• Introduction - link »
• Clarity - link »
• Social Critique - link »
• Economic Globalization has non-Market effects - link »
• Theological Critique - link »
• Ethic, Activity and Attitude - link »
• Alternatives: Ecumenical Ethical Resources - link »
• Conclusion - link »
  
  
• Download a copy of this article (MS Word .doc 77kb) here »
• World Council of Churches globalization links here »

While I am trained in Christian Social Ethics I also consider myself to be a contextual theologian. Normally, this means paying special attention to the nuances of my Canadian context and the special questions my people are asking about God’s action in the world. Here, I find myself in a different, but equally self-conscious context. Here I am the outsider, trying to provide resources for others while also being a learner, trying to listen for the questions particular to this time and place.

For help in this task I have turned to a Biblical scholar from Tonga. His name is John Havea and he has written on the subject of Pacific island hermeneutics. How does the reality of living among the Pacific Islands affect how one interprets Scripture, Tradition and the world around us.

Havea lifts up for us the question of boundaries and how we interpret them.  According to him, the idea of a boundary which serves as a solid barrier that prevents crossing is a continental notion and not appropriate to islanders:

“The understanding of a boundary as something that decisively limits, as a solid barrier that categorically prevents crossing, I argue, is a continental notion that is inapt for the islandic experience…. Though this may just be an imaginary line, the boundary is understood as a limit that separates…. One must bear in mind that a wall, for instance, shares in both the inside and the outside. It is not that which separates but that which links! In this regard, boundaries define the outside and the inside, and boundaries are able to define because they are able to separate”.[2]

Havea argues that island people have a different approach to boundaries. In the first instance they think not of walls but of the ocean and the ocean does not separate people so much as link them:

“Since we live off the ocean, the islandic boundary is essential to our existence: we live off our boundary by means of the food that we draw from the ocean, and we live off our boundary by inhabiting the islands. We cannot stay away from our islandic boundary because not only do we find nourishment from the ocean but also it is what links one island with another. The islandic understanding of boundary then is not only something that limits and separates, but also something that provides and links. We are a people of/f the boundary…”[3]

Havea makes a bold claim. I don`t think it holds in all circumstances. I have seen pacific islands where walls separated the mens` section from the womens` section for instance. In addition, I think it is just as hard (and foolhardy) to make grand generalizations about European or continental culture as it is to make them about Pacific or island culture. In spite of that, I find his re-imagination of the role of the ocean from boundary to bridge, to be an intriguing one. This is especially so when we consider Economic Globalization which is said to erode, if not obliterate, all boundaries which come before it. 

His hermeneutical approach has at least three effects here. First of all it invites those of us not from a Pacific island context to re-imagine the idea of island/ocean/island. Western culture, western property rights and western mythology re-inforce images of  islands as containers of solitary strength. This is the island pictured by Dafoe in “Robinson Crusoe”. In some ways the analogy of the Kingdom of God as an Island of Hope, by using the singular “Island” instead of Islands, falls into the trap of re-inforcing this myth. However, a closer reading of the text prepared by the Pacific Churches shows that their concept of “the land” includes not only all the Islands and the people but also the sea. They are actually describing an intricate network of traditional communal values based on culturally mediated relationships. I infer their agreement with the proposition that no ‘man’ is an island and so therefore we should really be talking about “Islands of Hope” if not an Ocean of Hope.

Second of all, Havea’s analysis invites us to rethink our approach to boundaries in general. Where are we erecting imaginary boundaries in our analysis? Are these boundaries permeable? Can these boundaries nourish us and carry us to other islands of understanding and insight? As you will see later in this paper, I am pursuing this approach with a reading of a Biblical text that has previously been beyond the boundaries of the liturgical and devotional lives of most Christians.

Finally, by drawing our attention to a boundary which is unstable, a boundary which is constantly moving, a boundary which creates as well as erodes, and a boundary with the capacity to both nourish and destroy, Havea has brought us into the territory of contradiction. This is a fruitful territory. It is appropriate for the contradictory forces of both globalization and economic globalization. However, it can be viewed as uncommon territory for Christian Ethics because it requires for response an Ethics of Contradiction.

