Is learning more important than well-being? Teachers told us how COVID highlighted ethical dilemmas at school

Shutterstock

Daniella J. Forster, University of Newcastle

As an educational ethicist, I research teachers’ ethical obligations. These can include their personal ethics such as protecting students from harm, respect for justice and truth, and professional norms like social conformity, collegial loyalty and personal well-being.

Moral tensions in schools can come about when certain categories of norms conflict with each other. For example, sometimes students’ best interests are pitted against available resources. These present difficult decisions for the teacher, the school community and its leaders.

As part of a global study on educational ethics during the pandemic, I conducted focus groups with Australian childcare, preschool, primary and secondary school teachers to find out what ethical issues were most pressing for them.

Below are three ways in which the pandemic highlighted existing tensions between ethical priorities.

1. Student well-being versus learning

The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers emphasise student well-being is important to learning. But they note teachers’ main priority is making sure the student learns at their stage of the Australian National Curriculum.

During COVID, this flipped and well-being took precedence. A primary school teacher told me:

It’s the first time in my teaching career where the learning became a low priority, and well-being took over … if we could keep them chugging along, that was good enough.

An Aboriginal-identifying teacher who shared their strong cultural background with students said:

… a lot of the Aboriginal students … didn’t have access to … resources. And so there was already this disconnect that became even wider by the time they had to learn from home … Some students were not able to complete the work that I was putting on the online forum because they were caring for little brothers and sisters when they were at home … or home life was extremely volatile …

A secondary school teacher said:

There were certain students that we were made aware of by the well-being coordinators that we weren’t to make contact with. If there were more extenuating circumstances in the life of the child then we weren’t to … exacerbate that by sending emails home about them not completing work …

Some teachers found it particularly difficult to identify students at heightened risk and to put in place their duty of care requirements.

---

Read more:
‘The workload was intense’: what parents told us about remote learning

---

A public primary school principal in a low socioeconomic area said:

We had a couple of instances where we would have had more contact with family, community services and since (then) we have heard stories of what happened when the children weren’t coming to school … we would have made an instant call to DOCS [Department of Community Services], but because we weren’t having that day to day contact we didn’t know. A lot of those things were hidden, very serious issues.

2. Government policy versus staff well-being

Leading teachers and principals found the tension between their personal safety and that of their colleagues were often in conflict with a lag in institutional directives.

Education departments often put out instructions long after principals felt the safety of their staff was compromised.
Shutterstock

For instance, on March 25 The NSW Teachers’ Federation urged the education department to immediately prioritise the safety of staff and students.

But the department took time to mandate social distancing measures, school closures and learning from home. In the meantime principals were on alert for risk management, anticipating directives for extensive social distancing, such as cancelling school assemblies, before being instructed to do so.

One public school principal said:

The federation is telling us this. The department is telling us that … I would make a decision and then a couple of weeks later … the department would come up with the same strict instructions … it was the well-being of the staff first for me … even to the point where we sent the kids home for the first week with no learning … the second that one child comes to school and catches COVID, then I’m not going to be able to live with myself.

---

Read more:
‘We had no sanitiser, no soap and minimal toilet paper’: here’s how teachers feel about going back to the classroom

---

But it wasn’t the same in all schools. A primary school teacher in a bushfire affected area reflected on the decisions made by the principal.

I’m trying to be diplomatic … We were very slow to engage with kids who were starting to be kept home from school. And we were very slow for teachers to be able to work from home and we were very quick to come back to … school … We have a parent who worked at the local high school saying, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ve been working at home all week’. We haven’t even been told that’s a possibility …

3. Personal well-being versus professional integrity

A teacher’s professional integrity is how they evaluate the alignment between the expectations of their role and their values. When a schism arises, it throws into question some core professional values.

One public school principal’s integrity had an extremely high bar.

I’ll be really honest, despite all of the warnings and all of the advice, my own well-being was my last priority. And the ethical dilemma for me was, I can’t look after myself because I’ve got so many other people to look after first, despite all the warnings, despite all the advice.

