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Finding an answer to poverty

A new TV ad challenges stereotypes around how to help the poor. Tarryn Pegna unpacks the impact of one of the most effective ways to eradicate poverty.

Tarryn Pegna

Tarryn Pegna is a writer for aid and development charity, Tearfund. She helps to communicate where, why and how the organisation works. 

A woman carries a plastic bucket on her head and held by raised arms and hands.

We’ve all seen them – haunting images of starving children, flies on their faces, begging for help – powerless to change the cruel lot they’ve landed in life… There’s more to the story, though. More to the people in the pictures. 

Extreme poverty is a very real problem. The living conditions faced by many around the world are, indeed, truly devastating, and in hoping to urge a response and to help, we can fall into a clichéd portrayal (and understanding) of need that strips people of a sense of dignity and agency.  

But, the answer to poverty can be uplifting, sustainable, restorative and empowering: the answer can be the Church. 

You may have seen Tearfund’s new TV ad. If not, you can watch it now. With some humour it challenges some of the stereotypes about how those in the developed world go about trying to eradicate poverty elsewhere.  

The ad shows a number of excellent things that a community in Burundi has achieved which have transformed the lives of the people living there. It features them talking about the training that made it possible – but what is this training? And what does it have to do with Tearfund or the church? 

Well, here’s how it works: 

It all starts with Bible studies. These are designed to help people identify the skills and resources that already exist within their community, and to see new ways they can use them to respond to their needs. 

Local church members (or leaders) receive training to facilitate these Bible studies and share the message within their community. 

Each Bible study ends with a call to action. This may be something small to start with – like a change in a harmful way of thinking – but can quickly grow in scale to things like improving or building schools, health centres and roads. 

Tearfund and our local partner organisations help to provide the practical knowledge and skills training needed to make it possible to carry out these plans. 

In this way, churches and communities can find themselves working together to lift themselves out of poverty for good and to realise their God-given potential and thrive. 

I played my part in the construction, even if I was not strong, I worked with others in digging the road and moving rocks.

The ad features Cecile, a young married mum with one daughter. She tells us her experience: 

‘We understood the power of coming together as a church and working together for our own development. A changed church changes the community for the better. Our congregation was able to build a health centre, a road and bring up water. 

‘I am happy to be part of this church as I come to know God and see his hand. I now have a church family, we love and support one another. I played my part in the construction, even if I was not strong, I worked with others in digging the road and moving rocks, and we also contributed some money. 

‘It is like an awakening. People are more engaged, we have been inspired to change and to change our community and we are now active.  

‘Apart from building the health centre, more people are working hard to change their situation. Some have started small businesses, I’ve also been selling vegetables and I hope that once I get enough capital, I’ll be able to start a small business at the market and earn more money to help [me and my husband] improve our lives and build a house.’ 

Every day, thousands of people around the world suffer and die because of poverty. Christians don’t believe that this is God’s plan. At Tearfund we believe that the church is part of his plan to respond – and that we all have a part to play in ending extreme poverty. 

Is the church even still relevant though? 

Here in the UK, it might seem strange to be so focused on faith and the church. The most recent census showed that, as a nation, we have a steadily declining affiliation with Christianity, and the news last year made much of the fact that only around ten per cent of the population regularly attend a church service. It might be worth wondering whether the church has lost some of its ability to influence change.

Almost three million UK adults sought help from churches or faith organisations because of the cost-of-living crisis. 

In England, Anglican bishops are still members of the House of Lords, so they have some voice, but for the rest of us…why the faith? Where does God fit into things and is the church even practical or relevant in society these days? 

It actually works 

In spite of the declining number of worshippers, in 2022 almost 3 million UK adults sought help from churches or faith organisations because of the cost-of-living crisis.  

During the worst of Covid, churches across the country provided a hub for making sure the most vulnerable in their communities were fed and provided for. Many church buildings became food preparation and distribution centres and local church members became temporary delivery drivers. 

The local church around the world 

In the same way, around the world, the church is often first on scene in times of need.  

From its unique position right within a community, the local church knows intimately the needs of the people it serves.  

And in many places where Tearfund works, the church has a significant and trusted influence, giving it a voice for change and for justice in society. 

The church, as a vehicle for transformation, has the capability to work powerfully and effectively in a way that lasts. 