An Ethics of Contradiction is an Ethics which requires us to say both yes and no in response to contradictory forces.[4] This is uncommon because it is more typical to think of Christian Ethics as the articulation of a Christian principle which produces ethical behaviour by simple application. However, sometimes we find ourselves in situations which are not so straightforward, situations which require an acknowledgement that powerful and contradictory forces are at work and they are not easily resolved. Some of Jesus` parables can be described in this way (ie. `Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and render unto God that which is God’s). 

An Ethics of Contradiction can also arise in response to a profound conflict of worldviews. Moral vision and understanding are rooted in particular approaches to the world. Moral conflict can occur not only at the level of conflicting principles but also at the level of conflicting (or contradicting) worlds. When moral worlds collide, it is not just a matter of choice between principles but a choice among possible worlds to inhabit. Such a choice requires either a conversion or a contradictory response – hence, an Ethics of Contradiction.[5]

As a contextual theologian I normally begin with a consideration of the questions which arise out of the context of the struggles of people of faith. These struggles represent the immediate commitments which arise out of faith response. These questions are guided by a social analysis and a theological analysis. The analysis generates specific action plans which become in their turn, the realized faith commitments of people and the church. However, in this place I accept the challenge to construct my talk in terms of the categories of ‘clarity, critique and alternatives’.

Happily I can leave to others an analysis of the detail of globalization. However, the method still requires of me to be ‘clear’ about what I understand economic globalization to mean. A formal definition would look like this:

“The process of creating integrated global markets for goods, services and capital …and … the social effects of this process”.

An informal definition would look like this:

“I would define globalization as the freedom of my group of companies to invest where it wants, when it wants, to produce what it wants, to buy and sell where it wants, and support the fewest restrictions possible coming from labour laws and social conventions.”[6]

Much of the literature about economic globalization is organized around the question whether globalization is a reality which is inescapable or a project one can decline. My own view is that globalization is both. The first definition refers to a change in global structures. If the structures of the world change, one’s only choice is to join or withdraw from the world completely. Since withdrawing from the world is not a realistic choice for the majority, it is possible to say globalization is inescapable.

The second definition refers to globalization as a project. In this case it is a political project. The agents of change are global corporations and they are the biggest winners. The agenda is political because these corporations want to remove those public policies like labour laws, environmental regulations and social conventions which reduce corporate profits.

It is always important to remember that a globalized market economy is a human creation. We have created it and we can destroy it, reshape it or re-negotiate it. This is why so much emphasis is placed on the idea globalization is inevitable. If we are convinced it cannot be changed, we will not resist it. So, the issue of choice is also political. As in any political process, the larger question is what criteria will be used to guide this choice? Only by understanding the process can we empower ourselves to exercise our power to shape the outcome.

Globalization & the Market System

One of the other key aspects for understanding globalization is an understanding of markets. Under globalization it is markets that are integrated not societies or cultures. When markets are integrated they form a market system and when they form a system then the relationship between markets and society is reversed. In a traditional society, or in a society characterized by long periods of economic stability, economic relationships are ‘embedded’ within social relationships. That is, society determines some of the conditions under which these economic activities take place. Culture, religion, and politics become instruments of economic regulation in such societies. Societies negotiate the terms of trade.

However, when markets are linked to form a market system then the power balance is reversed and the market system begins to determine the conditions under which culture, religion and politics will operate. Under globalization, markets for goods, services and capital have been linked to form a new global market system. Politicians are now discovering that instead of making political decisions which regulate markets, the global market system is now regulating politics. The most powerful corporations are negotiating the terms of political debate and struggle.

Moral, Immoral & Amoral

A market system is neither moral nor immoral. A market system has no conscience and so we say it is a-moral. If this were a person we would say it was a sociopath and put them in jail because of the danger they represent to the community. This imminent danger means the pressing social priority for the whole inhabited earth (the oikumene) is to re-regulate the global economy for the good of society.  The economic historian Karl Polanyi analysed this same phenomenon in his work on the Industrial Revolution[7]. There he described what he called a ‘double movement’. The first movement was the social devastation brought by Industrialization. The second movement was the social response which invented the union movement and social programs like welfare and public pensions.

