. Those with greater courage and integrity took a different approach and worked to ‘educate the hand that fed them.’ This was—and remains—somewhat dangerous work: how do you challenge your supporter base and question things like their environmental impact, career choice, or investment options without losing their financial support to a different organisation that tones down the justice talk and leans heavy on the ego-boosting lever?
It’s a little akin to preparing a last supper in an upper room knowing full well that some kind of death lies in the not-to-distant future. But what if we don’t resurrect after three days as Christ did?
Needless to say, the majority of Australian faith-based development organisations have adopted the word ‘justice’ while avoiding or diminishing justice as a key guiding principle for how we approach supporters. We prefer the awkward irony of declaring that poverty is largely an issue of injustice while avoiding conversations with the very people who have an ability to undo some of these injustices through their life choices. We prefer self-preservation and the pursuit of growth over a theologically sound approach to poverty alleviation.
The majority of Australian faith-based development organisations have adopted the word ‘justice’ while avoiding or diminishing justice as a key guiding principle for how we approach supporters.
The impact of lifestyle
But let’s rewind a little to March 17, 1980, at a conference centre a little north of London. Eighty-five evangelical leaders from twenty-seven countries gathered to put some flesh to the Lausanne Covenant resolution on ‘A Commitment to Simple Lifestyle’ made six years earlier. A collection of the papers entitled Lifestyle in the Eighties was published shortly after, arguing persuasively that a biblical approach to addressing poverty and injustice must include Christians in high-income countries choosing to live simply, and it mapped out some practicalities of what that might look like. I purchased a copy of the book a few years ago, figuring it would be an interesting historical document. It was an excellent read, but I came away a little disappointed that so little seems to have shifted. When it comes to strategies used by faith-based development organisations to approach supporters, the overall movement has been, if anything, backwards and away from justice. It felt like the only change needed to make the book relevant for today would be adjusting the title on the cover page to Lifestyle in the 2020s.
Our lifestyle choices alleviate or perpetuate poverty today as much as they ever did, and perhaps more-so given the hyper-globalised world we live in. I regularly buy products from places all over the world and my carbon footprint is felt by subsistence farmers in countries with names I can’t spell. Who I vote for matters in a fragile geo-political environment, while the tentacles of my superannuation reach to… well, who knows where?
Lifestyles in the 2020s matter for addressing poverty and are quiet declarations of what we truly believe the gospel to be and our role in living out its implications. Our 95 theses won’t be found tidy, typed, and nailed to a wooden door; they’re silently written into the everyday decisions we make and, in my experience, they are read most easily and plainly by folks on the margins (may the poor always be with us!). I’ve wondered at times whether supporters of faith-based development are a force for good in the world, or whether on-balance we are hurting the poor further. What would it look like if we went beyond donations and calculated everything? What if we counted not just what we give to the poor, but also what we take from them through things like excessive consumption, unjust superannuation investments, and climate change contributions? It’s a difficult, complex calculation, and probably an embarrassing one; maybe that’s why it’s not been attempted yet.
But hey, come follow in the footsteps of King David and Psalm 51 with me - let’s embarrass ourselves with the spirit of evangelical honesty and integrity. God’s grace is always bigger than any mess we’ve made.
What would it look like if we went beyond donations and calculated everything?
Climate change
A study by the World Bank in 2010 showed that the reasonable estimated cost for low-income countries to adapt to climate change was $75-100 billion per year – that’s about the same amount of annual global aid that was given that year to those same countries. Remember how climate change is primarily caused by the lifestyles of wealthy people, but disproportionately disadvantages economically poor people? If that’s true, our level of aid is just enough to help the poor to adjust to climate change. That’s not generosity: it’s just mopping up some of the mess we made. And it is a mess. I regularly visit rural farming communities in South-East Asia that are struggling with unpredictable weather patterns caused by climate change, and some of our work involves helping them adjust and adapt. Our carbon footprints matter if we declare we care about the poor, and reducing the size of the thing is a quiet, everyday declaration of that love.