Teachers reported the personal cost of changing work arrangements into remote settings, concerned about how they were to fulfil their professional integrity to provide the kind of meaningful interactions students needed.

A secondary Catholic school teacher said:

Remote learning really threw me off balance and I struggled to find myself and how I fit into that situation … I had to learn to let go and … work out what is really important.

For the next generation of teachers, the dilemma was more about how to set boundaries in an emerging professional identity.

One early career public secondary teacher said:

I did go out of my way to with my Year 11s, them being my most senior year … Which did bring up the ethical thing … there were times I would get a message at one o’clock and I’d be up but I’d say, I’m not answering that, I’m not looking at it. I’m looking at it in the morning. That’s too much in each other’s heads. And, yeah, the barriers were tough.

An experienced secondary teacher in an International Baccalaureate school said:

I was working sending emails at midnight, and getting up three hours before my lessons to try and make sure that the platform is working … and obviously all my lessons that I plan had to be then turned into online lessons. So that takes a whole other weekend for everything … I got WhatsApp messages at all hours …

She said students sent her emails to thank her for the commitment. She realised it was a toxic message to send, and that implied this should be the norm for teachers. While teaching is a generous profession, COVID highlighted the expectations on their generosity.

---

Read more:
‘Exhausted beyond measure’: what teachers are saying about COVID-19 and the disruption to education

---

Daniella J. Forster, Senior Lecturer, Educational ethics and philosophies, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A question for the treasurer: how do you treat mental health without measuring well-being?

Carla Liuzzo, Queensland University of Technology

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg mocked the idea of a “well-being budget” as “laughable” back in February. He’s got less reason to laugh now.

According to an Essential Research poll last week, 78% of Australians agree the pandemic has exposed flaws in the economy and there is an opportunity to explore new ways to run things. A well-being budget might be just the ticket.

In February, Frydenberg dismissed a well-being budget as “just another word for Labor’s higher taxes and more debt”, after the shadow treasurer, Jim Chalmers, committed the heresy of saying gross domestic product was, on its own, a deficient economic measure, and countenanced “a version of New Zealand’s well-being budget, which redefines what success means in terms of economic outcomes”.

Frydenberg joked about Chalmers being “fresh from his ashram deep in the Himalayas, barefoot, robes flowing, incense burning, beads in one hand, well-being budget in the other”.

But now, with the federal government changing its tune on many things, such as debt, it might be a good time for Frydenberg to change his mind on this.

Well-being measures, for one thing, could greatly assist the Australian government in budgeting to improve mental health and prevent suicides – things Frydenberg said in his budget speech are national priorities.

It’s impossible to address the nation’s mental crisis just through the blunt tools of economic growth and money for band-aid services. If a bigger income was the main means to mental well-being, after all, James Packer would be happier.

Mental health is a complex problem, with complicated causes, requiring a sophisticated response. To do that, developing measurements of well-being can only help.

---

Read more:
Budget funding for Beyond Blue and Headspace is welcome. But it may not help those who need it most

---

Measuring what’s worthwhile

There is no universal definition of well-being economics, but essentially it is an economic perspective that acknowledges gross domestic product – the monetary value of all goods and services produced by a country in a given period – as an all-too narrow metric for building a prosperous, sustainable, human-centred economy.

GDP is useful, as Chalmers acknowledged in his February speech:

It does still provide a powerful insight into the current state of the economy, and is useful for historical comparisons. […]

More broadly, growth matters to the jobs and opportunities created in our society. A healthy, growing economy can make people more comfortable with farsighted social and economic policy changes as well.

But GDP does not, as Chalmers said, paint the whole picture. He quoted Robert Kennedy, who said GDP measured everything “except that which makes life worthwhile”; and Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz: “If we measure the wrong thing, we will do the wrong thing.” So his point was hardly fringe.

