"Evangelicals are a Force for Good", says Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times.

What is the largest US-based international relief organisation? Save the Children? Care? Neither, says Nicholas Kristof; it's actually World Vision, a Seattle-based Christian group. The organisation has 40,000 staff in nearly 100 countries - more people than all the other big US relief groups combined. While the American view of evangelicals is still shaped by "preening television blowhards and hypocrites", the reality is that a growing number of conservative Christians are "acknowledging that to be 'pro-life' must mean more than opposing abortion". They are getting out there and helping the needy, doing "superb work" on issues such as Aids and malaria. And, contrary to the myth, it's not all about proselytising. Today, such groups as World Vision "ban the use of aid to lure anyone into a religious conversion". Secular liberals, who have a "snooty" disdain for all faith-based groups, haven't recognised their contribution. Indeed, some are pushing to end the long-standing practice of channeling US aid through such groups. That would be a "catastrophe", since it would destroy many of the "indispensable networks" the US relies on to distribute emergency aid. America mustn't make the world's most vulnerable people the casualties of its own "cultural war".



As quoted in The Week, issue 757, 13 March 2010. http://www.theweek.co.uk/