Please take a look at this new study. I know this can induce controversy, but it is reality and something we need to wrestle with. The post is from my friend Anne Jackson. Anne and I will be going to Moldova and Russia to help several projects that are involved with girls/orphans who have been rescued form the sex-trade industry. More to come.

The Bliss Institute recently commissioned a study on what “Conservative Religious Activists” deem important and what “Progressive Activists” deem important. You can download the study here.  but for definition’s sake:

“Conservative and progressive religious activists have distinct profiles in terms of affiliation, practice, and belief”

“Conservative religious activists are almost exclusively Christian.”

“Progressive activists are markedly more diverse in terms of religious affiliation. No single faith tradition makes up a majority of progressive religious activists.”

I’ll let the chart do it’s work, but let’s just say that only 23% of us “Christians” (the survey defined it even further as a majority of Christians being mainline protestant, um, people like you and me) think that poverty is an issue we should stand behind and fight.

The red in the survey represents a majority of “Christian” folk.

The blue is just your average, ordinary Joe.

Jesus himself said something about how people will know we are followers of Christ. (John 13:35)

According to this survey people will know we follow Christ by how much we fight gay marriage and not poverty and disease.

We care so much about abortion, about children before they are born. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

However, I’m wondering if the phrase “Sanctity of Life” in our political language should be changed to “Sanctity of the American Unborn” because according to these statistics, there are quite a few people who don’t care what happens to the child (or the parents or the siblings) once that baby is actually born.

If they these people really did care, well, actions speak louder than words…

…What about the 30,000 children who starve to death every day because of hunger?

Or the millions who die from malaria each year?

Or the millions who die from diarrhea because they have no clean water.

This is horrific.

This must change.

We must begin to engage this “Christian” world view that poverty is not an issue and help them see that caring for the poor is at the very heart of Christ.