Kairos Europa conference

“New Challenges for the Conciliar Process in the Context of Neoliberal and Imperial Dominance”

2006 October 27-28 | Mannheim, Germany

The Future of Ecumenical Engagement for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation in the Context of Neoliberal, Imperial Dominance:

Perspectives and Challenges from the South

By CARMENCITA P. KARAGDAG

The Status of Ecumenical Discourse on Globalisation and Empire

The ecumenical movement has a long and powerful history of social and political engagement, taking clear faith-based positions on justice and peace. Its finest hour came when, despite threats to church unity, it boldly confronted dictatorial regimes that were then entrenched in Asia and Latin America in defense of human life and dignity, and threw its support to African liberation movements against apartheid during the tumultuous seventies and eighties.

And yet on two of the most critical issues of the day—namely, economic globalisation and empire—ecumenical churches remain painfully divided, along South-North fault lines, on how to discern the signs of the times and hence how to respond effectively to the challenges posed. Many churches in the North, because of relatively privileged positions in the global economic and political order, remain ambivalent on these global problems and refuse to critically interrogate the root causes of massive poverty as linked with heightened militarisation in the South (and also increasingly in the North).

At the 9th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Porto Alegre, Brazil last February 2006, these South-North differences came to a head during the presentation on the Alternative Globalisation Addressing People and Earth (AGAPE) document, a synthesis of the findings and conclusions of a 7-year study process initiated by the WCC based on a series of national, regional and international consultations on globalisation. The controversial AGAPE paper was criticised mainly by European churches as “naïve”, simplistic”, “one-sided” and worse, “ideological”, and therefore as “analytically-flawed”.

At this present time when neoliberal thinking disguised as “scientific”, “rational” economics has gained ascendancy in policy debates, the word “ideological” has assumed a negative connotation; and neutrality and detachment have become synonymous with justice and fairness.

What is glossed over is that biblical texts are themselves ideological and can only be apprehended on the basis of one’s social location in the established hierarchy of power and privilege. Christianity itself was brought through the cross and the sword by conquering European powers to the Third World countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America mediated by western culture, values and ideologies. Hence in our part of the world Christianity is often experienced as a church of the colonizing power that has brought not only western civilization but also ruin to indigenous cultures and peoples. In this light, there is no value-free, neutral or ideologically unblemished reading of the bible as the experience, and hence perspectives, of the oppressed will invariably differ from those of the oppressors. Moreover the Scripture itself reflects the ideological and other biases of the cultures and communities that attempted to record their experiences of God. That the texts may have been sometimes written by those in positions of power makes the Scripture often suspect in the eyes of those on the underside of history.

Indeed what we have forgotten is that we, as churches and Christians, must necessarily espouse a Christian ideology. We have forgotten that we, as churches and Christians, must take unequivocal sides on the issues that affect our global community, but especially those that hurt the least of our brethren. Globalisation is, at bottom, a matter of faith. And no matter how much we theologiian-owned Placer Dome from 1975 to 1996. Placer Dome dumped more than 200 million tonnes of mine tailings into the Calancan Bay, contaminating 80 km2 of sea waters. People living in the area continue to suffer from arsenic and lead poisoning. The pollution also effectively killed the sources of livelihood of 12 fishing villages. To date, the Canadian company has yet to compensate affected communities.

CAMC’s FTAA is valid for 25 years and the ore deposit it seeks to mine is estimated to yield 300,000 ounces of gold each year, potentially generating a huge amount of waste rock and other pollutants. The company will use cyanide for processing. It will have to clear thousands of hectares of pristine forest to make way for the mine. Millions of people’s food security will be threatened as the prospective mine is close to an important watershed area servicing the whole of the neighboring Nueva Vizcaya province and the mine’s usage of that water for mining operations will affect important agricultural areas.

Government coffers will barely benefit from the deal. The Canadian/New Zealand venure will be granted tax holidays and duty-free importation of equipment as well as allowed 100 percent repatriation of profits as part of a package of incentives being given to mining companies.

