The world market has emerged as the dominant economic force.  The development of all Third World countries has to be necessarily related to the world market, which in turn is virtually controlled by the market of the industrialised countries.  Market forces determine the production needs and patterns.  They seldom take into consideration the basic needs of people.  The production of goods for export or for the conspicuous consumption of the rich is a glaring phenomenon.

The small entrepreneurs have very little chance of survival in this system.  The multinationals and other monopoly institutions with the help of the elite control development.  The foreign debts of the Third World further contribute to control the development process in these countries.  Terms and conditions on the loans imposed on them make it virtually impossible for them to develop on their own terms.  The unfettered growth of the multinationals and the emphasis on foreign trade are not conducive to a pattern of development that is oriented to the basic needs of people.

Globalisation involved a species of cultural invasion.  Technology is power.  It becomes the carrier of those systems and ideologies (values and cultures) within which it has been nurtured.  The tendency is to create a monoculture.  By monoculture we mean the undermining of economic, cultural and ecological diversity, the nearly universal acceptance of a technological culture as developed in the West and the adoption of its inherent values.  The indigenous culture and its potential for human development are vastly ignored.  The tendency is to confuse efficiency with productivity without any concern for compassion or justice.

Globalisation propelled by Multi National Companies is no respecter of national boundaries.  The free mobility claimed by this process worked only for a few.  You have to pay a price to be part of this exclusive system.  The policies of liberalisation and withdrawal of subsidies, which are the conditions imposed by the IMF and the World Bank, have resulted in the curtailing of the power of the State.  The global institutions tend to destroy the idea of the nation state and the state is forced to abdicate its social responsibilities.  While the state is rendered relatively powerless, it has become a mere tool of the rich and the powerful.  Its sole function is to suppress any organised resistance by ordinary people to the unjust system.

The pattern of development that is capital-intensive, and the life-style propagated by the media, together create a situation where the ecological balance and the sustaining power of the earth for nurturing life, are being destroyed.  In fact, the ecological crisis is not a problem solely confined to the Third World.  The whole planet has been affected, and, perhaps, this issue brings together concerned people of the South and the North.

Threatened by the forces of globalisation and the ideas of secularism, some sections in all religions assume a fundamentalist posture.  Under the guise of an identity struggle, the fundamentalists particularly in the majority community want to perpetuate their dominance by controlling the political process through militant organisations.  Here religion is co-opted for the exercise of political control and in the process it becomes divisive.  This process distorts both politics and religion.

While the pressures of globalisation are quite evident in all realms of life, there is nevertheless evidence of a mode of human organisation that represents an opposing trend.  Its focus is on diversity and the specificity of individual group identities.  Today we witness ethnic turmoil leading to an upsurge of violence and social breakdown in many parts of the world.

Marginal groups such as Dalits and Tribals are seeking a new identity for themselves based on their old religions and cultures that had been suppressed or destroyed by dominant communities.  In their struggle against historical as well as contemporary processes of domination, the Dalits and indigenous groups have become conscious of their identity as people.

All religions, Christianity included, are in various ways and to various degrees both oppressive and liberative.  They are oppressive because they legitimate unjust social systems like caste and racism.  But religions can also be liberative.  The movements of the marginalised have recourse to liberative elements in their religion.  A reinterpretation of religion is going on in similar movements that fight for their identity and justice.

The Church in the past has been ambivalent in its response to identity questions and the narratives that come out of it.  Christian mission, for sure, has enormously contributed to the social transformation of indigenous people.  But it has been insensitive to people’s struggle for cultural identity.

Globalisation is not a neutral process.  An alliance forged by the forces of domination for profit becomes the driving force of much of globalisation.  The poor and the marginalised do not find protection and security under it.  How do we organise the forces of globalisation for the furtherance of justice?  Can we seek a new global solidarity of the victims of the present system to build a just, global new order?

An alternative developmental paradigm should be supported by an alternative vision of human bonding to one another and to the earth.  It is important that this new vision emerges from the cultural and religious traditions of Asia, especially the experiences of the poor and the marginalised.  A concern for nature and life-sustaining values is integral to Asian spirituality.  Traditional values have to be seen in a new perspective and context.  We have to re-discover the traditional emphasis on the rejection of mammon as being integral to an authentic religiosity.

