Poverty Abolitionists: Faith, Activism, and Hope for Difficult Times - Hardcover

by David Beckmann (Author), Rick Steves (Foreword by)

The United States and the world have made dramatic progress against poverty in recent decades, but the second Trump administration has thrown progress into reverse. David Beckmann calls us to push back against MAGA and restore progress against poverty.

David is an economist, pastor, and activist. He was awarded the World Food Prize for leadership that led to substantial reductions in hunger. Drawing on stories from his own life and the struggles of poor communities around the world, Beckmann distills five essential insights and ten strategies to get progress against poverty going again.

These include legislative advocacy, volunteering and financial contributions to election campaigns, action in defense of democracy, and needed reforms in American spirituality and religion. He invites people of faith, seekers, and skeptics alike to deepen their solidarity with those in need and with a threatened planet.

He highlights data that prove poverty is solvable, confronts the problems that our country and the world now face, and calls for a new poverty abolition movement-similar in scale and determination to the movement that ended slavery.

At the heart of this book is hope: hope grounded in evidence, history, and the countless efforts of communities and advocates who continue to push for justice. With a foreword by travel writer Rick Steves, Poverty Abolitionists offers both a practical roadmap and a stirring moral challenge. It is a clarion call to action for activists, policy makers, and ordinary citizens who care about the future of humanity and seek to build a fairer, freer, and more just world.

Author Biography

David Beckmann is an economist, pastor, and activist who has spent his life working to end poverty. A former World Bank economist, he served for 29 years as president of Bread for the World, where his leadership helped secure U.S. and global policy changes that reduced hunger worldwide. Awarded the World Food Prize, Beckmann now leads the Circle of Protection, a coalition of Christian leaders advocating for programs that serve low-income people, and teaches on religion, politics, and poverty reduction.