19 February 2011 – A conference in Croydon, England, sponsored by the International Association for Religious Freedom and the World Congress of Faiths, and inspired by Datuk Leslie Davidson, who received the 2008 Meredeka Award for his service to the people of Malaysia.
Davidson may have done as much to feed the world as any other human being alive today. Where Jesus provided the loaves and the fishes, Leslie has helped provide cooking oil for billions, while conserving much of the Malaysian rainforest (Datuk is an honour similar to knighthood).
BBC presenter Rev. Peter Owen-Jones opened telling us that Christianity as it is practiced is ruthlessly earnest in being anthropocentric. Christian scripture and ritual is human-centred. Yet we are called to build not just a Habitat for Humanity, but a Habitat for all life: “If we have a loving ecological base for God, this changes the entire way we live.”
