ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the genesis and implementation of the Micah Challenge campaign, the first Evangelical transnational advocacy campaign for justice for the poor. The campaign, which ran from 2004 to 2015, sought to mobilise Evangelicals round the world to advocate to their national governments to do what they could to end global poverty, and in particular to support the Millennium Development Goals. This proved quite a challenge as Evangelicals are known for their focus on an inner-worldly religion and a reticence to engage in political issues. The chapter explores the way in which the campaign sought to overcome this reticence by developing a theology of justice and advocacy which would persuade Evangelicals that political advocacy for the poor could be a type of religious action. It shows how the tension between the personal and the social, the inner-worldly and the outer-worldly, shaped the way that Micah Challenge communicated about development advocacy and ultimately led to a paradox which it could not overcome. To make justice and advocacy palatable to global Evangelicals it had to develop a theology which placed a great emphasis on personal morality and spirituality, and yet in doing so it lost focus on the global political and economic issues that it wished to raise.