In this situation the nature of the communities we seek has become an urgent concern.  The Church should be at the service of people in their search for meaningful communities, which are empowered to live in harmonious relationships with nature and among people of different faiths.  Can these communities raise questions to the logic of profit and progress, which has “commodified” our lives?  We want to build communities that are different from traditional collectives that have submerged our selfhood and suppressed our women.

What is the paradigm of the miracle of the global village we have in mind?  People who write and talk about the global village have never lived in a village, so their images of the global village is born out of their references to a technological, industrial culture.  One of the prevailing tendencies in such a culture is to put everything into a manageable, organised system.  There is very little room for diversity.  The clearly defined centre exercises control over the periphery, which is why the “melting pot” becomes a favourite images in the United States.  But what we see in the village is not a neatly organised, uniform structure.  A village is a small, separate unit connected to other units of different shapes and diverse characters.  It is a mosaic, not a neat, uniform system.  The global is very much present in the local.  Diversity, not uniformity, is its hallmark.

Jesus proclaimed the reign of God as the vision of a new order and invited people to turn to its demand: “The Kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15).  He not only announces a future Kingdom to come; through his life and work he shows that the Kingdom has already arrived.  The Kingdom, among other things, is concretely experienced as a community with a new consciousness and an altered value system.  It is an alternative to the existing social order – a new movement, a new order of relationships.

A lot of interest has been evoked in the images of oikos in the New Testament, as an images of the church.  In a study produced by the W.C.C., attention has been drawn to two Greek words, which Paul uses.  One, oikodome refers to the act of building a house, but it actually applies to the building of Christian communities.  The Apostolic mission is a service to the oikodome of Christ (II Corinthians13:10).  Members of the church are called to use their charisma for the oikodome of the Body of Christ (Ephesians 2:2).  Christian churches are regarded as ‘ecodomical centres’.

But the church did not develop this perspective.  Instead, it settled for another concept, also derived from the word oikos, namely paroikia.  The church as a persecuted minority found itself at home with this images of aliens and exiles in a hostile world (I Peter 2:11).  “The parochial system became the organising principle around which the church was set up”.

There is tension between these two imagess.  “Whenever the former implies purpose and creativity, the latter tends towards separation of earth and heaven and fosters an escapist spirituality”.  But these two imagess should be related.  Parochial thinking has to be transformed by an ecodomical emphasis.

Mission is God’s mission and not the result of our feverish activity.  We are called to participate in God’s mission

The Bible deals with the nature and character of God’s mission in this world. Primarily, it is God’s irenic act.  Exodus is considered a paradigm of God’s liberation.  A group of slaves under the dictatorship of a ruthless king were crushed and oppressed and God hearing their cry intervened to free them, through the mediation of Moses.  This story is enacted throughout history in every age and time.  Believing in a God of justice and freedom is the basis of our mission.

God’s act is also that of bringing together peoples who are divided.  Reconciliation is another word for God’s mission.  God wants all God’s children to live in harmony.  In Isaiah 65:17-25 we are given the prophet’s vision of God’s mission.  It is to make ‘a new heaven and a new earth’.  ‘There will be no weeping’.  ‘Babies will no longer die in infancy’.  ‘People will build houses and get to live in them’.  ‘They will plant vineyards and enjoy the wine – it will not be drunk by others’.  They will live in harmony and in mutual responsibility.

In our Lord’s declaration of his mission when he starts his ministry he repeats a prophetic vision in Luke 4:18ff, and again we come across it in Matthew11:2-6.  There is healing, there is freedom from all forms of oppression, there is reconciliation and harmony; there is good news to the poor.  Mission, on the basis of the vision, opens a wide horizon; no realm of human activity is excluded from the renewing act of God.  We cannot limit God’s activity to something that happens within an individual.  It is a transformation of all God’s creation, renewing all things in accordance with the purposes for which they are created. The Apostle Paul calls this a ‘new’ creation in Christ.

