LOVE IS A RAINBOW

When I heard that Sekolah Tinggi Teologi Jakarta (Jakarta Theological Seminary - STT Jakarta) was having its annual Lesbian Gay Bi-sexual Trans-sexual Inter-sex Queer (LGBTIQ) Week in November 2012, I immediately contacted Rev Miak Siew, Pastor of Free Community Church. We both without any hesitation decided that we must attend to express our solidarity with the seminary. This is the first Asian seminary that is courageous enough to have such a significant public event.

I recall that when the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), organized an Asian Conference in Surabaya, Indonesia in March 2010, it was cancelled even when the 150 delegates  representing 100 organizations from 16 Asian countries were scheduled to attend.

Gaya Nusantara, one of the oldest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organizations in Indonesia, based in Surabaya was the local sponsor.  The National Human Rights Commission gave their full support.

Seven radical Muslim groups led by Islamic Defenders Front (FPI)  joined forces and protested, demonstrated and even threatened violence against the delegates. The irony is that Surabaya is an open city.  Surabaya’s residents are used to seeing gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people.

Grace Poore from Malaysia, the Regional Co-ordinator for Asia, filed this report:
"Indonesian police ordered the cancellation of the conference in response to pressure from Islamist fundamentalist groups. The conference hotel refused to permit the conference to proceed.  ILGA Asia found alternate venue, but fundamentalists tracked them there.  One of the groups occupied the hotel lobby for several days. After threats of violence and hours of negotiation, Indonesian activists were forced to leave the hotel and foreign attendees forced to disperse until they could leave Indonesia."

Rev Dr Joas Adiprasetya, President of STT Jakarta, warmly welcomed us and in his letter of appreciation when we left wrote: "We started the program with faith and dream and your gift is helping us believe in the future of this initiative. We understand that to initiate such a program in the Indonesian context is very risky; however we realize that we do not walk alone."

STT Jakarta  was founded as early as 1934. It is the oldest seminary and established to train pastors to serve the Christian churches in Indonesia. It is especially significant that an old established seminary had been moving with the times and had the vision to address the LGBTIQ issue and train the Christian leadership to support the movement.

LGBTIQ Week was organized by a committee of students whose sexual orientation was not identified nor regarded relevant. It was apparent that some of students and the public who attended are members of the LBGTIQ community. The faculty members officially supported the event and Rev Stephen Suleeman, from its Sociology/Communications Department represented the faculty. He has his first degree from Trinity Theological College in Singapore in the seventies. At that time I was working with his father who was on the faculty of STT Jakarta in the ecumenical work in Indonesia.

Rev Miak and I were asked to share about the historical development of Free Community Church (FCC) and its mission and ministry in Singapore. In a second session Rev Miak gave a lecture on Queer Theology which was well-received. We brought as a gift  about 70 books relating to the studies of the LGBTIQ issue and they were appreciative.

The other sessions conducted included presentations by a panel of gays, lesbians, and trans-sexuals.   
A recent woman graduate pastor shared her programme of pastoral care to the LGBTIQ members in the congregation and in the community. It was important to see that secular groups supporting them were present and contributed financially to the event. In each daily session there were around 100 participants. Some of them came out to the audience and shared their personal stories.

The worship service was an impressive one with a fusion of songs and dances of religious music accompanied by musicians which included traditional drums and gongs. The liturgists danced as a processional bearing the cross, bible, candles, and bamboo trays of local bread. They were in line with local cultural elements in the act of worship. The worship center setting had rainbow drapes hanging from the ceiling, flanked by rainbow flags and a local painting of the crucified Christ in front. It was indeed a meaningful experience.

Rev Miak and I returned inspired and enriched by our participation in the LGBTIQ Week. In spite of the difficult context the LGBTIQ people are in within the church and the community in their country, they were able to witness to the truth and the necessity to form a Church which is truly inclusive regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation and economic status.

The special tee shirt has a bright rainbow emblem with the words Love is a Rainbow.

To God be the glory.

Yap Kim Hao


--
When we lose the right to be different in diversity,
we lose the privilege to be free in captivity.





























       

   
       
       
       

Levels of Support for Causes

People are motivated differently to support various causes. For people of religious faith, we make the choice or born into one religion over other religions. Much is due to the time and place in which we were born and the way we react to our  conditions. As a result we are now surrounded by a diversity of faith communities. The challenge before us in our globalized world is that we have to exist with people who relate to different religions and with no religion and those who sense they are spiritual but not religious but do not belong to any particular religious community.

