Take Action

Reform Movements

Supporting Christian-led reform movements striving for human rights and democracy in countries around the world

Two hundred years ago only 6% of countries in the world were broadly democratic, the rest were dictatorships.  Today 72% of the world’s nations are democratic.  There have been similar dramatic improvements in human rights and reduced corruption.  These amazing changes have overwhelmingly been driven by peaceful, bottom-up reform movements of ordinary people demanding change within their nations.  And Christians have so often played a central role within these movements.

Working with others, Christians successfully campaigned for the abolition of slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; for political and prison reform and improved worker rights in nineteenth century Britain; for the first welfare states in nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe.  They stood with indigenous communities against colonial exploitation across Africa, Asia and Latin America, and protected Jewish communities in Nazi occupied Europe in the mid twentieth century.  

Later, Christians were at the heart of the US civil rights movement and successfully advocated against the regimes of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, and Augusto Pinochet in Chile.  In the 1980s and 1990s they were integral in the people movements in Poland, Russia and Eastern Europe which brought down Communism.  They were also central to the movement that ended apartheid in South Africa.  Today, Christians continue to be at the core of movements speaking out for democracy, peace, and human rights in countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and beyond.

The most effective thing the church, the world and we as individual Christians can do to see greater justice, improved human rights and more democracy around the world is to support these movements.  Arise is working with Christians involved in such movements all around the globe.  Get involved and help support reform movements by taking action today.

Take the latest action to support Reform Movements

Sign me up to receive monthly actions

Join The Movement!  Sign up here