Reformed Church Head Urges Lifestyle Changes to Bring Justice

Reformed Christians should expose the "false doctrines" that limit God's sovereignty to a narrowly defined spiritual realm, says Setri Nyomi, General Secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC).

"If we had followed these false doctrines in the 16th century or in the 1930s or in the decades of apartheid in South Africa, our witness would have been tarnished," Nyomi said in an address earlier this month in Belfast to the Christian Lifestyle Conference of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

The WARC general secretary applauded the church for organising a workshop on commitment to justice and its implications for the lifestyles of Reformed Christians. He urged participants to resist consumerism through ethical investing, the use of fairly traded products and by advocating for economic and ecological justice.

"We cannot yield to the rather mediocre view in which the powers that manage God's household today convince us that individual needs and greed are more important than the needs of the community and that privatisation and the motif of unbridled profit are paramount even if they oppress large numbers of people.

"Without a critical analysis, we could be engaged in idolatry in which particular economic systems become gods - the only solution. This is one reason WARC is engaged with some of its sister organisations in the building of a covenanting for justice movement."

Nyomi challenged Reformed Christians today to remember that God is sovereign over all and ensure that they did not stand by as millions of people around the globe continue to suffer and die because of the way the world's economic system operates.