Evangelicals working to break stereotypes – The Clarion-Ledger

Evangelicals have been pushing President Bush, an evangelical himself, to lead the charge on reducing foreign debt owed by Third World nations and to fight poverty and AIDS in Africa.

The debt-relief effort has been driven by the Rev. Rick Warren, author of the enormously popular book, The Purpose-Driven Life. Warren, pastor of the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., has been mobilizing evangelicals to work on the debt issue.

Warren and others are pushing “The ONE Campaign (www.one.org),” which seeks “to make poverty history” by allowing countries with heavy debts to spend money on social needs instead of interest payments. Warren also has created a separate “P.E.A.C.E. Plan,” to work on poverty and AIDS in Africa.

This is a positive development, as far as I’m concerned. The world needs as many different kinds of people to get involved with making poverty history, or working on related issues like eradicating disease or debilitating parasites.

I ran across several different stories in the last two days about parasites, for example. The Gates Foundation has given a lot of money to help eradicate parasitic worms in Africa (the Guinea worm) and they’re working with the Carter Center (yes, THAT Carter) to fight river blindness in the Americas.

Although it doesn’t specifically say so on the “about” page of the Carter Center site, I’d guess that the Carters walk the walk that their faith demands, and don’t just talk the talk like some other faith-based President I could name.