No matter where it is, the Christ-following church has always been about the transformation of lives and about community: called by Jesus to first love God (allowing him to transform Christians’ own lives), and then to love our neighbours as ourselves (bringing transformation to our communities).  

More than could, the church should be the answer to poverty.  

The church is a sustainable, efficient, empowering and highly cost-effective way of helping whole communities lift themselves out of poverty. 

The church (in all its various forms and denominations) is the largest non-governmental, non-profit organisation on the planet. Tearfund itself was born out of the church, and recently an independent study that we commissioned confirmed in numbers what our own experience, stretching back over 50 years, had already shown us: the church is a sustainable, efficient, empowering and highly cost-effective way of helping whole communities lift themselves out of poverty.  

By equipping the local church within a community facing poverty to find solutions to their needs, the people being supported can become agents in their own rescue.  

Like many charities, there are questions about the impact they have. Just how effective is working through the church really? 

In fact, researchers discovered that a social value of £28 was released for every pound invested in community transformation work through the church.  

Practically, that means that when compared to people in communities that had not received training and equipping through the church, those that do are: 

  • 27% more satisfied with their lives in general 
  • 113% more likely to work with others on shared projects 
  • 51% more likely to have maintained or increased their income in the last year 
  • 46% more likely to speak up and raise issues with decision-makers 
  • 62% more likely to have invested in assets, such as property or livestock in the last year 
  • and 26% more likely to feel confident they could cope with unexpected events in the future. 

Working through the local church has the power to bring positive, whole-life transformation which spreads throughout a community – so that even those who aren’t directly involved in the activities still experience some benefits. 

You can read more about the study and its findings here. 

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Oppenheimer’s Tower of Babel

Overwhelmed by the cinematic experience of Oppenheimer, Daniel Kim reflects on director Christopher Nolan's powerful modern mythmaking.

Daniel Kim

Daniel is an advertising strategist turned vicar-in-training.

An actor looks on as a film director stands beside him staring with his hands raised.
The modern Prometheus and the mythmaker. Cillian Murphy playing Robert Oppenheimer, stands next to director Christopher Nolan.
Universal Pictures.

The opening weekend for Oppenheimer has come and gone and the response has been almost unanimously glowing, even gushing.

And truly, the film is a technical masterpiece, demonstrating director Christopher Nolan is working at the height of his power.

The pitch-perfect performances from Cillian Murphy and the impressively star-studded cast, the transcendent yet intimate cinematography, Ludwig Görranson’s hauntingly triumphant score, and the remarkable pacing despite its three-hour runtime make for perfectly dialled-in cinema.

Some may struggle with the dialogue-heavy time-skipping narrative flow of the film, made particularly difficult by the inexplicable voice-muddying sound mix that seems to plague many of Nolan’s recent films. Despite the flaws, however, Oppenheimer is certainly one of the key cinematic moments of 2023. I don’t think I can add anything profoundly new to the gallons of electronic ink already spilt reviewing this film. 

Instead, what I can speak to is the most bizarre experience I had as the film came to a close. As the final shot of the biopic reached its climax and cut to black, I found myself suddenly and involuntarily dissolving into tears. I left the film feeling horrified yet inspired, sickened yet soaring, revelling in the triumph of an underdog technological victory as well as being confronted with the banal depravity of mankind. So much brilliance, yet so much brokenness. It invoked such a maximalist emotional response within me, that the only appropriate response my body could come up with was to weep. So… I am by no means an objective reviewer.  

Nolan’s depiction of the first nuclear test... is more like a religious epiphany rather than a run-of-the-mill movie explosion. 

To call Oppenheimer a ‘biopic’ would be like calling the book of Genesis a biography about Abraham. Nolan’s Oppenheimer takes more of the form of a Myth. ‘Myth’ not in the sense of fiction, but more in the sense that J.R.R. Tolkien or Carl Jung meant it - as a universal narrative that perfectly captures the spirit of the age. And in 2023, apocalyptic anxiety is very much in the air.  

Both Nolan and the biography that the film is adapted from - American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer - don’t shy away from the mythical and religious texture inherent to the story of the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb. 

Oppenheimer is Prometheus - who “stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity”. In fact, the film opens with this quote in white text over a slow-motion nuclear detonation, intertwining Oppenheimer’s life with that of the Greek Titan, Prometheus, who, having given technological fire to humankind, is chained to a tree by Zeus to have his guts eaten out by vultures for the rest of time.  

