Abstract
People are often surprised to hear that Christian Aid and other international development agencies still work in Brazil – a middle income country where many people enjoy far greater wealth than many in the UK. Yet the great cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are home to several million people living on the street or in slums. Flashy new cars sweep past people who are scraping a living by collecting and sorting through rubbish on the streets. The reason why we’re still there is this huge inequality, which continues to keep poor people poor, whether they live in urban or rural areas. And inequality is fuelled by discrimination, primarily on the grounds of gender, religion or ethnicity.
When I visited Brazil last year I was struck by the way in which people are working in partnership to address this life-threatening inequality, in particular through the ecumenical movement working together with social movements and grass roots NGOs.
The Brazilian ecumenical movement is itself a model of equality. Its focus is not so much on looking inwards, seeking unity among its member churches, as tends to happen in some other parts of the world. Instead it looks outwards, setting aside differences and seeking to be part of a much bigger community where it takes its place alongside others, united in working for the poor and marginalised, putting Christian love into action together in striving for social justice.
Equal partnerships are a significant force for change when it comes to addressing inequality and other forms of social injustice. So an important part of our theological conversations in Christian Aid has to do with the nature of relationships. We have reflected that God models relationship, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But do we express the Trinity as a triangle, with God the Father at the apex? Or, in the approach favoured by some Latin American theologians, is the Trinity to be depicted as a circle that leads to a dance (a rondo)?
Partnership as a circular dance implies equality and mutual responsibility – if one person breaks the circle everything collapses until the circle re-forms. A good example of this reciprocity in the context of international development is advocacy. The advocacy skills of the churches are very important to us in challenging social injustice. And similarly the Anglican Archbishop of Brazil, Archbishop Maurício Andrade, has called for an advocating church: “We testify to the Kingdom of God in a reality of anti-Kingdom, which is characterised by all forms of inequality”, he told Christian Aid staff in London last June. Together, in equal partnership, churches in the Global South and Global North are challenging poverty in an unequal world.
At an interfaith consultation for South American religious leaders held in Bolivia last autumn, we invited participants to reflect on the characteristics of God that might inspire us to work for equality. Much of their response was predictable: God’s unbounded love moves us to embrace people on the fringes of society, as does God’s solidarity with human beings. Much less expected was their understanding of God as a fighter – lutador – who in fighting with us and for us brings about transformation.
So we move forward together in the company of our fighter God, in the very real hope of confronting and overcoming the inequality that in so many places is preventing so many people from escaping poverty.