Chancellor faces prophetic message over debt
-20/02/06
A week after a leading Evangelic
Chancellor faces prophetic message over debt
-20/02/06
A week after a leading Evangelical from the US compared the Chancellor of the Exchequer to a biblical prophet, UK Evangelicals have announced that hundreds are to re-enact the flamboyant actions of another biblical prophet outside the House of Commons to send a message to Gordon Brown over debt relief.
Over 700 campaigners from the SPEAK network aim to send a powerful visual message to the Chancellor, as well as other members of the Government by imitating the actions of the biblical prophet Ezekiel, who lay on his side symbolically bearing the sins of Israel for 390 days.
Next Monday (27th Feb) the campaigners say they will re-enact this in Parliament Square with hundreds of Christian students and young adults stagger under massive burdens on their backs symbolising “the real, crushing burdens people in poorer countries suffer because of insufficient aid, unfair trade and unpayable debts.”
The news comes after Gordon Brown wrote the forward to the UK edition of the New York Times bestseller ‘God’s Politics’ in which the Chancellor is compared to the biblical prophet Micah.
The book praises Brown’s work towards cancelling the debts of the world’s poorest nations, and relates how the Chancellor told the author, Jim Wallis, during one of their many meetings, that he was relying on the support of the churches.
Jim Wallis has been dubbed ‘Brown’s Guru’.
Recently however, campaigners have expressed concern that the promises made by G8 leaders will not be kept, and warned that there is ‘unfinished business’ on debt.
A meeting of G8 Finance Ministers last weekend in Moscow failed to live up to the expectations of campaigners.
The new day of action marks seven years of SPEAKís radically different creative actions.
ìFor too long now the UK government has actively taken part in economic systems that are oppressing and exploiting poorer nations and their people.î Says Louise Donkin, founding director of the SPEAK Network.
ìThe time is long overdue for the UK to turn from these ways and lift the crushing burdens from poorer nations which have been forced on them for so long. ì
ìThe 2005 Make Poverty History campaign has been a really encouraging start, but our Government can and must do more. SPEAK is performing this unique action to send a strong message to the Government and the public; we need to repent for the economic burdens weíve inflicted on poorer countries and make significant changes in the way we operate and relate to poorer nations in the future.î
SPEAK are aiming to gather 722 people to lie under burdens, representing the number of months since the creation of the current financial institutions and economic systems that govern global trade and debt at Bretton Woods in 1945. These meetings developed economic systems that, although helpful in some areas, are often the cause of the modern day hardship that many nations and their people have had to endure.
SPEAKís Day of Action comes at the end of the annual gathering of the network, Soundcheck (February 24th-26th 2006) at which Ekklesia’s director Jonathan Bartley will speak.
Hundreds of people will gather to explore their faith and issues of global injustice in more depth.
You can read a review of Jim Wallis’ book ‘God’s Politics: Why the American Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It’ in this Saturday’s Guardian newspaper
Chancellor faces prophetic message over debt
-20/02/06
A week after a leading Evangelical from the US compared the Chancellor of the Exchequer to a biblical prophet, UK Evangelicals have announced that hundreds are to re-enact the flamboyant actions of another biblical prophet outside the House of Commons to send a message to Gordon Brown over debt relief.
Over 700 campaigners from the SPEAK network aim to send a powerful visual message to the Chancellor, as well as other members of the Government by imitating the actions of the biblical prophet Ezekiel, who lay on his side symbolically bearing the sins of Israel for 390 days.
Next Monday (27th Feb) the campaigners say they will re-enact this in Parliament Square with hundreds of Christian students and young adults stagger under massive burdens on their backs symbolising “the real, crushing burdens people in poorer countries suffer because of insufficient aid, unfair trade and unpayable debts.”
The news comes after Gordon Brown wrote the forward to the UK edition of the New York Times bestseller ‘God’s Politics’ in which the Chancellor is compared to the biblical prophet Micah.
The book praises Brown’s work towards cancelling the debts of the world’s poorest nations, and relates how the Chancellor told the author, Jim Wallis, during one of their many meetings, that he was relying on the support of the churches.
Jim Wallis has been dubbed ‘Brown’s Guru’.
Recently however, campaigners have expressed concern that the promises made by G8 leaders will not be kept, and warned that there is ‘unfinished business’ on debt.
A meeting of G8 Finance Ministers last weekend in Moscow failed to live up to the expectations of campaigners.
The new day of action marks seven years of SPEAK’s radically different creative actions.
‘For too long now the UK government has actively taken part in economic systems that are oppressing and exploiting poorer nations and their people.’ Says Louise Donkin, founding director of the SPEAK Network.
‘The time is long overdue for the UK to turn from these ways and lift the crushing burdens from poorer nations which have been forced on them for so long. ‘
‘The 2005 Make Poverty History campaign has been a really encouraging start, but our Government can and must do more. SPEAK is performing this unique action to send a strong message to the Government and the public; we need to repent for the economic burdens we’ve inflicted on poorer countries and make significant changes in the way we operate and relate to poorer nations in the future.’
SPEAK are aiming to gather 722 people to lie under burdens, representing the number of months since the creation of the current financial institutions and economic systems that govern global trade and debt at Bretton Woods in 1945. These meetings developed economic systems that, although helpful in some areas, are often the cause of the modern day hardship that many nations and their people have had to endure.
SPEAK’s Day of Action comes at the end of the annual gathering of the network, Soundcheck (February 24th-26th 2006) at which Ekklesia’s director Jonathan Bartley will speak.
Hundreds of people will gather to explore their faith and issues of global injustice in more depth.
You can read a review of Jim Wallis’ book ‘God’s Politics: Why the American Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It’ in this Saturday’s Guardian newspaper