David Beckmann to Speak at Wheaton College

David Beckmann is preaching about hunger and poverty at Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL, tomorrow, February 24. David will also keynote Wheaton’s annual HNGR Symposium entitled When Did I See You Hungry?  Advocacy, Hunger and Faithful Citizenship. This year’s Wheaton HNGR symposium explores the role of citizens to influence government—given that escalating food prices and increasing instability continues to deepen global hunger. It is a great honor for Bread for the World’s advocacy work to be featured at this important gathering.

Using his research expertise, Bread’s annual Hunger Report editor, Todd Post, will join the symposium panelists with presentations entitled “Facing the Facts: The Power of Research to Combat Poverty and Hunger,” and “The Earth and God’s Bounty, Emerging Themes in Global Food Production and Distribution.”  

Wheaton College is a celebrated academic institution within the U.S. evangelical world. What Wheaton offers to students by way of classes, chapel experiences, or educational symposiums such as this has ripple effects on the wider U.S. evangelical landscape. Many of tomorrow’s evangelical leaders in  churches, and international relief and development organizations come from Wheaton College.

In 2010, Bread for the World partnered with the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College to host an historic consultation focusing on how evangelical Christians approach government and God’s mission in the world. Government, Global Poverty, and God’s Mission in the World: An Evangelical Declaration came out of the rich dialogue amongst of the evangelical leaders representing academia, church, international relief and development organizations, media and advocacy institutions participating in the consultation.

The 2010 consultation at Wheaton inspired another exciting collaboration with two more prominent evangelical institutions.  A partnership between Asbury Seminary and Eastern University and Bread for the World formed in January 2012 to provide an online curriculum resource for evangelical seminaries and graduate coursework.  The curriculum will offer four modules that connect Christian discipleship and government engagement.  The resource will examine how evangelicals have thought about the role of government in the area of U.S. foreign assistance. The curriculum will be biblically grounded, using scripture to provide guidelines to help evangelicals growing concern to address global poverty worldwide.  The online curriculum resource will be open to the public and available June 2012.

Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy manages evangelical church relations at Bread for the World.