A contemporary example is global climate change. Unchecked emission of greenhouse gases by the rich industrialized countries is threatening the whole inhabited earth. This demonic reality has lead to the signing of the Kyoto Protocol. This Protocol is far from perfect. However, it does represent a first attempt at global regulation in order to save the planet. It represents the second half of the ‘double movement’ 

Integration & Disintegration

One of the observable effects of markets is that markets integrate. Markets bring people together who otherwise might not come together. They gather goods from many places and re-allocate them. However, insofar as markets form market systems, they integrate and they also dis-integrate. They bring people and resources together but the system also erodes the social, cultural and political frameworks in which communities live. Revolutions like globalization are characterized by the contradictory and simultaneous experience of integration and dis-integration. What is integrated are the local and regional markets. What has not been integrated are the societies that surround each of those local markets, the cultures surrounding the markets and the political processes that are characteristic of that society and market. Because the economic base has been integrated, then these other processes have been disconnected and so we experience disintegration at the levels of culture, politics and society.

The relationship between economy and society has been turned upside down . Instead of the society of Fiji determining what will be the appropriate economic relationships in Fiji, those relationships are now part of a global market and the market is telling Fiji what the society will look at. It is possible to describe these two phenomena in terms of a market society, and a moral society - a market economy and a moral economy.

Market Economy vs. Moral Economy

A Moral economy is both a memory and a project. It is a memory that is expressed in society in times of crisis. I will use an example from my context. About four years ago in western Canada we had a major river flood. There was so much rain and melting snow that the river expanded its banks by 40km. There was massive devastation. In the context of this crisis, everyone responded together. People had to be evacuated from their farms and towns and this was done according to the severity of their crisis. The closer they were to the water, the sooner they got out. It wasn’t the rich first and poor second. Everybody in the community came together to pile up sandbags, the state called in the army and they came to save the farms and towns. No one raised the question about whether or not we should do this in a different way. Without thinking people expressed the values that are the most deeply held in the society. In this sense the moral economy is expressed in terms of memory. Before you have time to think it is expressed.

This is not the experience of every day life. Our economic relationships are regulated by the market, and we would not describe the market as moral.  It is very important to understand the difference between the words moral, immoral and amoral. If I say something is immoral it is having the right morality versus the wrong morality. To say something is amoral is to say it does not have the capacity for moral judgement. When we say that a person is amoral we actually have a medical diagnosis. We call that person a sociopath – someone who has no capacity for making a moral judgements. These people are dangerous to society. Most serial killers are sociopaths. They need to be put in jail. The market does not have the capacity to make moral judgements. Markets determine price, supply and demand, not what is right or wrong. What this means is that markets have no conscience. The market is entirely indifferent to the fate of the participants in a market. If you go bankrupt or if your children starve to death, the market does not care because the market has no conscience. We regulate markets in order to protect ourselves from these dangers.

A special characteristic of the economic life of the Pacific region is the persistence of the subsistence economy, also called the traditional or non-market economy. This is where goods and services are traded but not for money. On some islands this is a very extensive aspect of social life. Economic globalization is a globalization of price setting markets. That means it is an integration of markets where money is exchanged. When economists talk about the GNP of Fiji, they are only describing those economic relationships where money changes hands. If I am living in Fiji and I climb a tree and get my own coconuts then I have something to drink and cook with, coconut oil and so on. This is an economic activity but this gathering of the coconut is not expressed in numbers about the formal Fijian economy. If I go to my neighbour and pay them to climb and pick the coconut, that is part of the formal economy. The government may try and tax this exchange, for example.

Capitalist markets propel themselves by growth. In that sense, so does cancer. Markets can grow by increasing the production or the trade of a good, but they also grow by moving goods from the non-formal sector into the formal sector. If everybody stops fishing for themselves and starts buying fish from the market, the economy is said to grow even though no more people are fed or fish taken from the sea.

