Adding to the list of relief agencies

Reflecting on the earthquake/tsunami tragedies and the cascading death statistics, I remembered reading Michael Taylor's book, Poverty and Christianity - Reflections at the Interface between Faith and Experience. As I wrote on the Evangelism and the Friends Testimonies forum: "Difficult reading, but important for understanding intelligent doubts about Christianity, and for doing the spiritual and intellectual work to prepare for faithful public witnessing in a terribly hurting world. Baptist minister and social theologian Michael Taylor writes, from a background of twelve years of leading the British agency Christian Aid: 'My experience of famine in the Horn of Africa led me to re-examine my belief in a loving and powerful God. My experience of disastrous floods in Bangladesh led to doubts about the impact of Christianity and its claim to be redemptive and creative.' If your faith remains intact after carefully reading this book, you will be a stronger evangelist." After these last few days, I need to re-read this book.

I see that NPR's Web site has a list of agencies working in the devastated areas. I would like to add Mennonite Central Committee to the list. The details of their hopes and plans are so modest and unheroic and human-scale that they have some kind of deep appeal to me.