Even within each religion with its own sacred text there are differences of interpretation of their holy writings leading to various schools of thoughts and sects in each religious community. I was fortunate to attend recently the lecture of Professor Farid Esack organized by Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS)  on "Text and Context" relationship to inter-faith relations and solidarity.

In all our sacred texts there are some "awkward" passages or even "clobber" verses attacking others within and outside the community itself who hold different interpretations. There is conflict within and without. All passages have to be scrutinized and evaluated by critical thinking especially by credible scholars of the text.  Our personal study and reflection lead to acceptance of a certain view or position.

In my own religious development, I had the privilege to study with professors who pursue critical analysis. I learnt to ask the question "Why." I was taught to deal with doubts and not resort too easily to suspend them and accept contradictory views in "faith." Are we honest enough that in spite of claims of revelations and loyalty to creeds, we as human beings admit that we can have approximations of truth. Only the Creator has the ultimate truth.

With our understanding of our experiences in life, we with our limitations need to plunge into the struggle  in controversial issues with faith knowing that it is only our claims of truth which often is not that of the majority of people.

When we offer support especially different causes there are nuances of the kind of support. For instance when I wrote about my impressions of Professor Farid Esack, I made the general statement which I want to correct so that it is more specific and precise and more accurate of the stance that he makes rather than the impression that I received.

My sentence “He supports the rights of gays, lesbians, bi-sexual, transgendered rights” should be corrected to  "He showed considerable insights into the challenges faced by gays, lesbians, bi-sexual, transgendered individuals when it comes to addressing the question of HIV.”

The degree and kind  of support need to be clear. However the support must show the degree also of consistency in order to gain credibility. To give full and total support to any cause is almost impossible. This is especially true in the political arena, it is generally known that compromises are expected to be made for the sake of security, harmony, economic growth. Yet, we need to evaluate how much we can accept the trade-offs in pursuit of our goals.

In the light of this perspective of support for causes and issues we must be realistic and weigh the consequences of our involvement. To engage we must. In faith take sides. Who we serve is the important criterion - the systems of domination or the poor, marginalized and oppressed.

Yap Kim Hao

My Impressions of Professor Farid Esack

Meeting personally Farid Esack for the first time, I was significantly impressed. He carries impeccable  credentials as an influential Muslim scholar and cleric, acknowledged prolific writer and articulate passionate speaker. He is recognized as a courageous Muslim interpreter of the Qu'ran, voice for the marginalized and oppressed, campaigner for social justice.

It was a special privilege for Singapore Interfaith Network on Aids (SINA) to organize the meeting on October 8,,2012 in which the distinguished Professor Farid Esack spoke on "The Challenges of HIV/Aids."  Professor Esack is a prominent advocate for the victims of Aids and initiated the movement known as "Positive Muslim" in South Africa.

Born in South Africa in 1959 to a poor family, he had his early education in  the traditional Islamic Studies program, in Madrasahs in Karachi, Pakistan. He secured his PhD at the University of Birmingham and post-doctoral work on Biblical Hermeneutics in Frankfurt-am-Main. He has taught at the University of the Western Cape, at Amsterdam, Hamburg and Gadjah Mada Universities and Union Theological Seminary in New York. He is a former Distinguished Mason Fellow at the College of William & Mary, and the Besl Professor in Ethics, Religion and Society at Xavier University in Ohio. Just before his current appointment as a Professor in the Study of Islam in the University of Johannesburg, he held a joint appointment  for two years at Harvard University between the Divinity School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as the William Henry Bloomberg Professor.

To participate in this important speech in Singapore were the practitioners who are directly involved in the HIV/Aids issue in Singapore. They represent the government Ministry of Health through its Health Promotion Board and the Communicable Disease Centre. Secular non-government organizations representatives were from  Action for Aids, Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics (H.O.M.E.), Pelangi Pride Centre, Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE). Faith-based staff members on HIV/Aids were from Tzu Chi Buddhist Foundation, Project X of Student Christian Movement, Catholic Care Centre), Kampong Kapor Methodist Church and Free Community Church. This group of fifty participants are actively and directly engaged in HIV/Aids projects of education, anonymous testing, counselling and healing support to People Living with Aids(PLWA), sex workers, domestic workers, migrant workers, shelters for the abused. They pursue the task advocacy for the rights of the victims to drugs, condoms, employment and housing. They battle with issues of discrimination and stigmatization..

