What the crisis shows is a “spectacular failure” of the current global economic system and the need for a radical reconstruction of it, believes Mohau Pheko, coordinator of the African Gender and Trade Network.

Pheko, who serves as an adviser to governments and trade organisations, presented her ideas to a conference held over the last week in Johannesburg exploring what churches could do to address inequalities in the global economic system.

The event, organised by the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, convened theologians, advocates, economists and senior church officials from 23 countries, and focused on economic justice and concern for the earth’s ecology.

On the second day of the gathering, Pheko said that a new economic model was urgent, especially in Africa, where people do not have money saved up to weather the effects of the crisis. In South Africa protests are already taking place over problems with service delivery and food.

“The streets already know the issues; we have to listen to the streets,” Pheko said.

“We have to smash the current paradigm so that it does not have roots and legs to rise again,” she added.

In addition to presentations, the conference also discussed the Accra Confession – a statement issued in 2004 by WARC in which it declared that the current policy of unlimited growth among industrialised countries and their drive for profit had plundered the earth and severely damaged the environment.

With the Accra Confession in mind, the conference debated how churches could interpret and respond to the impact of the current global economic model.

Information shared among delegates form the basis of reports at the upcoming world assembly of the Reformed church movement in June 2010 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The World Alliance of Reformed Churches represents 75 million Reformed Christians in 214 churches in 107 countries. Its member churches are Congregational, Presbyterian, Reformed, among other traditions.