ABSTRACT
The popularity of Mother Teresa of Calcutta in the 1980s and 1990s was an acknowledgement of the centrality of charity in the Christian moral programme. In the circumstances of the modern world, four kinds of operation are necessary for the practice of charity in the crusade against deprivation, namely: amelioration, enablement, protest, and structural change. They are clearly illustrated in the long campaign against slavery. In 1995 small changes in the rules of the Charity Commission required registered charities to make known their accounts to the Commission which put the information into the public domain. Christians have never been advised to close their eyes, fold their hands and expect the Holy Spirit to relieve poverty. The famous rationalist, Lecky, declared that the abolition of slavery was one of the few achievements of which the human race could rightly be proud. The eradication of slavery was one of the most daunting tasks which high-minded reformers could have undertaken.
