Under the title, "And now... the north?", the Dutch Council of Churches organized an ecumenical "day for the public" in the old city of Utrecht on March 25 2000. The council asked the cabinet minister for development cooperation, Eveline Herfkens, to respond to the Jubilee 2000 campaign for the cancellation of unpayable debt and the Warc challenge to view worldwide economic injustice and environmental degradation as a matter of faith and faith-renewed action.

Many people came from all over the country, and the minister's response was very positive. She expressed her continued support for the Jubilee 2000 campaign, and asked its organizers to increase the pressure on the other G7 countries to keep their promises.

Explicit attention was also given during the day to the "Message to churches in the north", a warm but also sharp letter written by the participants in the Bangkok symposium on the effects of economic globalization on the countries of the south.

The symposium, which was organized by Warc together with the World Council of Churches in November 1999, lay at the feet of the rich the suffering of so many people in the south and spoke of the deep lack of justice in the present world economy. Why, participants asked, should it be always the poor countries that are confronted with the need for "structural adjustment", but never the rich ?

Has the time not come, the letter asks, for the countries and the churches of the north to reflect critically upon their own luxury and their ever growing standard of living, which so often take away from the poor the resources which they badly need and threaten the environment? Does the Bible not warn openly about the risks and dangers of following Mammon, and does it not refer also to a better way: to accept the "richness" of sufficiency, of real contentment ?

The content of this letter struck most people deeply and led various visitors to ask what they could do. For it cannot be denied that the "new economy" is highly beneficial for the already rich and the newly rich, but to a large extent excludes the poor and their basic needs.

The message will also be brought to the level of the synod of the Uniting Protestant Churches in the Netherlands. And why should Christians in other rich countries not follow this example?

It may be, therefore, that this day is the first step in the growth of a new awareness in the rich churches and countries of the north that confessing Christ and his kingdom has no less serious consequences for public life today than in the past.

The lifestyle of rich countries is now at stake. This message came through clearly, and we may hope that it will bring the churches in the Netherlands to a new stand on these issues. All Christians today have to remember the pointed demand of Charles Birch in the fifth assembly of the World Council of Churches (Nairobi 1975) - a quarter of a century ago - that the rich should live simply so that others may simply live.

Bob Goudzwaard, Reformed Churches in the Netherlands