My new guest post on the Church Action on Poverty Blog

 

 

http://blog.church-poverty.org.uk/2015/02/20/evangelicals-poverty-and-politics/

 

In this piece I want to concentrate on the political response of Evangelical Christians to poverty, significant as it is in the context of the forthcoming general election. The report of our September 2014 survey of over 2,000 evangelicals on the theme of politics has just been published. It shows that in terms of voting intentions they are perplexed and divided as they seek to balance Biblical imperatives for social justice with traditional Christian standards of personal morality.

 

 

Shalom

Greg Smith

Development Co-ordinator Together Lancashire / Preston Christian Action Network

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Fw: Evangelical votes are up for grabs

 

 

A survey of evangelical Christians has revealed that nearly double the national average intend to vote in this year's general election. Four in 10 say they will change their vote from 2010. The government parties have lost significant support while smaller parties and Labour gained.

 

http://www.eauk.org/current-affairs/media/press-releases/evangelical-votes-are-up-for-grabs.cfm

 

 

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The influence of Jim Punton

 I have recently been reminded of the influence Jim Punton had on the development of my personal theology and politics in the late 1970's and early 1980s. A whole generation of Christians like myself who had responded to the challenge to live and work in urban priority areas found encouragement in his exposition of the scriptures and personal example.

 

`'There is no shalom in a society of injustice. There is no shalom in a society where racism prevails. There is no shalom in a society of elitism and privilege and of the kind of unequal distribution of wealth that means that some people are living in dire poverty. while others live it up on beds of ivory. And this is a message that we are not proclaiming today. The prophets did, Jesus did, the apostles did, but we have fallen silent because we as God's people today are implicated in injustice. ... We are the beneficiaries of injustice and we tolerate that situation." Jim Punton "The Messiah People" Hot Iron Press, published 1993! As relevant today as it ever was!

 

If you haven't read anything by Jim a lot of his material is archived at http://www.jimpunton.org.uk/index.htm

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