(for information, this was first on my blog, but thought it might stimulate discussion)

The MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY campaign is a bizarre juxtaposition of the church and the radical.

To illusrate this, two stories from yesterday.

Apparently, it is said that there were some last minute jitters from the organisers of the activities in Edinburgh. Nobody was quite sure how many people would turn up. Despite support from campaign groups, trade unions, radicals, anarchists and other assorted groups, in themselves these groups were only sending 50-100,000 people. This is not an insignificant number, but hardly what was hoped.

In the event, hundreds of thousands of church people dwarfed representatives of all the other groups put together.

Now to the G8 concerts. One memory for me is the number of times we heard the singers using the f-word.

How have we got to the world where such polar opposites share the same stage?

For the record, I think we need each other. A radicalised church represents an unstoppable moral community. A church which does more than sing hymns and hold prayer meetings represents a danger to any status quo.

I've been involved on-and-off in this campaigning since 1996. We've marched, we've written endless letters and postcards, we've challenged MPs. And we have refused to be stonewalled.

My part in that is minute. The other day I heard about church-based world poverty campaigns stretching back to the 1950s.

But it has taken the musician, the rock star, the radical, the media mogul to hit the general public consciousness. We may not look like natural comrades, but by golly, when they organise something the world jumps.

So, if - and this is a big if - we have finally done enough to change the world, if we have convinced the most powerful men in the world to change their minds, it will be the combined efforts of the Megastar and Everyman and his Granny. The ultimate combination of guts and brawn, mouth and muscle, professional and amateur.

The church has shown the radical the power and the stamina of the ordinary christian.

The radicals have given us a voice. And if nothing else, we have learned the phrase which we have been looking for all these years.

Poverty really is f-ing awful.