Social contribution movement by the American Christian Evangelicals: addressing poverty

Abstract

Politics and religion are closely related. Professor Kazunobu Horiuchi, Reitaku University, Japan, is interested in the relationship between evangelicals and politics in the US and believes there are misconceptions about conservative evangelicals. He is knowledgeable about the involvement and influence of conservative evangelicals in politics and is also interested in the links between religion and poverty. Indeed, in recent years, Horiuchi has been focusing on his research on evangelical efforts to address poverty issues, including conservative evangelicals’ reluctance to contribute to societal issues such as eradicating poverty and the active role of the Evangelical Left in such societal issues. In one study, he is working to empirically verify how conservative evangelical and liberal Evangelical Left churches actually tackle social or international poverty issues in church-side social contribution activities centred on poverty issues. To do this, he is exploring the history of the formation of the Religious Left and the Evangelical Left, the contents of the movement and an examination of the possible impact of these movements on the future of US society and politics. Horiuchi now has a grant to conduct research on the relationship between the US evangelical movement and race issues and this will be an area of focus for the next three years.