Private benevolence will not relieve world poverty, ease third-world debt, promote full employment, stop the mangling of the environment, mitigate obscene excesses of wealth, or negate all the damaging alienation that exists between groupings of people such as “Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female (Gal. 3:28).

Poverty is a complex form of disempowerment. It will not be solved by chance or by unleashing of greed, but only by the intelligence, restructuring of tsedagah and by recognizing the whole human family as a sharing “household.” That may seem hopelessly idealistic until you see that nothing else will bring peace to this earth.

from A Moral Creed for All Christians