To mark 80 years of Christian Aid, Nick Spencer and Bob Kikuyu unpack a Christian theology of hope, and offers it to a world that needs it. 05/12/2025
Feeling hopeful?
Hope feels in short supply right now. We won’t list the reasons. You know them already.
But of course, it is precisely when it is in shortest supply that it is most needed. Such is the law of supply and demand.
Over recent years, Theos has been working partnership with Christian Aid, reflecting theologically on a number of significant contemporary issues, and the fruits of our collaboration will be published over the next few months.
We are starting with an essay on hope.
Why hope? Or rather, why hope – other than the obvious reason outlined above? Well, here are a few others.
We need to think about hope because we often get hope wrong, confusing it with optimism. They are not the same thing.
We need to think about hope because we often base it on weak empirical foundations. Life globally has indeed improved over the last 80 years, as Steven Pinker often reminds us, but as investors are repeatedly told, ‘Past performance is no guarantee of future results’.
We need to think about hope because we sometimes base it on weak theological foundations. ‘Let go and let God’ might be good advice to a friend (though I have my doubts personally) but it is no answer to the climate crisis or civil war.
More positively, there are reasons – deep, theological reasons – for hope. The report unpacks them, picking up on the reliability of God and God’s creation, the reality of human agency, the power of human creativity, and the significance of human trust – or ‘faith’.
Perhaps most poignantly, there is this reason. Christian Aid was founded 80 years ago. In spite of the defeat of the Axis powers that year, it is hard to imagine a less hopeful, less auspicious start than this, amidst the rubble of a war that had murdered tens of millions of people, displaced many more, and revealed a vision of human barbarity that shocked even the most jaded and cynical. And yet, a better, fairer world was constructed. There were reasons, even then, to be hopeful.
Subsequent essays from our partnership will come next year and cover power, prophecy and investment. But for now there is hope. We trust you will find something of value, something to celebrate in this essay, at this time.
You can read the essay in partnership with Christian Aid here.
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