A Quantifiable Life Goal

Many years ago, I met my friends in Platzspitz-Park in Zurich. We had set ourselves the ambitious task of writing down our life goals. One of mine read: lift 100,000 people out of poverty. The specific number wasn’t thought through at all! But yes, the suffering in this world genuinely moved me. And I was conscious of my enormous privileges. Perhaps that’s where the drive to think big enough came from. Even though the number wasn’t carefully chosen, it triggered something positive. It forced me to think backwards: what steps would actually be needed to achieve such a goal? Many conventional ideas made me sceptical. They sounded too much like feel-good gestures, salving one’s conscience, or even scapegoating.

EA and Christianity—Do They Fit Together?

And so I began to search. And I found something: The Effective Altruism (EA) movement convinced me through its determined, careful and open search for ways to serve our fellow human beings in a manner that they truly profit from.

I’m someone who enjoys going to church. There have been ups and downs—but the Christian faith has remained at the centre of my life.

The EA bubble, however, is very secular and therefore often doesn’t reach Christian circles particularly well. This is actually a shame, because in churches the “A” of EA is taken very seriously—simply under the label of “loving your neighbour”. If churches also took the “E” of EA more seriously, something significant could emerge. With the right tools, far better results could be achieved from good intentions.

Bringing EA Ideas to New Circles

That’s why several other Christians and I developed the idea of introducing the “toolkit” of the EA movement to a Christian audience. This led to Christians for Impact, an organisation that has set itself precisely this goal. After several years of work, our book “All the Lives You Can Change” has been published this spring.

A Book for Christian EAs and Others

In this book, we demonstrate how well EA ideas truly fit within a Christian perspective. For instance, the famous Parable of the Good Samaritan doesn’t actually call us to love our neighbours, but it is rather about who our neighbours are. The key point of the parable is that we can become neighbours even to those who are far from us. Or consider this: Jesus emphasises not only that we should love, but that we should do so with our whole mind. In the book, however, we present not just theory but also portraits of people who have pursued this vision with both passion and reason. And we show how embedding the EA mindset within a Christian outlook—that is, within an awareness of unconditional acceptance—can help to keep up the drive and prevent burnout.

This makes the book well-suited not only for Christian EAs, but also addresses Christians who want to become EAs or those interested in our ideas. And perhaps it’s simply an interesting way to start a conversation about EA with Christian friends or family.