Globalization involves the integration of price setting markets and that can have non-market effects. Policies are made by governments in relation to those aspects of the economy that involve money. This can have an effect in the non-money economy which may be detrimental to marginalized groups. For example, traditional societies rely heavily on communal resources which include land and the minerals beneath, wild animals, plants and trees, water and fish.  We can call them the global commons. These resources are owned by the community but there may be no piece of paper giving title to private property. The integration of markets under economic globalization puts enormous pressure on these communal resources to be privatized. Private property is one of the underlying assumptions of global markets. The pressure to shift resources from communal ownership to private ownership extends beyond trees, minerals and fish to include the genetic resources of your own body. The DNA of the communities of the Pacific can also be seen as being part of the genetic global commons. Now people are applying for patents on this communal resource. When they do that they make it part of the formal economy - money changes hands.

The new global market system

We have been moving back and forth between economic and political discussion, because you can distinguish but not separate these two. The markets have been combined to form a global market, to form a global system. This system needs to be regulated. Transnational Corporations dislike uncertainty. They want stability. They can prosper in a dictatorship because there is certainty. They need to regulate this global market in order to protect their own interests.[8] The questions before us are these:

Under the new global market system

• Who will benefit from it?
• Who will regulate it?
• What mechanism will they use to regulate it?
• To whom will they be accountable?

These key questions have important ethical dimensions. Some will benefit and others will not. Some will regulate it and others will not. Sometimes they will be regulated in ethical ways and sometimes in unethical ways. If  the new regulatory bodies are not accountable to anybody, then they are not being ethically responsible. So we are faced with the need to identify the criteria to guide the regulation of a global economic system and we do so in an environment characterized by economic integration and social, political and cultural dis-integration.

As I was anticipating this conference I was pondering the translation by the Pacific Council of Churches of ‘Kingdom of God’ language into ‘Island of Hope’ language. I was pondering this in the context of patterns of integration and dis-integration. I asked myself what Biblical stories also included this pattern of integration and dis-integration. I was surprised to find myself turning to Judges 19 and the story some people refer to as the Levite’s Concubine.

I was surprised because some people think of this story as perhaps the most gruesome tale in all of Scripture.[9] My shock was alleviated when I realized this is a story about the ‘absence of the kingdom of God’. Here we have the Hebrew Scripture teaching us by means of a negative example. At a time when we are confronted with a negative form of oikumene in the form of globalization, it might be instructive to turn as well to a negative form of the kingdom of God.[10]

Let me recall the story for you. A Levite was living in the hill country of Ephraim. One of his wives (not his first wife hence concubine) came from Bethlehem in Judah. In anger she left him and returned to her father. After four months, the Levite went to retrieve her. His wife welcomed him as did his father-in-law who entertained him. After five days the Levite set off for home accompanied by his wife. After sunset, they sought shelter near Gibeah in the land of Benjamin. For the longest time no one would take them in. Finally an old man who was originally from the same country of Ephraim, took them in.

A crowd gathered outside the door of the old man and demanded that the Levite be presented to them for intercourse. The old man refused and offered his daughter instead. The crowd refused the daughter and so the Levite took his wife and thrust her outside. The crowd assaulted and abused her all night. In the morning the Levite opened the door to resume his journey. He found his wife lying on the threshold. He commanded her to get up so they could continue the journey ‘but there was no answer’. He put her body on his ass and returned home. Upon his arrival he cut up his wife’s body into 12 pieces and sent them ‘through the length and breadth of Israel’ saying ‘Have you ever seen the like of this since the Israelites came out of Egypt?’ and inviting them to gather and speak their minds.

All of the Israelites gathered for a General Assembly and heard from the Levite how the Benjamites had broken the code of hospitality and had raped and killed his wife only when they were prevented from killing him. The rest of Israel then declared war on the Benjamites. At least 25,000 Benjamites died and 22,000 Israelites. Domination was total. Not only the soldiers died but all the women and children too. (20:48) “The Israelites … put to the sword the people in the towns and the cattle, every creature that they found; they also set fire to every town within their reach.”