Indeed even the architect of GDP as an economic measure, economist Simon Kuznets, warned against putting too much emphasis on it, and of the dangers of it subverting the normally “valuable capacity of the human mind to simplify a complex situation in a compact characterisation”.

---

Read more:
Redefining GDP and what we mean by growth

---

New Zealand’s well-being budget

The first country in the world to introduce a well-being budget was New Zealand, in May 2019.

The main difference of The Wellbeing Budget to previous budgets was how it allocated resources to five priority areas: mental health; child well-being; Māori and Pasifika well-being; productivity; and environmental sustainability.

The traditional budget process tends to consider priorities on a yearly basis. This guides governments to put more money into short-term goals and less into initiatives with long-term returns. To overcome this bias, New Zealand’s Treasury created an assessment framework that considers the merits of projects according to 60 different measurements (covering economic, social and environmental impacts).

The intention is to ensure the budget doesn’t neglect to invest in long-term initiatives that can prevent problems, rather than being caught in a cycle of pumping money into alleviating the symptoms short-term.

In mental health this means more emphasis on policies that keep people well, rather than on providing help only once they are very unwell – the type of “defensive spending” dominating the Australian government’s priorities in mental health in last week’s budget.

---

Read more:
New Zealand’s well-being approach to budget is not new, but could shift major issues

---

Building back better

The Australian Capital Territory’s Labor government has already replicated New Zealand’s model in its own Wellbeing Framework.

In February Chalmers indicated a desire for federal Labor to take a well-being budget to the next election.

ALP leader Anthony Albanese’s response to the federal budget on Thursday night gave few signals the Labor Party will do so. Though he criticised the government’s short-term GDP growth focus, the word “well-being” did not pass his lips.

But popular opinion suggests both parties should be putting well-being measures on the agenda. Already more than 30 countries measure “life satisfaction”. Support for well-being economics should transcend party lines, as it does in countries such as Britain.

If the Australian government is to “build back better”, it’s hard to see how a well-being budget could possibly hurt.

Carla Liuzzo, Sessional Lecturer, School of Business, School of Creative Industries, Queensland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Coronavirus reminds us how liveable neighbourhoods matter for our well-being

Chanan Greenblatt/Unsplash

Melanie Davern, RMIT University; Billie Giles-Corti, RMIT University; Hannah Badland, RMIT University, and Lucy Gunn, RMIT University

We are witnessing changes in the ways we use our cities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The liveability of our local neighbourhoods has never been more important.

Right now, we are working together to flatten the curve by staying home to control the spread of COVID-19 and reduce demand on health services. This means spending a lot more time at home and in our local neighbourhoods. We are all finding out about the strengths and weaknesses in the liveability of our neighbourhoods.

This experience can teach us some lessons about how to live and plan our communities in the future. A liveable neighbourhood promotes good health and social cohesion, both now and after this pandemic passes.

---

Read more:
How do we create liveable cities? First, we must work out the key ingredients

---

Heavy use of local open space

Anybody who has left their home in the past few weeks will have noticed more people are using local streets and public open spaces. Parks and other public spaces are more popular than ever. Some are becoming too crowded for comfort.

Accessible public space is a key ingredient of healthy and liveable places. Public green spaces provide multiple benefits for mental and physical health, urban cooling, biodiversity, air pollution and stormwater runoff as identified in a previous review for the Heart Foundation.

Access to local public open spaces has become even more important as the current need to stay home adds to the impacts of increased density in the form of smaller houses, lot sizes and apartment living. Yet not everyone has access to local parks.

---

Read more:
Higher-density cities need greening to stay healthy and liveable

---

We looked at neighbourhood access to public open space using our liveability indicators included in the Australian Urban Observatory. Not all neighbourhoods have access to public open space within 400 metres. We see this in neighbourhoods just north of the beach in North Bondi, Sydney, as the liveability map below shows.

