Christian homelessness charity Housing Justice has joined with Scottish Churches Housing Action, Church Action on Poverty and the Church Urban Fund to launch an investigation into the experience of poverty, homelessness and bad housing across Britain.

Leaders from the World Council of Churches and its Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and independent member churches are lobbying the United Nations and member states as part of their concerted advocacy efforts for Africa and other causes.

Archbishop Celestino Maggiore, the Vatican's permanent observer to the United Nations, has said, in a UN debate on development in New York,that global sustainability should be a priority for the nations of the world.

On the southern slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro, a small bank owned by 330,000 members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania's Northern District is improving the lives of poor people, while still managing to make a profit.

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".

The question of when the pursuit of economic well being turns into greed is one of the key issues to be discussed at a 5-9 November inter-Christian consultation in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, looking at poverty, wealth and ecology.

The leader of the All Africa Conference of Churches, the Rev Mvume Dandala, has called on churches to renew their energy and resources to fight poverty, while expressing fears that the poor are being forgotten as African Christianity grows.