Make Poverty History helped change minds at the highest levels of global government. Now a new campaign, Livesimply, challenges each one of us during this season of excess to make a difference by looking at our personal impact on poverty and the environment
Take a glimpse at our national newspapers, and you quickly spot the significance of the season. No, not the season of Advent, pregnant with expectation, but the season of shopping, the busiest time of year for retailers. From "Christmas sales bonanza" to "The complete guide to online shopping" to "Are you merely rich or really rich?", the emphasis is on spending money. In London alone an estimated 40 million shoppers visit the West End during the six weeks leading up to Christmas, and parents today are happy to spend hundreds of pounds on their children's gifts which, rather than a book and a jigsaw, tend to be the likes of mobile phones, iPods and other electronic gadgets.
Enough is not a word that advertisers use. Our prevailing culture is about choice, more for less, and instant gratification. My supermarket gives me 40 brands of shampoo to choose from and eight different types of potato. We have new gadgets and software every month; 99p flights to Barcelona; and 150 channels on cable.
There are signs, however, that many people have had enough of this drive to make us conform to media-driven consumption patterns and self-obsessed lifestyles. The success of various charities' alternative gift lists, including cows and goats for Africa, bought instead of yet another bottle of aftershave, is one sign of change. There are other signs, too, that growing numbers of people are heeding God's call to be different, to speak out, to be a living symbol to the world that an alternative way of life is both possible and necessary.
That is why the Livesimply campaign is being launched, and with it comes a commitment: to change our lives in the affluent West, and also other people's lives in poorer parts of the planet.
It was clear during the huge Make Poverty History gathering in the summer of 2005 that people do want to make a difference. Among the marchers were tens of thousands of Catholics led by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor and Cardinal Keith O'Brien walking under Cafod (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development) and SCIAF (Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund) banners through the streets of Edinburgh. We were challenging the global economic powers meeting at Gleaneagles for the 2005 G8 Summit, calling for finance to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by doubling aid, cancelling debts and making trade fair.
Never before has such a broad mass movement been mobilised on global poverty. Promises were made to double aid over the next five years and cancel debt to 18 of the poorest countries - promises that we have to track and ensure are kept. Although we did not get all we wanted, especially on trade, there is no doubt in my mind we made a difference that day.
But the strength and simplicity of the campaign was also its weakness. Only by focusing on the simple message that rich governments need to change global structures of injustice on aid, debt and trade did we manage to achieve such a broad and diverse coalition. The campaign was a part of the answer, not the whole answer. We didn't talk about conflict, or HIV, or bad governance, or amoral financial institutions. We didn't address the tension between economic growth and climate change.
It let us, as individuals, off the hook. Nelson Mandela reminded us at the launch event that poverty is avoidable and that we as humanity are responsible for the poverty that causes the death of 30,000 people a day from preventable diseases, poor water, malnutrition, and Aids - yet many of us still thought that all the costs would be borne by governments and came cost-free to us. The challenge to look at our personal impact on poverty and the environment was missing.
The Livesimply challenge hopes to fill that gap. It states that "God calls us to look hard at our lifestyles and to choose to live simply, sustainably and in solidarity with people who are poor. In this way we can help to create a world in which human dignity is respected and everyone can reach their full potential. This would be true progress, worth more than economic growth alone."
More than 30 Catholic organisations have backed Livesimply, launched last weekend, which challenges us as individuals and as members of the communities we belong to - family, parish, school, nation. It is inspired by the fortieth anniversary of Pope Paul VI's great encyclical Populorum Progressio, written after his visits to Africa and Asia in the early 1960s.
He made clear that challenging the causes of social injustice was part of the mission of the Church - what he called the structures of sin - and asked "all people of goodwill" to take the issue of global poverty seriously and work for economic justice.
Pope Paul emphasised that human development is always integrated within the economic, social, cultural and spiritual domain. An isolated economic approach of development is inadequate; personal commitment and reflection - and personal conversion - are vital. When Pope Paul addressed individual personal growth through "union with the living Christ", this was not presented as an option but part of God's will.
He reminded us that we have the power and the opportunity to change ourselves and society in order to bring about a world where not only will people not be hungry, but all will share the same table. As Populorum Progressio says: "It involves building a human community where people can live truly human lives, free from discrimination on account of race, religion or nationality, free from servitude to others or to natural forces which they cannot yet control satisfactorily. It involves building a human community where liberty is not an idle word, where the needy Lazarus can sit down with the rich man at the same banquet table."
The Livesimply challenge invites us all to live more simply, sustainably and in solidarity with people who are poor. Solidarity is not, as John Paul II expressed it in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis in 1987, "a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the hardships of many people, both near and far". Rather, "it is a firm and persevering determination to commit ourselves to the common good: that is to say, to the good of all and of each individual because we really are responsible for all".
Poor communities contribute least to the causes of environmental and climate change, yet are likely to be the most affected. I have seen first-hand the impact of devastating drought in Ethiopia and Sudan, the aftermath of floods in Bangladesh and the submerging of the islands in the South Pacific. Those who live in poverty are in the worst possible position to cope.
As early as 1967, Pope Paul VI reminded us that we must think of future generations, and not just ourselves. Church teaching on the environment and creation since then has become much more fully developed. While Paul VI would not have used the word "sustainably", he reinforced the interdependence of humanity and nature. In "The Call of Creation", the bishops of England and Wales teach that "whatever we do, whatever choices we make, other people and the earth itself are affected".
The Livesimply challenge asks us to live more sustainably, and to consider carefully how our choices might affect communities most affected by environmental degradation and climate change. With limited access to resources, they cannot bounce back from setbacks as easily as those who have plenty. So we are called to live more simply - to share rather than to hoard, to be generous with our selves, our time and our resources, to consider how much is enough. And to live sustainably - to appreciate the beauty of the earth, the glory of creation, to breathe with it rather than against it.
To live simply is not just to live frugally for its own sake - that would be like fasting without prayer or almsgiving. It is to live in such a way that human dignity is respected and all may reach their full human and God-given potential. This would be true progress, worth more than economic growth alone.
The Livesimply Network hopes the challenge will be taken up by all within the Church. Reflection and self-examination are the first crucial steps. Following that, we will be running schemes like the Promise Database where you share your Livesimply commitments and events throughout the year, taking up these themes.
Many of us joined together in the Make Poverty History campaign, which challenged the structural injustices that keep people in poverty. Today, Livesimply challenges us to take personal responsibility for creating change and for understanding the impact our way of life is having on poor people and the environment.