Residents of neighbourhoods north of Bondi Beach in Sydney lack good access to nearby public open space.
Australian Urban Observatory, Author provided

We found a similar pattern in neighbourhoods of St Kilda East in Melbourne. It’s a pattern repeated in many neighbourhoods across cities in Australia.

Private green spaces and backyards are also being appreciated more than ever. Many people are rushing to plant fruits and vegetables at home.

The private green spaces and biodiversity found in backyards are important influences on subjective well-being. Connecting with nature in the garden is a great way to support mental health.

---

Read more:
3 ways nature in the city can do you good, even in self-isolation

---

Dogs are also enjoying more time with their owners in local green spaces and pet ownership is increasing. Office video conferences often feature furry friends at home. Let’s hope the increase in pet adoptions helps people cope with social distancing but also provides the animals with good long-term homes.

Fewer cars, more cycling and walking

Reduced car traffic is making local streets safer and more usable for residents.
Tony Bowler/Shutterstock

One of the noticeable differences in our cities right now is the reduced car traffic in typically busy neighbourhoods where more people (including children) are out on bicycles and walking. Walkable environments with paths and cycleways are providing supportive and safe spaces for both recreational physical activity and for getting to places such as local shops and supermarkets and offices without unnecessary exposure to other people.

The benefits are greatest for people living in high-amenity walkable areas with access to such places within 800 metres. Having services and facilities close by has been shown to support walking for transport to shops and services, promote health and reduce non-communicable diseases such as heart attacks and strokes.

However, our new lives during this pandemic also highlight inequities in local access to health, community and social services. Research shows access to these services is poorer in the low-density outer suburbs that are common across Australian cities.

---

Read more:
The average regional city resident lacks good access to two-thirds of community services, and liveability suffers

---

Better air quality

Reduced car traffic and industrial emissions are undoubtedly improving air quality in our cities. In 2018, the World Health Organisation declared air quality was the “new smoking” as it increases respiratory problems and cardiovascular disease. The transport sector also contributes about 25% of global carbon dioxide emissions .

Homes, schools and care facilities located within 300 metres of major roads are more exposed to air pollution and risk of disease. Those risks are likely to have decreased during the COVID-19 crisis.

At the moment, many of us are living and shopping locally and enjoying the co-benefits of the “slow walkable city”: less traffic, more active modes of transport, better air quality and less noise.

---

Read more:
Transport access is good for new housing, but beware the pollution

---

Valuing social cohesion

Loneliness is a serious public health problem. It causes premature deaths on a scale similar to that of smoking or obesity.

Pre-pandemic lifestyles involved time-poor people travelling widely to destinations for employment, education, recreation, socialising and extracurricular activities. The suburbs were places of much social isolation.

With these activities now reined in, are we are seeing a rise in neighbourhood social connections due to people staying at home? Anecdotally, yes. It’s emerging through new or reinvigorated conversations with neighbours, support and sharing of goods (toilet paper anyone?), and coordinated neighbourhood support systems, such as WhatsApp groups and neighbourhood happy hours. Across the world, we can see this sense of neighbourhood belonging in the form of bear hunts and rainbow chalk drawings.

It is well documented that feeling part of the community is good for your mental health. Local support networks become even more important and valued during crises such as COVID-19.

These are just some of the more obvious reflections about the liveability of our neighbourhoods as we stay home to help contain the spread of COVID-19. No doubt there will be many more lessons to come that we need to remember and act on after the pandemic passes.

Melanie Davern, Senior Research Fellow, Director Australian Urban Observatory, Co-Director Healthy Liveable Cities Group, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University; Billie Giles-Corti, Director, Urban Futures Enabling Capability Platform and Director, Healthy Liveable Cities Group, RMIT University; Hannah Badland, Principal Research Fellow, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University, and Lucy Gunn, Research Fellow, Healthy Liveable Cities Group, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Armenian Christian leader put to ‘Évin’ prison in Iran

Pastor Vahik Abrahamian, an Armenian Christian residing in Tehran, Iran, who was visiting a friend, upon his return to his home was arrested in Tehran by plainclothes security officers, reports FCNN. The manner in which he was arrested and the prolonged detention in Evin notorious prison, has created grave concern amongst the Iranian Christian community, particularly with family and friends.