Professor Esack shared his views especially on the broader aspects and the necessity of social justice in dealing with this public health issue. While it is an immediate need to deal with the physical and psychological aspects of people living with Aids, it is necessary to engage also individually and in solidarity with others in social, economic, religious and political problems that interlink with HIV/Aids.

What is the general response of the public to HIV/Aids? Professor Esack identified the levels beginning with ignorance, denial, scorn, pity, compassion, and justice.

He began by illustrating it in the scenario of an car accident in which a drunken driver was involved. We rush to the scene. There are those who ignore it and deny it for fear of being involved in a legal case. There is scorn thrown because the driver was drunk and deserves the dreadful consequences. But there are a few who express compassion for those who suffer physically. The ambulances were called but they delayed in arriving. The streets were not well lighted and there were potholes. Surrounding and leading to the accident are social justice issues which are related to the incident. To prevent accidents we must deal with such issues and must not treat it in isolation from the related factors.

Further he narrated the story of the woman who pick up the babies who were floating down stream and cared them. It is not enough for she needs also to be aware of how the babies were in the river in the first place. Someone upstream has been throwing the babies in the river. That situation must be dealt with too.

We are familiar with the story of the cars that plunged down from the cliff above. We rush to the scene below and provide the ambulance to care for the victims. This is necessary but we have to go up the cliff and find how we can prevent the cars from falling down. We are so busy with our ambulance work or caring for the victims without changing the conditions that cause the carnage.

While it is necessary to have compassion we must be engaged with justice issues. This was the clear challenge that Professor Esack posed to us who are so tied down with the care efforts of the victims of HIV/Aids without addressing the factors of culture, economics, religion. and politics. His compassion is to do justly to those who are afflicted and affected.

As I reflect about Professor Esack and his own involvement, he is not a single issue person or just touching the surface of different issues around him. He himself is hands-on and personally engaged in clusters of issues which are inter-related. He handles them according to his training and personal ability. He is a progressive Islamic scholar of the Koran.  In this minority religious community in South Africa he was active in the battle against apartheid. He is active in inter-faith relations.  He supports the rights of gays, lesbians, bi-sexual, transgendered rights. Nelson Mandela appointed him to serve as a Commissioner of Gender Equality promoting the rights of all women. I can see how he has embodied in his own life and career the inter-connected issues. Coming from a background of poverty and enslave ment, he has developed the passion for social justice. He has pushed the parameters, he has stretched the limits, he has widened the horizons as he got involved in HIV/Aids and other causes in his society.

In a subsequent meeting organized by the Centre for Contemporary Islamic Studies in which I am the only non-Muslim who was invited to be a member, I got a further insight about Professor Esack. To an audience comprised mainly of young progressive Muslims he conducted an open discussion with them. The theme of the talk was announced at different times to be "New Muslim" then "Modern Muslim" and finally publicised as "Good Muslim."  This indicated how the event could be interpreted differently. However Professor Esack shared on the topic of being a "Controversial Muslim." He emphasized that it is his willingness to take a stand and be different and not for the sake of just being different all the time. It is more of being courageous to deal with controversial issues even when it is not popular or in favour with the systems of domination by those in power. It is to be authentic and honest with his own convictions and to serve those who are voiceless, marginalized and oppressed. He made the further insightful observation that all the prophets of our religions have associated themselves with the hopes and aspirations of the downtrodden and showed the ways for their liberation. Being controversial is the perception of others but it has to be viewed positively as being courageous and prophetic.

It was an inspirational evening for those of us who were fortunate to be present and be enlightened by such an eminent personality.

Yap Kim Hao

Ponderings over disasters

In the midst of the raging storm and surging seas erupting from Hurricane Sandy, we ponder as we do when natural disasters once again strike us. In the wake of the havoc that Sandy caused in the heavily populated northeast of the United States how do we make sense of it all. Atlantic City is enriched and survives by its casinos and its mayor Atlantic City Mayor Lorenzo Langford told CNN: 

"When Mother Nature sends her wrath your way, we're at her mercy, and so all we can do is stay prayerful and do the best that we can"

But how do we pray in such tragic times? Who do we pray to? We are used to believe in the All Powerful God. It is hard to reconcile such a God in disasters. The toll of suffering humanity is beyond human comprehension. The destructive force paralyzes the bustling busiest city of New York in the world. Mercilessly damage is done to saints and sinners, innocent and the evil. Cities are  submerged by the waters and all economic activity ceases.