The Dipidio community—composed of peasants, fisher folk and indigenous peoples—in partnership with churches and people’s organisations have been actively campaigning for the cancellation of CAMC’s environmental compliance certificate. This is no small task. Opposing mining projects is a dangerous business in the Philippines where resistance is often quelled with brute force.

According to various independent reports and investigations, numerous human right violations (ranging from forced evacuation, murder, torture, arbitrary arrests and illegal detention, hamletting and food blockades) have been committed by mining companies in connivance with the US-trained and funded military or paramilitary forces within the counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism framework of the Philippine government, which, not coincidentally, is the fourth largest recipient of US military aid. Historically, conflicts and violence have risen from attempts by the powerful to extract and drain economic resources in the South for the benefit of the North. Thus it comes as no surprise that mineral-rich areas are some of the most militarised in the country, and oil-rich Middle East, the largest geopolitical prize in the world, is the principal locus of the US wars of plunder and occupation..

Challenge to European Churches

The stories I have shared with you underline two points. First of all, our experience in the South has shown that globalisation and militarisation (as manifested in US geopolitical hegemony and empire-building, and as replicated and enforced by its ally or satellite states in Europe and the North as a whole as well as by its client states in subordinated countries) are inextricably intertwined. Second, militarised globalisation is a matter of life and death for two-thirds of the world’s population who are marginalised based on class, sex, race/ethnicity and religion. It is not merely a subject for philosophical or intellectual debate: millions of people’s lives, their sources of sustenance are at stake. And people resisting the agenda of global capital and imperial dominance are being literally butchered by governments awash with cash and military hardware from their imperial sponsors. This outrage demands an immediate and clear response from churches both in the South and North based on what, at core, it really means for us to be Christians.

At the 1998 Assembly of the WCC in Harare, Assembly, we asked: how do we live our faith in the context of globalisation. And the answer seems basic enough: love and do justice to the least of our brethren.

The challenge then to European churches may be summarised thus:

First, ecumenical analyses of globalisation cannot be de-linked from the discourse on militarisation and empire-building. US military and political hegemony are clearly guided by oil and corporate interests engaged in resource extraction and exploitation of cheap labor in the South. Yet Europe, too, as represented in the World Trade Organisation, the Bretton Woods institutions, multinational corporations and security institutions and arrangements benefit from and are complicit in the perpetuation of the unjust economic and political order.

Secondly, European churches’ preoccupation with neutral rationality (as if reason, argues Reinhold Niehbur, is exempt from human finitude and sin) and the idea that the North has a monopoly on knowledge have to be overcome by a passion, spirituality and humility springing from genuine faith commitment: the biblical imperative of preferential option for the poor and the oppressed. Christians from the North are thus called to transcend their own narrow biases based on positions of power and privilege. They are challenged to take a clear faith stance in solidarity with the people of the South who are at the receiving end of the death-dealing forces of globalisation and empire that contravene God’s design for humanity and all of creation.

Finally, as Christians we cannot but be deeply concerned about the rise of fundamentalism in both the economic and religious spheres which are exacerbating today’s conflicts and wars. For under the regime of globalisation, we are confronted with market fundamentalism that makes a fetish, an idol of the global market, ascribing to it nearly divine qualities of omniscience and omnipotence. At the same time we face the challenge of religious fundamentalism, not only of the Islamic variety that has fuelled today’s jihad against imperial incursions, but also the fundamentalism of the American religious right which, in collaboration with the neo-cons and oil interests, is behind the US wars of plunder and occupation, thinly disguised as war on terror.

Indeed current empire building has been infused with a religious fanaticism unheard of in recent years. We are called to overcome fundamentalism and the use and misuse of religion for the immoral project of empire. At the same time Christians are impelled to mobilize the transformative power of faith and draw on the liberating elements of spirituality in resisting the life-threatening forces in our midst.