"As per reports by FCNN correspondents and sources within the country, on Saturday 20th February 2010 (1 Esfand 1388) plainclothes security officers arrested 44 years old ‘Vahik Abrahamian’ , who is an Armenian Christian leader, as he was departing a friend’s house who was visiting Iran from Europe.

The manner in which Pastor Abrahamian was arrested is very unsettling and indeed ambiguous. As per received reports, 3 plainclothes security agents who were in a green Peugeot vehicle, swarmed upon Mr. & Mrs. Abrahamian as they were departing their friends house.

What is quite uncommon in any similar incident, one of the agents was filming the whole episode with a handheld camera. The agents showed an arrests warrant with permission to ‘shoot to kill’. After searching their vehicle and seizing all personal belongings, they set Mrs. Abarahmian free and took Pastor Vahik to Evin prison.

As per FCNN reports, wife and parents and extended family and friends of this Armenian Christian leader, are extremely concerned for the well being of the prisoner and are completely in state of shock. Mrs. Abrahamian has been unwilling or afraid to discuss the matter with anyone.

All Pastor Vahik’s family and friends vouch for his meek, humble and Godly character. All are unanimous that he was not only God fearing and law abiding citizen but was also very compassionate and sensitive particularly to the drug addicts and reached out to serve them. All are totally convinced that his character is beyond reproach and are hoping that this grave misunderstanding by the authorities will clear and he will be set free.

It’s noteworthy that Pastor Abrahamian had dual Dutch and Iranian citizenship, yet chose to live, work and serve in his native country Iran, staying close to aging mother and family.

As per obtained reports, there are many unanswered questions with regards to the circumstances leading to his arrest which is normally conducted in detaining known terrorists or political activists. The authorities have neither commented why this extraordinary measures were taken and nor why is he being held for such lengthy period. It’s also unclear who is holding this law abiding ordinary citizen and which authority has ordered his arrest! It seems that we have a long wait to hear from Islamic republic Juridical and legal authorities about reason of his arrest.

The received reports indicate that after elapse of over a month from his arrest, there is complete silence by Iranian Legal and juridical authorities and so far he has been denied appointment of a lawyer or visits by next of keen. Mother, Wife, brother and extended family are extremely concerned for his well being and are grief stricken with no clear and promising news.

At this time we would like to beseech all Christian community in Iran and overseas to fast and pray for his release and also pray for other Christians arrested in the last days and weeks in various cities in Iran. May God in His grace intervene in this situation and let’s hope that he will unite with his family bringing great joy and relief in the festive days of the Nowruz’ spring in Iran.

Report from the Christian Telegraph 

Iranian Christian was arrested and took to unknown place

Farsi Christian News Network (FCNN), reports that at 8 am on December 16, 2009, several security officers entered the home of Hamideh Najafi, a Christian lady who resides in the city of Mashhad, and not only searched her home thoroughly, but also arrested and took her away to an unknown location.

According to this news three security officers, two female and one male, who carried an order for arrest from the Revolutionary Court of Mashhad, entered the home of this lady and after searching the her home seized her personal belongings along with books, CDs, and hand painted portraits of Jesus Christ that were hanging on her walls. According to these officers the existence of these pictures will be sufficient evidence that would convict her in court.

Even though Mashhad is the birthplace of Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, and is considered one of the holiest centers of the Shiite faith (Ghom being the other center in Iran) and also a center of pilgrimage and theological schools, in the recent years there have been significant growth of the underground home based churches.

Mashhad is an ultra-religious city where Rev. Hossein Soodmand, one of the recent Martyrs of the church in Iran was executed on December 3, 1990 at the Mashhad prison and was buried in a trash dump site outside of the city.

