Alexander D. Baumgarten, director of government relations for the Episcopal Church, has written an essay for the web pages of Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies, which calls our attention back to the fact that the Millennium Development Goals will not be achieved primarily through acts of personal charity, but through vigorous advocacy.
One of the heroes of the Anglican Communion, Father Gideon Byamugisha, an HIV-positive priest in the Church of Uganda, asks us to imagine a world in 25 years that did not summon the moral and political will to eradicate extreme poverty and deadly disease. He speaks of those who will be “survivors” twenty-five years from now.
“The greatest and most obvious gaps that survivors will wonder about, and be angry about” he says, “are the missed opportunities, the lack of political will and the lack of total commitment by those of us in leadership positions to use all that we knew and all that we had to fight [poverty and disease.] They will surely ask ‘What went wrong?’ ‘What prevented us from transforming the knowledge and the resources we had, into focused will and targeted action?’ ‘Who were the world leaders at that time?’”
Read it all.