Discipling Nations: The Power of Truth to Transform Cultures.

Priest, Robert J.

By Darrow L. Miller, with Stan Guthrie. Seattle, Wash.: YWAM Publishing, 1998. Pp. .308. Paperback $14.95.

Darrow L. Miller, vice president of staff development at Food for the Hungry International, argues that poverty and hunger are "the logical result of the way people look at themselves and the world. [ldots] Physical poverty is rooted in a culture of poverty, a set of ideas held corporately that produce certain behaviors, which in turn yield poverty" (p.63). Poverty, Miller argues, is most likely to be present in settings where the biblical worldview is absent.

In the Christian worldview God is good and rational. Creation is orderly. Work is sacred. Progress is possible. People are agents. Wealth is created. Stewardship, "a metaphor for development" (p.227), is a core value. This worldview is foundational to physical well-being and prosperity.

While written in an attractive and inspirational style, and while I appreciate the Weberian point that ideas matter, I have substantive concerns. The author blames poverty on the "poverty of mind" (p.63) of those who are poor. Animistic peoples prize ignorance (pp. 92, 113), which explains African poverty (p. 113). In fact, however, many animistic tribal peoples have profound knowledge of their physical world and may do well in terms of nutrition and diet--until a larger world impinges on them, expropriates their land, and turns them into landless peasants at the bottom of a new socioeconomic order. Their knowledge related to prudential matters concerning food and housing was not problematic until others changed their world. Many of the poorest people on earth represent such subordinated minority groups. In such cases, blaming their "poverty of mind" is a way of blaming the victim.

The author argues that the area with the least Christian presence (the so-called 10/40 Window) is also the area with the most poverty (p. 61). He fails to note, however, that this region also includes some of the richest nations on earth. Whatever the variable separating these rich and poor nations, it is not that of a Christian worldview.

An adequate biblical response to poverty requires a more balanced understanding of complex and variable factors contributing to poverty than anything presented in this book, which I cannot recommend.

Robert J. Priest is Associate Professor of Mission and Anthropology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois. The son of Wycliffe missionaries, he grew up with the Siriono of Bolivia and subsequently conducted anthropological research with another Amazonian minority group, the Aguaruna of northern Peru.