According to FCNN, after 10 days of her arrest there has been no telephone contact or visitation granted to the family of Hamideh.

Despite the worries about her well-being and the location of her detention, coupled with her husband’s frantic efforts to contact the Revolutionary Court of Mashhad in order to have information as to the nature of the charges against Hamideh, unfortunately as of now the officials have refused to provide any answers or information. When her husband finally decided to retain a lawyer in order to investigate his wife’s condition, the court officials notified him that the accusations were political in nature and she would be charged for contacting foreign Christian television networks.

This incident is based on the yet-to-be-defined laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding what constitutes a political crime and calling a religious television program does not constitute a political crime.

Its is probable that Hamideh Najafi is currently being held at a detention center on the Vakil Abbad Blvd., next to the Mashhad prison, in order to be fully interrogated and confessions be obtained for future court trial.

She has a 10 years old daughter that is currently suffering from a severe kidney and bladder infection that only her mother is capable of nursing her. According to news received this little girl’s condition, due to missing her mother and being away from her, is not well at all and during the last 10 days, she has not been able to attend school.

The Committee of Christian Activists of the Human Rights in Iran, not only expresses its serious concerns regarding the condition of this Christian woman and the baseless accusations of political crimes that have been filed against her, but it is equally worried about the physical and psychological condition of the 10 years old daughter of Hamideh Najafi who needs her mother, and demands an immediate investigation and speedy freedom of this Christian lady.

Report from the Christian Telegraph 

LAOS: OFFICIALS ANNOUNCE BAN ON CHRISTIANITY IN VILLAGE

Chief warns Christians to worship only local spirits or lose homes.

DUBLIN, July 16 (Compass Direct News) – Following the confiscation of livestock from Christian families earlier this month, officials in a village in Laos on Saturday (July 11) called a special meeting for all residents and announced that they had “banned the Christian faith in our village.”

The chief of Katin village, along with village security, social and religious affairs officials, warned all 53 Christian residents that they should revert to worshiping local spirits in accordance with Lao tradition or risk losing all village rights and privileges – including their livestock and homes, according to advocacy group Human Rights Watch for Lao Religious Freedom (HRWLRF).

The Katin village leader also declared that spirit worship was the only acceptable form of worship in the community, HRWLRF reported. Katin village is in Ta Oih district, Saravan Province.

The previous Sunday (July 5), officials and residents confiscated one pig each from nine Christian families and slaughtered the animals in an effort to force them to renounce their faith. Officials said the seizure of the pigs – each worth the equivalent of six weeks’ salary for an average laborer in the area – was punishment for ignoring the order to abandon Christianity. (See “Officials Seize, Slaughter Christians’ Livestock,” July 10.)

According to HRWLRF, the chief’s order clearly contravened Article 6 and Article 30 of the Lao Constitution, which guarantees the right of Christians and other religious minorities to practice the religion of their choice without discrimination or penalty.

In addition, HRWLRF stated that Katin officials had violated Article 53 of the 2003 Law on Local Administration, which requires them to abide by the constitution and other laws and to provide for the safety and well-being of all people living under their care.

Officials in Katin have a history of ignoring constitutional religious freedoms. On July 21, 2008, officials detained 80 Christians in the village after residents seized a Christian identified only as Pew and poured rice wine down his throat, killing him by asphyxiation.

When family members buried Pew and placed a wooden cross on his grave, officials accused them of “practicing the rituals of the enemy of the state” and seized a buffalo and pig from them as a fine.

On July 25, 2008, officials rounded up 17 of the 20 Christian families then living in the village – a total of 80 men, women and children – and detained them in a school compound, denying them food in an effort to force the adults to sign documents renouncing their faith. The other three Christian families in the village at that time had already signed the documents under duress.

As their children grew weaker, 10 families signed the documents and were permitted to return home. The remaining seven families were evicted from the village and settled in an open field nearby, surviving on whatever food sources they could find in the jungle.

