Few words are bandied about with such casual abandon as “liberal”, says Giles Fraser. It can stand for the liberality and generosity vital to any outlook, but it can also mean an exulting of individualism and a damaging denial of inherited wisdom.

You often get more preoccupation with finance in church meetings and more serious attention to God in political meetings, says Simon Barrow. At least in terms of being sanguine about their respective claims. Sometimes.

There is a "gradual retreat of neoliberalism" in the region, according to participants in a Latin America and Caribbean ecumenical Christian consultation to examine the links between poverty, wealth and ecology.

The Anglican archbishops of York and Canterbury have attacked short term action, greed, manipulation and the modern worship of money, in commenting on recent events that have worsened the global credit crunch.

In a provocative short article in the International Herald Tribune newspaper, Phillip Blond argues that the dominant neo-liberal model of global economy is in crisis, and that both the political right and the political left have failed to understand the nature of the challenge this embodies.

Leaders of the world's biggest grouping of Reformed churches have compared the effects of neoliberal economic globalisation to the transatlantic slave trade, and said that Christians need to combat this modern form of "enslavement".

As world financial leaders gather in Washington DC for the annual joint strategy meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Christian Aid is calling for an urgent rethink of the World Bank’s approach to tackling energy poverty.