I have always questioned why the faiths have not teamed up to tackle issue like poverty and world hunger. With all of their resources put together, the faiths could give for free the knowledge needed by the poor to get ahead in life and even the financial means if necessary. So why don't they?
Differences: One of the primary reasons faiths choose not to cooperate is because of the differences of belief that they have. They look at each other with skepticism and sometimes derision (like how Mormons are typically viewed by the rest of the Christian community). But I question this. Is this not being so petty as to not accept aid from your fellow man? It is silly to not accept each others help. The Mormons have a fantastic disaster relief network with them typically getting to the communities in trouble long before the government or even other charities arrive. Catholics have a world wide network which allows them to gather information quickly so as to know what is needed where. Muslims who use sharia law integrate charity into all of there transactions (it’s obligatory), and thus gather large sums of money quickly. However, because of differences in faith and belief, many of these faiths choose not to help each other out. As such, when trouble occurs each choose to continue to do things on there own in there own way. This to me is counter to what my Christian teaching tells me as a Catholic. We do not know who are Gods chosen people and associating with people of a different faith will not make us sinners. So I feel that getting the community of faiths together, even if it is just in your own town and making an emergency supply center/shelter that doubles as a food pantry could be a nice start to something bigger. Who knows, maybe these faiths can even team up to do other things like creating genealogy trees like some Mormon communities do, and maybe revive some of the more stagnant churches by copying some of the Baptist singing and rejoicing in the sermons. If the faiths just cooperate they may yet grow and renew themselves.
Government: The other reason that inhibits faiths from going further is do to the government getting involved with things like welfare. Welfare used to be done by the churches and other similar community groups, but government decided to step in during the Great Depression when it was felt that these churches and groups could not handle the sheer amount of poverty that occurred. It can be argued that the government perpetuated the depression though by slaughtering livestock and burning crops which raised the price of food (see book Grapes of Wrath), the same food that would have been much cheaper and affordable for the poor to buy if not for there interference. Add in price and wage controls and government made it impossible to feed the poor on the cheap. Now there is a way of thinking that the Charities cannot handle the poor if government was to step out of the picture for even a little bit (which I believe is false). This mindset has even infiltrated the churches and as such they have no incentive to go beyond the current services they are offering. Charity used to be local for a reason, to ensure that those who need help get help. But with government, anyone can become a freeloader.
Conclusion: Each of the faiths has much to offer by getting together. They can learn from each other, share resources and information and even set up interfaith networks to handle things like health care, education, the obvious welfare aid and maybe even sanitation if a community needs it. Together the faiths can do it; they can show that government is not needed to survive in the modern world. So start coming together, and start saving people the way God intended.
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