Rich countries have utterly reneged on their promise to pay £200 million a year to help poor countries cope with climate change, Christian Aid claims. Had the promise been kept, wealthier countries would have now contributed £584 million.

Leaders of the world's biggest grouping of Reformed churches have compared the effects of neoliberal economic globalisation to the transatlantic slave trade, and said that Christians need to combat this modern form of "enslavement".

As world financial leaders gather in Washington DC for the annual joint strategy meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Christian Aid is calling for an urgent rethink of the World Bank’s approach to tackling energy poverty.

A World Council of Churches economist has criticised the global economic system for creating "material and spiritual poverty" and called for a people-centred economy in which morality replaces mathematics in tackling problems caused by global capital.

More people in the world are living in cities than ever before, and this is leading to renewed interest in religion, confounding those who predicted a growth of secularisation, says a new United Nations report.

Blaming religion alone for the world's troubles is factually wrong, says the head of the World Council of Churches. Both religious and non-religious roots of conflict must be faced, and Christians have a vocation as peacemakers.

The global mission of the Christian churches does not sit comfortably with selfish and economically over-determined forms of globalisation, said World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary the Rev Dr Samuel Kobia in a paper prepared for his visit to India this week.