THERE are more than 15 million people living in poverty in the UK. New findings from the three-year research project Life on the Breadline show that the Church needs to use its cultural capital to foster a culture in which poverty is seen as morally unacceptable.

Furthermore, it demonstrates that, while the Church has been on the front line in caring for people living in poverty during the “age of austerity”, it has been less effective at speaking truth to power and “transforming structural injustice” — even though these commitments lie at the heart of the Five Marks of Mission.