Is poverty a matter of perspective? Significance of Amartya Sen for the church’s response to poverty: A public practical theological reflection

Abstract

Poverty continues to present an enormous challenge to the well-being of humanity. Different frameworks on poverty tend to identify different persons as poor, impacting on efforts to fight poverty. The church as a role player in the public domain needs a framework that can assist it in its task of working for salvation and liberation in the face of overwhelming poverty. Acombined framework, from Amartya Sen’s entitlement approach and capability approach, is amalgamated and suggested as an integrated framework that could act as a lens or a viewpoint from which the church could venture to conceptualise, quantify and respond to instances of poverty. Keywords: Poverty; Church; Well-being; Amartya Sen; Entitlement Approach; Capability Approach