The Israelites held a second Assembly and “felt remorse over their brother Benjamin” (21:6). There were a few scattered survivors but the Israelites had promised that none of their daughters would marry Benjamites. They asked if any village had not heeded the call to Bethel and there was one village that had not done so. So they sent another army and slaughtered all the inhabitants except for the unmarried women, who were given to the remaining Benjamites. When that was not enough, some more women were kidnapped until the tribe of Benjamin could reproduce again.

It is not often one has to apologize for reading scripture but I apologize for reading such a horrendous story. Like Havea’s oceanic boundary, I have used the contradictory boundary of Scripture to transport us to a new perspective on the Kingdom of God and its absence in our world. Surely there is no book more well known in the world than the Bible? And yet here is a story from that same text that no one knows. It is not part of our lectionary traditions, nor is it part of our piety. As a part of the Scriptural Canon it is ever present yet it is simultaneously absent from our knowing. Its truth is so dangerous we must repress it.[11] Here, at many levels, is a vivid example of the absence of the Kingdom of God. What can we learn from what it looks like when the kingdom of god is absent? Below, I have identified seven characteristics:

1. A complete perversion of values. In this story we have vengeance and greed and anger. This is a perversion of the justice called for by the prophet Isaiah (58: 1-8) and a mockery of the year of Jubilee called for by the Levitical code (Lev. 25: 8-55)
   
   
2. Communication is based on lies. The Levite doesn’t say ‘I put my wife out to the crowd’, he says instead ‘Look what the Benjamites have done!’  If you read the text carefully, you’ll discover it doesn’t say that the wife was dead on the doorstep. It just says she didn’t respond when he called to her. The Levite then took her home and dismembered her.
   
   
3. Integration based on exclusion. The tribes of Israel are gathered based on these lies, but it is based on exclusion because the Benjamintes are excluded. They are not given a chance to explain what really happened. The text distinguishes between the Isrealites and the Benjamites as if they were not one of the twelve tribes. They are excluded from the decision making and they are excluded from the identification of the Tribes of Israel.
   
   
4. Violence without mercy. The murder and dismemberment of the Levite’s wife is an extreme form of violence. It is without limit. In the same way, the murder of all the non-combatants among the Benjamites – the women and children – is also without limit. To that list we can add all the people who didn’t come to the second assembly, and the women who were kidnapped at the end.
   
   
5. Violence without ecological limit. When the Benjamites were killed, the text tells us no living creature survived, not even the cattle when the towns were set on fire.
   
   
6. Excluded ones become the scapegoats. When the plagues descend on Egypt, Moses tells his people to slaughter a lamb and put its blood on their door posts so their first born children will not die. When Abraham prepares to sacrifice his son Isaac, God intervenes and instructs him to slaughter a goat instead. From these images we develop the doctrine of Substitutionary Atonement whereby Jesus has become a sacrificial lamb whose blood will preserve us from the consequences of our sin. These theological and Biblical images describe a psychological pattern known as ‘scapegoating’, whereby an innocent but vulnerable group is set apart for blame enabling to guilty to escape the moral consequences of their actions[12]. In this case, the resolution of the violation of the law of hospitality is achieved by blaming the Benjamites for a sin which belongs to the Levite.
   
   
7. The apparent resolution is based on further oppression. The story appears to draw to a close when the Tribes of Israel realize they run the risk of eliminating the Tribe of Benjamin forever. This new problem is resolved when a group of women are kidnapped in order to provide forced marriages and reproductive services, thereby allowing the Tribe to continue.

These characteristics are certainly opposed to the values identified by the Law and the Prophets (Deut. 6: 6-9). They are also opposed to the Kingdom of God described by Jesus (Luke 4: 43). Here we are reminded of the conviction of the World Council of Churches as expressed in the declarations of the Harare Assembly (1998).

