Newsletters - Violence and the Family

Summary

The Church must have a particular concern for marginalised groups and the issues that affect them. Church training programmes should include issues such as human rights, civic education and good governance.
The alarming increase in the number of people living below the poverty line means the Church must seriously engage in poverty alleviation programmes.
The Church has a particular role to play in promoting conflict resolution and peace-building activities such as Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.
The Church should ensure that refugees and displaced people live in humane conditions and are re-settled or repatriated where this is possible.
Faced with corruption at all levels in society, the Church must be exemplary in the following areas:
1. Demonstrating servant leadership especially with vulnerable groups,
2. Providing financially for all church workers - clergy and lay
3. Democratic structures which prevent institutional violence and corruption
4. Resolving disputes in an open manner
The Church world-wide is challenged to lobby governments on the evils of the arms trade, the debt crisis, the dumping of waste, the supply of expired drugs and harmful items that destroy local agriculture and industries in developing countries.
The Church's prophetic role is to challenge any form of injustice. These include unfair land distribution, unjust economic policies, oppressive laws and discrimination against minorities.
In the face of the fast-spreading Islamisation of Africa, the Church needs to encourage inter-faith dialogue as well as to promote an atmosphere of tolerance and peaceful co-existence.
Christians are to be stewards of God's creation. This calls for the Church to advocate for programmes that ensure a sustainable environment.
Programmes of moral regeneration should be introduced to restore a culture of ubuntu (humanness towards others � openness, acceptance, sharing).

Top

Page 23 of 25