The Divine whom we call God is affirmed as the Creator of the heavens and the earth. The earth and its environment is but a tiny speck in this vast universe. We would imagine that this Creator can stop the destruction but as in all natural disasters God did not. On the contrary it is regarded as an act of God. But how do we reconcile God's action or inaction with such widespread destruction.

As we face this harsh reality, how real is our God? Too readily we say that it is God's punishment but that is so arbitrary for it affects those who do not deserve it and it is an overkill to those who have done wrong. God is not a cruel Judge or a Destroyer. Once again we are called to reconcile what we believe about the loving and powerful Creator with the disasters that we experience around us from time to time.

It has been observed that out of love for created beings the Creator has placed self-limitation of power. The Creation is alive and the process is not completed. It is still evolving and anti-creative forces are at work. Freedom is gifted to all created living beings. We are not robots programmed to act in a determined way. Freedom is integral to us and the exercise of freedom must necessarily be with responsibility. Otherwise we have to deal with disasters.
 

Do we over-populate the world, do we exhaust earth's resources, do we get into community conflict? Do we conserve or destroy, do we care or ignore, do we compete or co-operate? There is a long list of responsible activities that we ignore at our peril.

In our created environment we have a web of interactions and inter-relationships. Intentionally and unintentionally in the exercise of freedom we cause disruptions to the order. The Creator cannot intervene to stop the effect of our actions. There is much around us that is mysterious waiting to be unravelled. But when we do understand and work along with the order that exists, we can send a man to the moon and dock a craft in the station out in space. The Creator patiently waits for life to discover its secrets and exist in harmony with them.

Meanwhile we do not have straight forward easy answers to natural disasters. Our faith does not protect or prevent us from the whirlpool of suffering. The Creator stands with us and shares our pain and our grief.
 
We resort to prayer for the understanding that we are perpetrators or victims of anti-creative forces and we must align ourselves with the creative forces for the shaping of a safer and better future for all. The road that we travel together will be littered with the debris of disasters. When we learn our lessons of history and understand partially this mysterious life on this planet earth we will do better. Such a faith allow us to hope in spite of our pain when we face the disasters in our lives.

The Inclusive Community
 
Last weekend I went up to Kuala Lumpur to conduct a Marriage Blessing Ceremony in a Garden Pavilion in a residential resort complex. It evoked a tsunami of memories from my boyhood and teenage days. 

The bride is the grand-daughter of a family friend in Kampar in the early forties and the groom is the son of a dear friend of mine in Ipoh since the fifties. I buried the grandmother of the bride in the sixties in Kuala Lumpur and the father of the groom a few years ago in Kuching. The groom is a Indian Methodist and the bride is a Chinese Catholic. They found no pastor but me to convey God's blessings.

They had earlier given me a number of Scripture passages to base my wedding message for the occasion. But I gave them the choice but they did not inform me. Coincidentally I used Colosians 3:12-17 which was what they had chosen in the first place. It was serendipity. 

The passage was appropriate and conveyed the teaching of "compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience" which are the principles that cement a blissful life of marital relationship of two people. It advises the need of mutual forgiveness and "Above, all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds every thing together in perfect harmony."

I further drew the congregation's attention to the verses previous and following the chosen passage. 
Paul in writing his letter to the followers of Jesus in Colossae spoke of the new life where "there is no longer Greek or Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, but Christ is all and in all! That was the cultural context in his time.

But if Paul was writing to us in the contemporary scene he probably would say to us that there is no longer Indian or Chinese, Christian or Catholic, rich or poor, gay or straight, male or female, young or old for our Creator made us all different from one another.

Then in the verses there was the traditional call for wives to submit to their husbands. But Paul would have updated that for us today with wives and husbands submit to one another and love mutually. 

This is the way in which we ought to read and interpret the traditional holy writings to serve our present time and situation. 


The groom had the customary bachelor's party with his Chinese and Indian friends the night before. While he was doing that I have my "gay party" with a dinner meeting with gay and straight friends way past midnight. In my meeting were a Christian single mother who brought up three children, Methodist woman taking care of her new adopted grandchild, gay doctor working on HIV/Aids, Korean feminist theologian, Sikh woman who was the daughter of the watchman in Methodist Boy's School in KL, young gay social worker, and a Queer theologian. This group meets weekly and support one another in a new inclusive human community. They were all dis-enchanted with established religions. I felt Jesus was very much present as he was among us.

