JUSTICE AND GLOBALIZATION
Nurturing Justice 15 (2007)
This comment on International Relations is the fourth on our list of "big issues". If you wish to refresh your mind on the list just click on "PREVIOUS" at the top of the page. As we work through a provisional "think big" list of "public justice" issues, which will still be with us over the next decade, our aim is to challenge ourselves to think again about the way we fulfil our calling as Christian citizens. So what does Christian citizenship mean for our lives on the global stage? How should we understand globalization? What of global warming and climate change? And what do we do to act responsibly in the face of the still widening gap between rich and poor, not only between the "North" and the "South" but also within our own nation and region particularly when we, in GDP terms, are said to be among the world's wealthy?
The first thing that should be said concerns our need to know what is going on in the world and what is driving the major forces which shape international society. That means research; historical study, sociological analysis, economic evaluation and political diagnosis. It will also mean developing a sense of solidarity with all those people, wherever they are, who are trying to find an alternative path to materialism and the policies of those who still cling to the doom-filled scenario that without growth in consumption and production we will all surely perish. But to find and express this solidarity requires patient research: reading and listening to what others are doing. Here's two items that have come my way in the last two days:
Have you heard of Raj Patel? He is the author of Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System. This is what he says about his book: "It's a story of the global food system, about why there are one billion overweight people and 800 million going hungry, and about the millions of people who are fighting back". That simple by-line for the book says a lot.
Or try this News Hour item titled: Companies Race for Oil and Gas Reserves in Arctic. Norway's state-owned oil company, Statoil, recently opened Europe's first large-scale liquefied natural gas plant in Hammerfest, Norway. As global warming melts Arctic ice and makes reserves more accessible, companies are racing to the Arctic to stake their claims.
It seems that life around the globe is so incredibly developed that we could spend all our time listening to news reports, (even composing and editing Nurturing Justice), trying to catch up with what is going on, on our doorstep, in our nation, in our region and beyond. We will also find it hard to avoid cynicism. So, how do we start to consider these issues? Web articles are sometimes so full of links to other pages and other links, that we find ourselves overwhelmed. Is there any way to get a grip on what we see before our eyes? Is wisdom and insight in these matters a thing of the past?
Wisdom is supreme, therefore get wisdom. Though it cost you all you have, get understanding (Proverbs 4:6-7).
Can we obtain understanding? With ourselves caught up in the whirlwinds of globalization is it still possible to gain wisdom and insight? Are there grounds for hope?
For starters, let me recommend a study written by a banker and an economist. Leo Andringa and Bob Goudzwaard with Mark Vander Vennen have written: Globalization and Christian Hope: Economy in the Service of Life. Read it and think about its argument. Consider the examples they give of local initiatives - Focolare, Oikicredit. How do you think about money? What place does money have in our life? What has changed in the world of finance?
Can I also draw your attention to the "Letter to the Churches of the North" on pages 23-25. It was drafted by the participants of a Symposium of South Asian Christian churches on the Consequences of Economic Globalization (November 12-15, 1999, Bangkok, Thailand). Note the date. Remember the Asian financial crisis? This is a letter that is 8 years old. But its message is still fresh. Have you read it before? Have the churches of Australia heard this call?
Next to the pain and suffering in the South, there are the threats in the North. We heard about poverty, coming back in even your richest societies; we received reports about environmental destruction also in your midst, and about alienation, loneliness and the abuse of women and children. And all that, while most of your churches are losing members. And we asked ourselves: is most of that not also related to being rich and desiring to become richer than most of you already are? Is there not in the western view of human beings and society a delusion, which always looks to the future and wants to improve it, even when it implies an increase of suffering in your own societies and in the South? Have you not forgotten the richness which is related to sufficiency? If, according to Ephesians 1, God is preparing in human history to bring everyone and everything under the lordship of Jesus Christ, his shepherd-king – God’s own globalization! – shouldn’t caring (for nature) and sharing with each other be the main characteristic of our lifestyle, instead of giving fully in to the secular trend of a growing consumerism?
The letter is worth reading in its entirety. Why not set aside a whole day - or even half a day - (Is that feasible? I hear you ask - I answer: Is it feasible not to set aside time to really confront the issues?) - discuss this letter with a couple of friends and think about your response. If you are Christian the letter must have a particular prophetic poignancy. It reminds us that we have lost the cutting edge of our faith. We have become slack with lives that simply accommodate the ruling neo-liberal ideology with "There is No Alternative" as we take another Tim-Tam. Any challenges that might be mounted are usually short-circuited by a determination to maintain levels of material comfort. But how did Christianity in the Western world fall into its grovelling posture to the god of Mammon? Could it be that we have accommodated to global finance as to an imperial power and thus put ourselves radically at odds with the religion we profess?
We are convinced that the time has come for a return to the fundamental and undiluted teachings of the Gospel. It is time for all of us to make a choice: God or mammon. We know that some churches in the North are very active in this regard and we feel strong solidarity with their actions. But the present situation invites us to stand up all together. We call for concrete acts of solidarity to alleviate the massive suffering of our nations in the North and in the South.