“Globalization poses a pastoral, ethical theological and spiritual challenge to the churches and the ecumenical movement in particular. The vision behind globalization is a competing vision of the oikumene, the unity of humankind and the whole inhabited earth. The globalized oikumene of domination is in contrast with the oikumene of faith and solidarity that motivates and energizes the ecumenical movement. The logic of globalization needs to be challenged by an alternative way of life of community in diversity.”[13]

Under economic globalization we can see that the world is becoming one. It is becoming unified in terms of global markets, in terms of telecommunications and in terms of an emerging global commercial culture. How can we tell if this unity is the unity we have been seeking and the unity we have been promised? How can we tell the difference between a world becoming one under the direction of the transnational corporations and one world under the guidance of God? What are the characteristics of the presence of the Kingdom of God, and of the absence of the Kingdom of God? So we need to ask ourselves, do we have an integration based on inclusion or exclusion?  Do we contain our violence or do we experience violence without mercy? Is the apparent resolution of our difficulties based on justice or on further oppression?.

Ethics of Globalization

Another way to tell the difference is to analyze the language being used. One characteristic of the language of globalization is that it is always about competition. We are constantly encouraged to become more competitive as if competition was the only value that we held. I do not propose that competition by itself is bad, but when it is held up as the one value to be acknowledged before all others it can become demonic.

I like to compete. I play sports and I like to be competitive. I also want to be just and fair and kind. When competition is raised up as the only value to guide our behaviour then it leads to domination. If I want to compete with you economically, the competition is not just today at 3pm. It is today, tomorrow, next week, and next year. It never ends. I want to win and I want you to lose – today, tomorrow and next year. I want you to keep losing so I can keep winning. When I keep winning and you keep losing it is called domination.

Ethics are the rules that govern our behaviour. They produce specific activities. In order to produce those activities they have to be supported by appropriate attitudes. I used to be a smoker. Eventually I was persuaded that smoking would kill me and be dangerous to my children. I concluded it would be wrong of me to continue smoking so my ethic changed. I quite smoking, then again and again and again until finally I was able to quite smoking for good. I had to really believe that smoking was bad for me. I had to have the right attitude to keep quitting even when it was so difficult. In order for me to dominate you I have not care about you. If you are hungry or broken or bleeding, in order for me to continue to be competitive, I have to not care what happens to you. If  I care, then my attitude is changing. I will want to pick you up off the ground and stand in solidarity with you. I will want to coverse with you to find out how we can cooperate in order to make sure this doesn’t happen again. The attitude of  compassion supports the activity of solidarity. The activity of solidarity is governed by the ethic of cooperation. It is possible to chart these competing ethics in the following manner:

COMPETITION                                    ETHIC                        COOPERATION

DOMINATION                                    ACTIVITY                        SOLIDARITY

INDIFFERENCE                                    ATTITUDE                        COMPASSION

I ask myself as a Christian, the following questions: what has been the teaching of the Christian Church in terms of ethics?  What did Jesus teach? What do the Gospels say about how we should live? Should we adopt the left side or the right side? Every time I ask the question, no matter how I ask it, I always arrive at the same answer. If you ask me to adopt the left side, you are asking me to abandon my Christian faith. This I cannot do. Actually, this approach goes to the heart of the ecumenical movement’s approach to economic questions.[14]

In the work of WCC there has been different themes over the last forty years which have governed the council’s work on social issues. All of these themes represent resources which may be applied by those seeking ethical criteria to guide their response to economic globalization.

Responsibility

The first theme that comes to mind is “The Responsible Society”[15]. Responsibility evokes the idea that with power comes an obligation to use it wisely. This has deep roots in the Roman Catholic tradition. St. Thomas Aquinas commented on it extensively in his Summa Theologica. This is the theme of governance. The King and the Priest had the most power in ancient societies and with that power came responsibility. If transnational corporations are now the most powerful organisations in the world then it is now their responsibility to exercise that power with justice. Another understanding of responsibility

is accountability. The people who engage in this activity have to be accountable for the results of that activity. For example, first world industrialised nations, USA Canada France Germany Netherlands, etc have to be held accountable for the environmental consequences of pollution.

Justice

The theme of “The Responsible Society” was replaced in the WCC by the theme of the “Just, Participatory and Sustainable Society” at the Nairobi Assembly in 1975.

