When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself by Steve Corbett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A solid re-definition of poverty with a number of practical ways to apply its teachings. The majority of this book was paradigm-shifting for me in terms of how to view and address poverty. However, my main qualm with this book is that I disagree with its criticism of the doctrine of the spirituality of the Church, and its embrace of the neo-Kuyperian transformational approach. While the spirituality of the Church has sometimes been abused in order to remain aloof from the issues of poverty, the proper solution isn’t to reject the doctrine as a whole. Instead, we ought to correct the misguided use of the spirituality of the Church.