We believe that God’s transforming act is further crystallised in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The pattern of the freedom of God is concretely expressed in Jesus Christ.  Therefore Christ becomes God’s mission for us.  To know God’s mission we need to ponder anew who Christ is and what kind of transformation Christ brings to us.  This leads us to the second affirmation.

Mission is Christ’s way.  ‘As the father has sent me I   will send you’, Jesus told his disciples

Jesus proclaimed the reign or rule of God and invited people to enter it.  The vision of the Kingdom is the same as that of Shalom, which the prophets brought to us.  Shalom is peace with justice.  Healing and wholeness, harmony and liberation are all integral to this vision.

It also points a new direction for global community that celebrates sharing and hope. Jesus rejected the imperial model of unity, which in his time was represented by the Roman Empire and the power wielders of the Jerusalem temple.  He turned to Galilee, to the poor and the outcasts, women, and the marginalised.  He identified with them.  His own uncompromising commitment to the values of the kingdom and his solidarity with the victims of society made him an enemy of the powers that be.  Conflict was very much part of his ministry.  It resulted in death.  On the Cross, he cried aloud, “My God, My God, why have you forgotten me?”  This is a cry of desperation, a cry of loneliness, but it is also an articulation of solidarity – a moment when he identified humanity with the cries of all humanity.

In solidarity with the suffering, Jesus gave expression to his hope in the liberating God who opted to defend the poor and the dispossessed.  It is in this combination of total identification with the depth of suffering and the hope that surpassed all experiences that we see the clue to Jesus’ presence in our midst and the future he offers us.  New wine, a new logic of community that comes from a solidarity culture, was projected against the old wine, the old culture.

The promise of God’s future in such a solidarity culture is an invitation to struggle, advocacy for the victims, and compassion.  People who are drawn to the side of the poor come into contact with the foundation of all life.  The Bible declares that God encounters them in the poor.  With this step from unconsciousness to consciousness, from apathetic hopelessness regarding one’s fate to faith in the liberating God of the poor, the quality of poverty also changes because one’s relationship to it changes.

Such solidarity culture is sustained by spirituality, not the spirituality that is elitist and otherworldly, but that which is dynamic and open.

In our struggle for a new global order, we need to mobilise the spiritual resources of all religious traditions, not only the classical ones, but the primal religious traditions as well.  In fact, the classical religions tend to project a type of spirituality that is lacking in a commitment to social justice.  There are, however, notable exceptions.  We begin to see a new search for the liberational form of spirituality in these religions.  See, for example, the writings of Swami Agnivesh and Asghar Ali Engineer.

Tagore’s words express this kind of spirituality:
Here is thy footstool and there rest thy feet
where live the poorest, lowliest, and the lost.
When I try to bow to thee, my obeisance cannot reach
down to the depth where thy feet rest among the poorest,
the lowliest and the lost (Gitanjali).

But a distinct challenge comes from the Indian spirituality tradition.  Its focus upon interiority is to be considered important when we talk about a commitment for action.  Amalorpavadoss emphasised this in all his writings.  Freedom also means liberation from pursuit, acquisition, accumulation, and hoarding of wealth (arta), unbridled enjoyment of pleasure’s comfort (kama), without being regulated and governed by righteousness and justice (dharma), without orientation to the ultimate goal (moksha).

A fundamentalist ideology and movement in any religion often betrays its own fundamental beliefs. The ‘liberative vision’ of humanity enshrined in those fundamentals, raises questions about the distorted systems, rituals, and practices of the grandiose edifice built by all religions.  Christian presence should be liberative and open. Mention has already been made of the spirituality of indigenous peoples.  Their holistic vision and communitarian value systems are important for the emergence of a new global order.  They are signs of the freedom we long for.  As Paul said, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”  Our longing for a free and open order is a spiritual longing.  Only when communities live in mutual respect, when they together eliminate all caste atrocities, when they together remove poverty and hunger, when all their religions sing the song of harmony, when they together celebrate God-given unity – then the spirit is free.  Let us commit ourselves to that global solidarity.