Justice includes right relationship with God. Another understanding is human rights. Human Rights language is a new language. In some denominations the idea that human rights language is religious language is controversial. But it is part of the evolution of the understanding of Christian Ethics. The great Genevan Reformer John Calvin spoke the language of obligation and duty.  From this point of view, God is the primary actor and we are the respondents. Our task is to fulfill our duty towards God. We also have obligations toward our neighbour and if these are taken seriously then our neighbours have a claim on us. Our neighbours have rights which we have an obligation to honour. So the language of rights, even human rights, can be understood as a variant on the deontological language of duty and obligation.

Justice can also be understood in terms of equity and fairness. The WCC argument on the issue of equity in global climate change is a good example of this. In the Kyoto protocol there is an assumed calculation as to who has the right to pollute and who has access to what percentage of the atmosphere for this purpose. What was proposed by the protocol was that the existing common atmospheric resource should be divided according to historical pollution patterns. Under this proposal, either the UK should have largest percentage access to the atmosphere because they have been polluting for the longest, or the USA should have the largest access because they have the largest industrialized economy. India`s proposal was “One person, one portion”. The principle was equity and this position was supported by the WCC.

Participation

The dignity of every person is compromised without the right to participate in decisions which affect them. The World Council of Churches has consistently supported these historic struggles. This is true whether the issue has been political democracy in the Soviet bloc, racial discrimination under Apartheid, or the human rights of women in Patriarchy. The new form of this struggle is a response to economic globalization. The new agents of economic change are transnational corporations. Through regional treaties like NAFTA or through multilateral institutions like the World Trade Organization, these transnational corporations have introduced global policies to support and stabilize their activities. In people’s gatherings from Genoa to Seattle to Quebec City, representatives of Civil Society have used popular protest as a way to assert their right to participate in these decisions.

Sustainabilty

This word has been used most often to describe a form of economic development. However, the Churches have used the word most often to describe human development. In that sense the World Council of Churches has contrasted Sustainable Development with Sustainable Communities. For example, Canada has large forests. The forest industry representatives talk about sustainability but what they mean is having a sustainable yield. They want to make sure they can cut down the same number of trees year after year after year. The Christian Churches were among the critics who argued that the forest was a complex ecological system. That means a sustainable forest is different from sustainable yield because it must allow for the sustenance of all the people, animals and organisms for whom the forest is also home. We could say that our human technological capacity is struggling with the sin of pride by refusing to acknowledge that only God is without limits. The ecological limits of the globe are being challenged as well as the social limits of human communities.

Peace[16] 

A constant feature of the social witness of the World Council of Churches has been its witness for peace. The extends from violence between nation states to violence between racialized groups to violence between social classes to violence between genders. The Kingdom of God is a promise of Peace, not violence, an inheritance of Reconciliation not militarism. God can only be glorified when peace on earth is enjoyed by the people of God, especially women and children, minorities and the vulnerable.

Integrity of Creation[17]

This language needs to be understood as an alternative discourse to the dominant dominion theology. Many of us look to the book of Genesis for a starting point on ecological issues. Dominion theology starts at the same place but elevates the role of human beings in the management of world resources. This has often led to the proposition that the only thing important in God’s sight is the struggle of human beings. From this point of view humans represent the apex or culmination of creation.

Integrity of creation language sees things differently. We are part of creation but all of creation bears the marks of God. The Kingdom of God includes the whole of creation which sighs together in anticipation of the coming reign of Peace. The redemption of the world is a redemption of the whole world not an extraction of human beings away from the world.

Finally, I will leave you with three questions:

1. What will happen if we do nothing?
   
   We can ask that question as churches or as people with regard to globalization. Something very clearly will happen. Those who want to regulate the global economy will do so. The Pacific islands will be flooded, for example.
   
   
2. What will happen if we respond as individuals? Or Individual churches?
   
   We might be able to make some difference. However, since the advocates of Economic Globalization have organized collectively, it is unlikely we will have the strength to successfully resist.
   
   
3. What could happen if we decide to respond together?
   
   We have met this challenge before in relation to the movement against Apartheid. We have proved it is possible to assemble serious resistance. We could have a very different future. But only if we respond together.
   
   

Christopher Lind
St. Andrew’s College & St. Stephen’s College
Saskatoon, Canada