We call for urgent action on your part to address your governments and the institutions that are designing and implementing the present globalization project.
We call for a process of study of the current economic system and its consequences in our midst, in the light of our common faith in Jesus Christ, the Saviour, who showed us caring and sharing as members of God’s family.
Economic injustice is a violation of the basic tenets of our
common faith. We call on you to join us in confessing that the economy is a
matter of faith.
This is a clear and forthright Christian call to repentance. Think back over the events of the past week and the APEC gathering. Was the contribution of Australia, this professedly Christian nation, inspired in part by this 1999 call by the churches of the South to forsake consumerism? Forgive me for saying so but reading between the lines it seems we, and the other nations present, were more concerned with reassuring the money-markets that they will indeed work to maintain consumerism as a sine qua non of our political and national life.
If our Government, or Opposition, were to take seriously the poverty in the world in the knowledge that "economics is a matter of faith" would this somehow indicate that the church had somehow taken over politics? Of course it wouldn't. But we, as a nation, don't seem to be concerned about walking the path of stewardship and justice among the nations of the earth. Rather, we seem more concerned with winding ourselves up to maintain the same old discredited nature-destroying, poverty creating course. Are the APEC nations really committed to working together to overcoming the increasing poverty, the land degradation, the environmental catastrophe, and other burgeoning problems in the Asia Pacific region, let alone the dispossession of indigenous peoples and the export of natural resources to deepen the poverty cycle of indigenous peoples everywhere? Why haven't we, and other rich countries, decided to heed the mounting evidence and adopt a more restrained pattern of production and consumption by a joint and unequivocal commitment to refocus our economies towards care for nature and finding mechanisms that share the resources of the earth with true equity? Are we really serious about the massive re-direction of resources that will be needed to ensure basic necessities for increasing numbers of those who need them but don't have them? Are we now filled with urgency to live moderately, to avoid foolish consumption?
By simply asking ourselves these questions, we begin to sense the unreality of global politics of the APEC type - the unreality of an idealistic globalization that assumes that more and more production and consumption is the way to achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest number. It is the corollary of the crazy view that building more and more sophisticated defence weaponry is the sure way to guaranteed security. APEC has come and gone but is it still the Dow Jones, FTSE100 and Nasdaq indices which we rely upon to tell us how to interpret our immediate and long-term future?
Clearly, Christianity needs to rediscover itself, its own faith. In recent times there has been a modest revival of Biblical scholarship that has begun to explore the possibility that the early church was indeed a contra-imperial movement. The writings of Bishop N T Wright, and many others, are worth reading in this regard. Wright also offers a cogent explanation for the way in which English-speaking Christians have accommodated their reading of the New Testament to the privatisation of their religion and to latter imperial and colonial world-views. Many of his contributions are available at the N T Wright Page. In one recent lecture on the book of Romans he made the following remark:
What Paul is talking about must have been heard by his Roman readers and must have been intended by Paul as counter-imperial theology. Paul ... fell heir to the long Jewish tradition in which the Creator God was the King of the world and relativised all pagan Kingdoms. God could use them and indeed God wanted there to be authority in the world but God was over against them particularly when they vaunted themselves over against Him. And when Paul talks about the Gospel of God in the Son of God who is the Lord of the world, who is the Saviour of the world ... through whom is revealed justice and freedom and peace - these are all part of the Roman Imperial rhetoric of his day. The Caesar cult was the fastest growing religion in Paul's world in his day - that is the world of the eastern Mediterranean - and Paul must have known that what he was saying is "God is King and Caesar isn't!" "Jesus is Lord and Caesar isn't!" "It is God's justice, not Caesar's, that will win in the end".
If that is indeed what Paul was teaching, then this Christian revival in biblical studies issues a challenge to rethink our attitude to the New Testament. But not only that. Wright and others indicate that the Gospel always confronts its political context, and so we are encouraged to read the bible in a fresh way in order to derive decisive guidance for making a political contribution in our world today. After all the confession "Jesus is Lord" carries with it the belief that God knows that we are citizens in various political communities at various levels. And God is not at all surprised by globalization. In fact, as the letter from the churches indicates, the Gospel is the heraldic announcement of God's specific globalization project (See Ephesians 1:10). We are called by these churches to discover citizenship as one of the ways in which the Gospel has called us to serve our neighbours with love, to make economic confession with our lives. The question then is: how then is it possible for us not to develop a better understanding of what is required from us in the life of nations? Contribute we must. We cannot avoid it. And so we face some serious questions about concrete steps we should be taking to walk the path of justice, of loving mercy with a genuine intimacy with all our neighbours. We keep close to the Good Shepherd, because we believe He has come close to us for our rescue, for the survival of those who are weak and cannot support themselves.
Nurturing Justice
August 2007
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