Superannuation
In 2024, eighty-eight percent of Australians said they would prefer to have their super invested ethically, but only thirty-six percent of superannuation in Australia is currently ‘invested responsibly’. This is a rather odd situation given that every Aussie has the opportunity (I’d suggest ‘responsibility’) to choose which superannuation fund to invest with – what’s stopping fifty-two percent of Aussies from switching to a more ethical superannuation provider that aligns with their values? Many ethical superannuation funds still have thresholds (or appetites) for investments in things like fossil fuels, tobacco, and weapons manufacturing. Regardless, if we count the thirty-six percent as genuinely ethical investments (we’re keen on grace, remember), it means that sixty-four percent of superannuation in Australia—or roughly $2.3 trillion—has little to no interest in screening for investments beyond what will provide the largest returns. That’s two-thirds of Aussie superannuation investments being potentially invested in companies that are responsible for deforestation in the Mekong, selling weapons to the Myanmar junta, poisoning rivers with mining tailings in Papua, or running sweatshops in Bangladesh.
So, by the time we add the impact of our collective superannuation investments to our climate change mess, the net benefit is already flowing steadily from the global poor to the average Australian.
Consumption
I searched up Australian average levels of consumption for things like meat, transport, and housing and plugged them into an online ecological footprint calculator. While online calculators are always going to be somewhat inaccurate, the outcome suggested that we would need the resources of roughly eight earths to sustain life if every human lived like an average Australian. This is just looking at levels or rates of consumption. The calculator doesn’t weigh up how ethical our purchases of food, services, and products are, but they matter too, and they work in a similar way to our superannuation investments. Every purchase is a vote for the type of world we want to live in and how we want businesses to operate. Bought a brand-new t-shirt for $12? It’s not possible to produce it for that; someone—some people—bore some of the hidden costs through being underpaid for their work or copping the environmental burden. But it doesn’t end there. For example, we’re protecting our forests and banning old-growth logging in places like Western Australia; but this means we’re off-shoring the issue by importing hardwood timbers from places with little regulation on deforestation—places like Indonesia and Malaysia. And then there’s the other side of our consumption: our waste, much of which is shipped to low-income countries under the guise of recycling or gifts.
Once consumption is added, the flow of net benefit swells to a river that will hardly be slowed by the $300 given annually by the average Australian to international aid programs. Perhaps responsibility for the rather sluggish wins in the war on poverty lies more in the living rooms of suburban Australia than the failures of international aid organisations. Maybe we feed that fire by telling folks we can end poverty with just a $300 donation.
Household economics
Maybe this all just sounds like a grumpy rant – and perhaps it is. But there is little point in sharing the ways organisations like Amos Australia are working to address poverty internationally if we don’t also (first?) have serious conversations about stemming the flow of injustice fueled by lifestyle choices here in Australia. I get that it’s impossible to live 100% ethically – we’re sinful folks living in a sinful world, and I live with that tension myself. But there are ways forward and tools like the Household Covenant study resource from Manna Gum. I just finished walking through this study with a small group of friends and it was great. We burned the grace candle at both ends, but we had cracking conversations and shared some great ideas. We all made decisions that moved us towards a more just world, and we somehow left feeling encouraged, supported, and unjudged.
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Let’s not confuse charity with biblical justice. I do hope that the average Australian Christian supports economically poor people as part of their response to the gospel. But I hope this is one of a wide variety of responses that are kingdom-shaped and aim to be ethical and just – from the kinds of work and rest we enjoy, to where we invest our money, who we give our time to, and how we use our political power. These all impact the economically poor. There is much to be done in this area in the Christian community, and encouragingly there are small pockets of people already thinking this stuff through and seeking to live just lives.
If that’s you, hang in there! Share with grace the ways that you are attempting to live justly. Be David-like in your honesty about the challenges of living justly and prepare each supper like it’s your last.
Because there’s a resurrection just around the corner. And according to this wannabe theologian every story ultimately—somewhere, somehow—ends with a resurrection.
Clinton lives with his wife and four children near Fremantle, Perth. He works for Amos Australia and is chipping away at a PhD looking at theologies of supporter engagement in Australian faith-based development organisations.