The religious leaders are urging Prime Minister Tony Blair to press for radical commitments on behalf of the poor when he chairs the G8 meeting, which will bring together his counterparts from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.

"A world divided by poverty cannot be healed without justice," wrote the faith leaders from the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Free churches; the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth; and the Council of Mosques and Imams.

Churches and development agencies like Christian Aid and its Roman Catholic counterpart CAFOD are among the most active supporters of the Make Poverty History campaign in Britain. Internationally, the Global Campaign Against Poverty has also won wide support. Anywhere between 100 000 and one million supporters of the anti-poverty campaign are expected to rally in Edinburgh on 2 July as the leaders of the G8 nations prepare for their Gleneagles summit.

"The churches are glad to be part of something so universally compelling," Richard Holloway, the former Anglican Bishop of Edinburgh, told Ecumenical News International. "Their ethical vision has been mainlined."

Make Poverty History is built around what Holloway, one of Scotland's best known public figures, described as a "virtuous triangle" of trade justice, debt relief and improved aid for developing countries.

The finance ministers of the G8 earlier in June approved a debt relief package worth up to US$55 billion affecting 27 countries mainly in Africa. CAFOD praised the move as "a good and significant first step".

Church activities in support of the campaign include a group of Catholic children and teenagers in Ashley, central England, pledging to drink only water for three days to highlight the lack of clean water in much of the world.

The Church of Scotland put a Make Poverty History armband on the statue of John Knox, the leading figure in the Scottish Reformation, as nearby the church's general assembly debated world poverty.

Methodists are planning special Saturday services across Britain on 2 July to mark the G8 summit.

Make Poverty History argues that debt relief and improved aid are not enough and that global poverty will not be solved without redefining world trade practices.

Christian Aid, in a briefing paper issued ahead of the summit, said free trade, enforced on poor countries as the price of loans, aid and debt relief, had cost sub-Saharan Africa $272 billion over 20 years - enough to wipe out their debts and have enough left over to vaccinate and educate every child.

Farmers and factory workers made jobless are not "an unfortunate but small minority", said Christian Aid. "Whole countries would be much richer today if they had not been forced to open their markets."

In a report "The Damage Done: Aid, Death and Dogma", published in May Christian Aid, it was said 4000 farmers in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh had killed themselves after markets were opened up under international pressure. In Jamaica, women were being driven to prostitution and drug smuggling after trade liberalisation wrecked their employment opportunities.

Some church opinion is, however, on the free trade side of the argument rather than the fair trade.

Mark Hart, an Anglican priest, writing in the Church of England Newspaper, said: "Free trade is the engine of wealth creation which has lifted millions out of poverty."

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in a sermon in April to mark Christian Aid's 60th anniversary, acknowledged that there is "a serious economic argument" for free trade, although he stressed that professional economists as well as "starry eyed religious activists" had expressed their scepticism about free trade as a mantra.

"Universal trade liberalisation may offer fresh markets and promise overall increases in wealth. It also forces choices on vulnerable countries, whose effects may be - in the short to medium term - very costly indeed to a whole generation of workers, to the environment, to political stability," Williams said.

The archbishop's view was praised by the London-based Globalization Institute, which describes itself as a "free trade think tank" that believes globalization is a force for good. The president, Alex Singleton, said: "I'm delighted that the Church of England is starting to recognise that the debate is more complex than first imagined."

Blair has pledged to make Africa a priority at the G8 meeting, and on the other side of a heavy security screen around Gleneagles, campaigners will seek to hold him to his word.

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