In support of the end comment in last posting by Dougthebear:

“The alleged ‘humanist morality’ never happened – to this day, 80% of all unpaid and unself-interested voluntary and charity work is faith-driven.” – Julie Burchill, article ‘For the love of Christ’ in The Guardian, 14 August 2008

Glorfindel and Doug
I may have agreed with you some years ago about faith driven charity work although much of non-Christian charity work went on without the same amount of fanfare.

Also Christian groups were able to access large amounts of money via parishioners and governments to create charities as part of their evangelical missions. I would not credit some of the charity work by missions or Churches as being humanistically motivated given the ill-treatment in many religious run children's homes in previous years.

In recent years there has been an enormous growth in non-religious based charities started by highly altruistic people who sought that all funds raised went directly to the cause rather than a conversion agenda.

Smith Family, Care Australia, bushfire volunteers, Landcare, various conservation and animal welfare groups, various Aids organisations, World Youth, just to name a few.

I note that in later years even organisations like Lifeline and Red Cross who had Christian origins, no longer push a religious agenda. It does not form the basis of their work. The Red Cross has even adopted the Red Crescent emblem to be able to work in non-Christian areas who may see the symbol of the cross as overtly Christian and disrespectful to other cultures and belief systems. I have volunteered with the Red Cross a number of times and one would not know it's founder was a Christian nor is any religious agenda ever raised.

Over time, in a modern world I believe charity work will move away from an overtly relgious agenda and seek only to assist those in need.

As far as the topic goes, advertise by all means just don't be hypocritical should the atheists, or other religious groups wish to mount a similar large scale commercial activity.

Spot on Pelican.

Glorfindel "and unself-interested " does not necessarily apply to a percentage of faith charity work. Much is done with the ulterior motive of promoting the faith, of following what the individual believers consider to be a command of their god. That does not make the work bad but it's not really any more selfless than many other things people do to promote or further something they believe in passionately.

R0bert

Thankyou Pelican for chastising Runner for the very nasty, unchristian vitriole against my post (and me) yesterday.

I hadn't planned on responding to such drivel, but then I read the posts from Pelican, RObert and CJMorgan.

I am certain that if there are actual Gods out there, they wouldn't want to be represented by such nasty people!

Sue.

Thankyou Pelican for chastising Runner for the very nasty, unchristian vitriole against my post (and me) yesterday.

I hadn't planned on responding to such drivel, but then I read the more pleasant posts from Pelican, RObert and CJMorgan.

I am certain that if there are actual Gods out there, they wouldn't want to be represented by such nasty people as Runner!

Sue.

Of course churches do charity work as part of their evangelism, in the same way that it was the churches who pushed so hard to end slavery in the British Empire: That is the Christian faith taught that all people are equal before God, that is Christ died for all will accept that, and this leads to a strong belief in the basic human dignity of the individual, not just the group or clan.

If feeding the hungry (as opposed to the indecent worshipping of wealth that attempts to pass for Christianity in those television and pseudo-charismatic 'churches') in order to reach people is wrong then perhaps the best way of countering the churches 'subterfuge' would be for a lot of people to get together and form secular soup kitchens.

It is interesting that the faith based charities do not reject people on the basis of their own beliefs.

Is the churches evangelical activities so threatening to people that they have to work against it? Well the news is, when you tell a church to stop doing something they are more likely to want to do it, because your criticism only shows how much the work is needed.

Regarding the Red Cross: the 'cross' has little to do with Christianity, it is the Swiss flag colour reversed in recognition of the nationality of the founder of that organisation.