Should world religions band together to solve global poverty?
February 23, 2008 7:11 AM Subscribe
Could the world's major religions solve world poverty tomorrow?
I'm far from religious. I actually have little knowledge of what actually goes on inside a religion, or for that matter a church. I was raised by non-religion parents and wasn't exposed to religion until late in my teen years.
However, I see a lot of prime real estate in my city that houses churches, or church buildings. A quick internet search estimates that my city of 75,000 has 65 churches. At least some of the individual properties are worth millions. In fact, a recent upgrade to one of the mega baptist churches cost several million alone. Let's say that the average church and it's land is worth 200,000. That means my city has $13M worth of church property. If I quickly extrapolate to the US and take into account the low cost of real estate in my city (and my numbers may be totally off), there looks to be $60-100B worth of church property in the US.
That doesn't take into account a lot of things I know. And, it's all hypothetical. These properties may be mortgaged, the churches may be in debt, churches may not sell as quickly or as well as regular commercial or residential property. There are a lot of factors that are missing.
However, it also doesn't take into account the number of churches in the world, the organizational wealth of those religions, the salaries and income of the staff of these religions.
So Peter Singer, in his article to NYT from about a year ago, estimates that the cost of solving global poverty is well within this range. At least, that's how I compute it.
So, how possible would something like this be? And, if it is possible, why don't the world religions get together to solve it. I believe all of them care about the poor? Am I insane? Totally ignorant?
I'm far from religious. I actually have little knowledge of what actually goes on inside a religion, or for that matter a church. I was raised by non-religion parents and wasn't exposed to religion until late in my teen years.
However, I see a lot of prime real estate in my city that houses churches, or church buildings. A quick internet search estimates that my city of 75,000 has 65 churches. At least some of the individual properties are worth millions. In fact, a recent upgrade to one of the mega baptist churches cost several million alone. Let's say that the average church and it's land is worth 200,000. That means my city has $13M worth of church property. If I quickly extrapolate to the US and take into account the low cost of real estate in my city (and my numbers may be totally off), there looks to be $60-100B worth of church property in the US.
That doesn't take into account a lot of things I know. And, it's all hypothetical. These properties may be mortgaged, the churches may be in debt, churches may not sell as quickly or as well as regular commercial or residential property. There are a lot of factors that are missing.
However, it also doesn't take into account the number of churches in the world, the organizational wealth of those religions, the salaries and income of the staff of these religions.
So Peter Singer, in his article to NYT from about a year ago, estimates that the cost of solving global poverty is well within this range. At least, that's how I compute it.
So, how possible would something like this be? And, if it is possible, why don't the world religions get together to solve it. I believe all of them care about the poor? Am I insane? Totally ignorant?
This post was deleted for the following reason: This is kind of an interesting what if, but that's exactly what it is -- really broad, really hypothetical, and pretty much unanswerable. Not a great fit for Askme. -- cortex
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by 45moore45 at 7:14 AM on February 23, 2008