Suffering from the loss of their property and livelihoods, however, the seven families eventually recanted their faith and moved back into the village. But over time, some of the Christians began gathering again for prayer and worship.

On Sept. 8, 2008, provincial and district authorities called a meeting in Katin village and asked local officials and residents to respect the religious laws of the nation.

Four days later, however, village officials seized a buffalo worth approximately US$350 from a Christian resident identified only as Bounchu, telling him the animal would be returned only if he renounced his faith. When he refused, they slaughtered the animal in the village square and distributed the meat to non-Christian residents.

Report from Compass Direct News

Christian human rights group concerned for minorities in Iran

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), a UK-based Christian human rights group says that it is concerned for the safety and well-being of non-Muslim religious minorities in Iran as violent protests over recent Presidential elections continue, reports Dan Wooding, founder of ASSIST Ministries.

Alexa Papadouris, CSW’s Advocacy Director, said: “Recent comments by the Iranian Government and Ayatollah Khamenei apportioning blame on foreign elements for the mass demonstrations is a worrying development. The linking of national unrest with international interference has, in the past, been associated with increased targeting of non-Muslim religious minorities, deemed by the regime to be sympathizers with a Western agenda.”

CSW is concerned that the situation for non-Muslim religious minorities, particularly for Baha’is and certain Christian denominations, which worsened under Ahmadinejad’s previous term of presidency, will continue to deteriorate amidst the current political chaos. As the world’s attention is drawn to the unfolding events in Iran, CSW appeals that the situation for religious minorities is not forgotten.”

CSW is a human rights organization which specializes in religious freedom, works on behalf of those persecuted for their Christian beliefs and promotes religious liberty for all.

Report from the Christian Telegraph

WORLD EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE ASSEMBLY CLOSES IN THAILAND

More than 500 senior evangelical leaders gathering in Pattaya, Thailand from October 25-30, 2008, have wrapped up their General Assembly, after five days of intensive discussion to plan the way forward in world evangelization, reports Michael Ireland, chief correspondent, ASSIST News Service.

On Wednesday, delegates agreed upon six major resolutions setting out an evangelical response to religious liberty, HIV and Aids, poverty, peacemaking, creation care and the global financial crisis, according to a media release obtained by ANS.

“The worldwide financial turmoil is, at its root, evidence of what happens when too many are captivated by greed and put their faith in, and entrust their security and future aspirations to, a system animated by the maximization of wealth. Many legitimately feel betrayed,” read the resolution on the global financial crisis.

“While we hope that the painful consequences of the turmoil will be mitigated, our concern is that its impact will continue to permeate into more regions and economies of the world. We recognize that this economic crisis will have the most painful impact on the poor, who are the most vulnerable.

“We reaffirm our faith in God and acknowledge that He is in control. We repent when we have placed our trust in money, institutions and persons, rather than God. Our security is not found in the things of this world.”

The resolution called on Christians to care for the poor during the crisis and live simply and generously.

“The Body of Christ, His Church, is living with HIV,” stated the resolution on HIV, a major focus area for the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA). “With brokenness we admit that as Evangelical Christians we have allowed stigmatization and discrimination to characterize our relationships with people living with HIV. We repent of these sinful attitudes and commit to ensuring that they are changed.”

In the preamble to the resolution on the Millennium Development Goals, evangelical leaders stated, “In coping with the financial crisis of 2008, governments and international institutions have shown how quickly and effectively they can move to mobilize massive resources in the face of serious threats to our global, common economic well being.

“Yet one child dying of preventable causes every three seconds and 2.7 billion people barely sustained on an income of less than two dollars per day has yet to evoke a similar level of urgent response.

“We believe this to be an affront to God, a shame to governments and civil society, and a massive challenge to the witness and mission of the followers of Christ.”

World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) international director Dr Geoff Tunnicliffe told delegates that they faced additional challenges to fulfilling the Great Commission from radical secularism, postmodernism, declining Christianity at the same time as growing interest in spirituality, trafficking and migration.

