From the Rev. Jim Wallis (SoJo.net):

This week, with the news of the U.S. financial crisis dominating the headlines, the United Nations General Assembly opened its annual meeting.  The threat to the entire global economy has created alarm and fear that those in poverty, both in the U.S. and around the world, will be left behind and forgotten. World leaders, including U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, expressed deep concern that the crisis would threaten efforts to fight global poverty.  On today’s U.N. agenda is a review of the Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015. This ambitious agenda includes cutting global poverty in half, reducing infant mortality, reducing the ratio of women dying in childbirth, ensuring primary education, promoting gender equality, combating HIV/AIDS and malaria, and a setting of benchmarks for environmental sustainability and development.

We already know that progress is mixed, and that the growing cost of food and fuel coupled with the economic crisis threatens that progress.  The goal of developed countries spending 0.7 percent of their GNP on aid has not been met by most countries. The New York Times noted this week that

The aggregate aid budget of the most developed nations amounts to 0.28 percent of their gross national income ... The United States, shamefully, is at the bottom of the list, spending 0.16 percent of its income on development assistance.

Given that reality, Micah Challenge USA released a Letter to the Church in the United States from thirty senior evangelical leaders in four continents.  The letter recognizes what U.S. Christians have contributed to the global South, but goes on to say:

Nevertheless, the political, social, and economic situation in the places where this hope has been announced is increasingly distressing. Millions of people in the global South are dying of hunger, violence, and injustice. These situations of poverty and pain are not simply the product of the internal functions of our countries; rather they are the results of the international policies of the governments that wield global power.

And, in a prophetic challenge to Christians in the U.S.:

Therefore, we have this against you, brothers and sisters, that along with this powerful announcing of the Gospel, the Church from the United States has not also raised its voice in protest against the injustices that powerful governments and institutions are inflicting on the global South - injustices that afflict the lives and ecosystems of millions of people who, centuries after the proclamation of the Gospel, still have not seen the sweat of their brow turned into bread.

Specifically,

And so we ask you as sisters and brothers, citizens of the wealthiest most powerful nation on earth, to publicly challenge your candidates and political leaders -- now and after the elections are over -- to lead the world in the struggle to cut global poverty in half by 2015.

With millions of people in the U.S. and billions in the global South facing poverty, Sojourners is pursuing its Vote Out Poverty campaign, with the goals of cutting domestic poverty in half over ten years and ending extreme global poverty by fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals.  I urge you to respond to the challenge from our brothers and sisters in the global South by joining the campaign. We must answer our brothers and sisters and demand that our political leaders make cutting poverty in half — both globally and in the U.S. — a priority even as they work to resolve the financial crisis.

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