The head of the Church of England is the second most influential Christian alive today. [1] The current Archbishop, Justin Welby, is speaking at the EA-adjacent Christians for Impact conference with Rory Stewart about faith and poverty.
What should we ask Archbishop Justin in the Q&A?
Feel free to submit anonymous thoughts here.
Source: ChatGPT
The church of England challenges its members to "adopt as an initial target the giving of 5% of their after tax income to and through the church, and a similar amount to other work that helps to build God’s kingdom".
Should the church also encourage people to make these donations to impactful charities in order to use their talent well, given that there are great differences between the impact of different charities?
The story of Jesus being anointed by a woman with a costly jar of perfume leads us to the question of how we should divide our resources between religious gestures (“praise”, if you like) and helping the poor. Is this story still relevant in the current age, and if so how should we think about this question today?
I'm not the archbishop of Canterbury ;). But I can't resist sharing my 2 cents here. After this happened Jesus both praised the woman who broke the jar then quoted from this passage in Deuteronomy "the poor you will always have with you"
"Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.'
I'm also not the archbishop of Canterbury ;) , but in case you are curious I once wrote a blog post about how this story connects with effective altruism.
I'd be curious how much dialogue and agreement there is between him and heads of other Christian denominations about the general importance of impact and the specific decisions made under that rubric.