Oppenheimer is also the Hindu God, Krishna, who originally said the now infamous line, “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” from the Bhagavad Gita. The phrase he utters at the first test of his invention.

He is the man who decided to name the first test after Triune Christian God - The Trinity Test. The irony is thick. The great creator God of Christianity is represented by the great destroyer of worlds - the atomic bomb. In fact, Nolan’s depiction of the first nuclear test is more like a religious epiphany rather than a run-of-the-mill movie explosion. Some viewers might be disappointed by the impressionistic and almost surreal way the Trinity test is depicted at the climax of the film. Yet, I found the moment almost mystical. The blinding light of atomic devastation is the blinding light of divine glory.  

1940s New Mexico becomes the arena for the 21st Century’s struggle against itself and its fraught relationship with technology and morality.

The film doesn’t allow you to extricate the history from the myth, the science from the mystical, or the past from the present. The film explores the particular historical knots that you would expect from a film about Oppenheimer. The equal pride and guilt of the scientists who worked on the bomb post-Hiroshima; the banality of the American military industrial complex; the post-war Soviet nuclear threat; and the enigma of the man himself. There are some very powerful scenes that explore these themes with sickening and gut-wrenching effect. Yet, Nolan is fully aware that his film is in dialogue with the contemporary existential discussions about the dangers of AI, the fear of climate and political apocalypse, and the moral implications of technological progress at all costs.  

The star-studded cast is not only hugely impressive but also has the strange effect of continually dragging the historical context of Oppenheimer right into 2023. Nolan has used his considerable clout to draw together a cast of some of the most recognisable and celebrated icons of the 21st century from Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr, and Emily Blunt to Gary Oldman, Rami Malek, and Matt Damon. Only Christopher Nolan could cast a leading man like Gary Oldman and give him 10 lines to say in a three-hour film.   

This creates a movie where the most iconic faces of our time come together to play their part in this myth. 1940s New Mexico becomes the arena for the 21st Century’s struggle against itself and its fraught relationship with technology and morality.  

In this way, Oppenheimer is more than just a cautionary tale from history. It becomes an icon of our time, in the religious sense. A manifestation of a universal story set in a particular context.   

What is three-hundred years of so-called progress, technology, and political theory culminating to? We have no idea. 

Many of us will be familiar with Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. A work of comparative mythology which describes the archetypical hero found in the world of myths - The Hero’s Journey. Campbell calls this the Monomyth - the one story which every story is about. A hero ventures forth from his common world, encounters adversity and his inner demons, wins a decisive victory against the forces of death, and returns from this adventure forever changed and with the power to bestow wisdom to his community. This is Luke Skywalker, Aladdin, and Harry Potter but it’s not Oppenheimer.  

Christopher Nolan has seemed to have stumbled upon a different monomyth with his biopic. The story of a human community earnestly seeking technological knowledge of the heavenly powers, desiring to harness it, and ultimately unleashing it upon the earth only to discover its civilisation-destroying power. It’s the monomyth of the Tower of Babel. Technology reaching to the heavens resulting in the destruction of the city. But instead of a tower of brick and mortar, Oppenheimer’s tower is a pillar of fire and nuclear ash. Things might seem like grand progress in one moment, yet in the next, it’s annihilation.  

Nolan’s decision to make Oppenheimer a biopic has the uneasy effect of intermingling the myths of The Hero’s Journey and the Tower of Babel. Oppenheimer is the protagonist who undergoes all the key beats of the Hero’s Journey. Yet it is precisely this aspirational adventure that culminates in The Tower of Babel. It’s as if the film is saying that those who have most embodied The Hero’s Journey in our Modern Age are those who have also destroyed the world. Oppenheimer is but one example in a retinue of such technological geniuses. 

There is a haunting line in the film where one of Oppenheimer’s colleagues refuses to work with him on the bomb. He says:

“I don’t want the culmination of three-hundred years of physics to be a weapon of mass destruction.”  

This is still the anxiety that typifies our technological and political moment today. The only difference is, we don’t know where we’re culminating to. Where is three-hundred years of so-called progress, technology, and political theory culminating to? We have no idea.  

Maybe this is what struck such a deep primal chord with me as the credits rolled.  

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