He insisted, however, that great challenges also brought great opportunities for evangelical engagement.

“We see this tremendous growth and this seismic shift in the church around the world and we are excited to what God is doing as he raises up women and men around the world in so many different places,” he said.

“As we think about the global reality of the world in which we live, [there are] immense challenges but also immense opportunities.”

Dr Tunnicliffe also said that the WEA would remain committed to integral mission “or holistic transformation, a proclamation and demonstration of the Gospel”.

“It is not simply that evangelism and social involvement are done alongside of each other but rather in integral mission proclamation has social consequences. We call people to love and repentance in all areas of life,” he said.

He reaffirmed the WEA’s commitment to world evangelization.

“If anyone tells you that we’ve gone soft on world evangelization you can tell them that we are totally committed to world evangelization because it is only Jesus Christ that changes people’s lives,” he said.

A highlight of the week was an address from the Rev Joel Edwards, who was commissioned during the assembly as the new director of Christian anti-poverty movement Micah Challenge.

In his address, the former head of the UK Evangelical Alliance told delegates that the power to rehabilitate the word ‘evangelical’ lay in their hands.

“Whatever people think of evangelical Christians, if people are going to think differently about evangelicals the only people who can actually change their minds are evangelicals,” he said.

“We must reinvent, rehabilitate and re-inhabit what evangelical means as good news. We must present Christ credibly to our culture and we should seek to be active citizens working for long-term spiritual and social change.

“Words can change their meaning. If 420 million evangelicals in over 130 nations across the world really wanted it to happen, evangelical could mean good news.”

In another key address, the head of the Evangelical Fellowship of India, the Rev Richard Howell said that an identity anchored in Christ and a universal God was an evangelical non-negotiable in an age of pluralism.

“We have but one agenda: obedience to the Triune God revealed in Jesus Christ,” said Dr Howell. “We are evangelical Christians for the sake of God.”

“Our identity has to be related back to God. Unless we do that, we will never know who we are. Our identity comes from God and God alone.”

“The Christian belief in the oneness of God implies God’s universality, and the universality implies transcendence with respect to any given culture.

“Christians can never be first of all Asians, Africans, Europeans, Americans, Australians and then Christians.”

The assembly also heard from the Chair of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (LCWE), Douglas Birdsall.

The WEA is collaborating with the LCWE in its major Cape Town 2010 meeting, which will bring together 4,000 evangelicals to assess the next steps in realizing the movement’s vision of ‘the whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world’.

“You might ask is there a need for an international congress that deals with world evangelization,” Birdsall told the assembly. “I would say that throughout history, such a gathering is only necessary when the future of the life of the church is threatened by some type of challenge – either internal challenge or external pressure.”

The assembly also saw the launch of the WEA Leadership Institute, a brand new initiative to see the leaders of the WEA’s 128 national alliances trained to serve and proclaim Christ within some challenging contexts.

“Leading an Evangelical Alliance is not easy,” commented Dr Tunnicliffe. “That’s why we want to provide them with the relevant training and resources.”

Also commissioned during the week was the new leader of the WEA’s Religious Liberty Commission, Sri Lankan national Godfrey Yogarajah.

Dr Tunnicliffe rounded up the assembly with a call to evangelicals to keep in step with God’s work on earth.

“It is my prayer that we in our community will be women and men who live with divine purpose within our lives, that we will be good leaders envisioned by God to make a difference in the world,” he said.

“The most important thing that you can do with your [life] is to integrate it into the never ending story of God’s kingdom. God’s already at work in the world. He’s doing things. We just need to align with what He is doing.”

World Evangelical Alliance is made up of 128 national evangelical alliances located in 7 regions and 104 associate member organizations. The vision of WEA is to extend the Kingdom of God by making disciples of all nations and by Christ-centered transformation within society. WEA exists to foster Christian unity, to provide an identity, voice and platform for the 420 million evangelical Christians worldwide.

Report from the Christian Telegraph