Mentioning two concrete expressions of it can conclude this reflection on liberative solidarity.  One is the emergence of Dalit theology in India.  Dalits are the oppressed groups, marginalised for centuries by the social and cultural systems.  Today Dalit consciousness based on a newfound identity has provided the impetus for a Dalit theology.  Solidarity with the suffering is its characteristic feature.  Professor A.P.Nirmal describes the methodology as follows:

For Dalit theology “Pain or Pathos is the beginning of knowledge.”  For the sufferer more certain than any principle, more certain than any proposition, more certain than any thought and more certain than any action is his/her pain-pathos.  Even before he/she thinks about pathos; even before he/she acts to remove or redress or overcome this pathos, pain-pathos is simply there.  It is in and through this pain-pathos that the sufferer knows God.  This is because the sufferer in and through his/her pain-pathos knows that God participates in human pain.  This participation of God in human pain is characterised by the New Testament as the passion of Jesus symbolised in his crucifixion.

A few months ago, I visited a Buddhist monk in the southern provinces of Sri Lanka.  I had heard about his intense involvement in the struggles of people for freedom and justice.  Three of us, theologians, sat at his feet listening in rapt attention to the stories of his involvement – how at the risk of his own life he had to defend young activists.  He was constantly clashing with the powers that be.  At the end, one of the group asked him, “Sir, how do you explain the motivating power that sustains you in all these?”  He thought for a moment and then said, “I do not know, perhaps I am inspired by the compassionate love of the Buddha.”  And then, looking intently at us, he asked, “Don’t you think Jesus also teaches us about compassion?”  I ventured to say, “Yes, but there is a big difference between the response of some of us Christians to our Christ and your response to your Buddha.”  I do not see the same intensity of commitment to the passion of Jesus in our churches.  That is the crux of the problem.  Can compassion – another name for liberative solidarity – unite us

Speaking to a group of German pastors recently, I remarked that all theologies were contextual theologies and Karl Barth was a contextual theologian.  Predictably my comment about Barth was received with some hesitation.  It was pointed out that Barth had rejected a kind of contextual theology found in the liberal tradition.  But they had to agree that Barth was concerned about the Word in the European situation obtaining after the World War and the crisis of liberalism.  Further, it was pointed out that his own experience in his parish made a big difference in the manner in which he theologised. Kosume Koyama’s contribution in developing contextual theology in Asia should be acknowledged.

G.Soares Prabhu, “The Kingdom of God: Jesus’ vision of New Society”, in D.S.Amalorpavadas (ed) The Indian Church in the Struggle for a New Society, Bangalore: National Biblical Catechical and Liturgical Centre, 1981, p.601.

Gieko Muller – Fahrenholz, God’s Spirit Transforming a World in Crisis, W.C.C., Geneva, 1987, p.147.
Ibid. p.109.
Ibid., p.110.

Preferential option for the poor is the characteristic mode of response in liberation theology.  In some situations it may be misconstrued as a patronising attitude.  Liberative solidarity has the advantage of entering into a different relation with the poor.  Their experiences and their spirituality hold the key for a future order.  To acknowledge our indebtedness to the poor is to seek a new future.

Dorothee Soelle, On Earth as in Heaven : A Liberation Spirituality of Sharing (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), p.16.

See especially Asghar Ali Engineer, Islam and Liberation Theology: Essays on Liberative Elements in Islam (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1990).  Here the influence of liberation theology cannot be ignored.  All the religions are challenged to take seriously the emphasis on liberation.  One may quote the stirring words of Deane William Fern at the close of his essay, “Third World Liberation Theology: Challenge to World Religions,” in Dan Cohn-Sherbok, ed., World Religions and Human Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992), p.19: “Liberation theology issues a call not only to Christianity, but to the other religions of the world as well.  Are these religions willing to show ‘a preferential option for the poor’?  Can the communities of the poor which are irrupting throughout the Third World be the basis for a new ‘people’s theology’ which seeks to liberate humanity from all forms of oppression: poverty, servitude, racism, sexism, and the like?  Can justice and spirituality become partners in a world embracing enterprise?  Can the struggle for justice and belief in God come to mean one and the same thing?  Herein lies the stirring challenge of Third World Christian liberation theology.”