Voice for the voiceless

In his blog Adam Taylor says,
"In the all too familiar script of presidential elections and debates, these words (middle class) have essentially replaced the words of Jesus. Candidates campaign on platforms based on a distorted remix of Mathew 25, replacing the all important middle class with Christ’s concern for the “least of these among you.” I listened carefully to the entire presidential debate last night, hoping that one of the candidates would have the foresight and courage to mention the poor in the context of our economic crisis and our foreign policy priorities. The first two debates have rightfully focused on the duress and hardship associated with the meltdown of Wall Street and the crumbling of our economy. Yet somehow candidates manage to systematically ignore the 36 million Americans living in poverty and the nearly 2 billion people around the world living perilously on less than $2 a day. Too often politicians follow the lead of our society in devaluing and dismissing the needs of the poor, exacerbating their marginalization."
The reality is that the candidates are following the lead of the media who in returns feeds off of public opinion. This is where the church must step up. We are called by Jesus to speak on behalf of the poor. We are to defend the poor. My pick for a candidate is one who will be a voice for the voiceless. I guess I will just have to keep looking for that candidate!

Next Christendom

Excerpted from "The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity" By Philip Jenkins. "If there is one thing we can reliably predict about the 21st century, it is that an increasing share of the world’s people is going to identify with one of two religions, either Christianity or Islam, and the two have a long and disastrous record of conflict and mutual incomprehension. For the sake of both religion and politics, and perhaps of simple planetary survival, it is vitally necessary for Christian and Jewish Northerners to gain a better understanding of Islam. But odd as it may sound perhaps the more pressing need is to appreciate that other religious giant, the strangely unfamiliar world of the new Christianity. Southern Christianity, the Third Church, is not just a transplanted version of the familiar religion of the older Christian states: the New Christendom is no mirror image of the Old. It is a truly new and developing entity. Just how different from its predecessor remains to be seen."
According to Jenkins, “If we want to visualize a ‘typical’ contemporary Christian, we should think of a woman living in a village in Nigeria or in a Brazilian favela” (page 2).
What do these facts mean for us - "christians" in the Western world?