The same feeling came upon me in the following day in the wedding ceremony and the wedding banquet in the Grand Ballroom in Marriot. 

This is what inclusivity meant for me. Are we able to stretch the boundaries and enlarge the tent to cover us who are each different and embrace one another in love and respect?

The Poverty Trap II I continue my reflections on the Poverty Trap with reference to Cambodia and share my personal experiences. I want to show the contrast between the time past when the country was under Pol Pot and the present. In the seventies Cambodia was drawn into the Indochina conflict. The countries began with their struggle for national independence from their colonial masters. They chose to follow the Marxist line. They succeeded at great cost and won the war against the mighty capitalistic empires of France and the United States. They envisioned the building of a new people and a new society. Some of us in the Christian movement understood their fight for independence. During the conflict the global Christian community were offering some relief services of food and medicine for the victims of war. In rehabilitating their communities we provided resources for the re-opening of their hospitals, schools, farms and factories. They were in desperate need to re-build their war-torn countries. The continued systems of domination of the Western powers were still in place. The irony is that it is also from some of the enlightened people from the same countries who dominate them that the resources for assistance were made available for their recovery after the war. They won their war of independence but they have to engage in nation building. The rise of China gave them some hope but the resources among themselves were too limited to effect the change required. Pol Pot who literally drove the city dwellers out of Phnom Penh to the countryside was for the purpose of changing their mind-set and developing the rural sector. It was a form of cleansing from imperialism, consumerism and individualism. In 1979 when the regime was overthrown, a colleague and I representing the relief and rehabilitation programme of Christian churches were granted the first visas to enter the city. It was emptied of people except for their officials and the military. People were still kept outside. Basic infrastructure was not restored for their return to their former homes. A handful of women who spoke English were discovered to work as interpreters to relate to foreign aid agencies. Ms Dany who studied in the Regional English Language Centre was assigned to us and we instantly became friends. She later was responsible for the development of women's work and represented her country in Hanoi. In 2000 she came to Singapore as the wife of the Ambassador of Cambodia. Miss Vuthy went to Thailand for Christian theological training and returned to her country to minister to her people. This only shows how important it is to develop local leadership. Fast forward to the present. Cambodia since the past decade or two began to attract foreign capital. Labour was plentiful and cheap and urbanization and industrialization developed at a fast pace. The new society that was envisaged soon became the resurfacing of the old society with new colonial masters within and without. The same evacuation of the city-dwellers started though less extensively than it was in the past. They have to give way to the new rich and powerful local elites and foreigners. When I met recently some of my Indochina friends whom we have collaborated with during their war of independence, I queried them about the new society that they have toiled and fought and spilled blood for. They smiled but was embarrassed. They themselves have become like those that they fought against before. It is a vision that has evaporated in these days of globalization and economic development. What do we do in such a situation NOW We can help those displaced city dwellers who are scratching the barren land in order to survive. But there will be a steady stream of these people. How do we manage the stream. We need to help them to get better compensation for their homes which are demolished for high rise office buildings service apartments and factories. We need to help them to scratch a living in the barren rural areas. We need to provide them with resources to build a new future in the countryside. Our piecemeal efforts must be changed to concerted ones and taking a comprehensive and sustainable development approach for the rural community. We need to support those who are committed to develop new leadership in the nation. One of the promising assistance that I know is the work of the Turkish community who are being influenced by Fetullah Gulen. This Muslim spiritual leader has concentrated on education for leadership in the 21st Century. They have opened educational institutions in many countries both in the developed and developing world. They are committed not to promote the Islamic faith like in our mission schools but to provide the highest quality of education that they know in our multi-religious world. Their three-pronged goals are quality education in the arts and sciences, character formation with appreciation of universal spiritual values, and promotion of inter-racial and inter-faith harmony in our pluralistic world. Their teachers are dedicated and passionate in selfless service and lead by example to fulfill these noble goals of education. They shared their lives with the people they serve. A little over ten years ago they responded and entered Cambodia. They began by starting a secondary school followed a few years later with a primary one and two years ago the Zaman University. I was privileged to attend the opening of the first local University in the country by the Minister of Education They have in a short space time gained credibility and was able to enroll children of parents who are leaders in business, industry and government. The Rector of the University, Dr Erkan Polatdemir, was a scholarship student in NUS and secured his Ph.D. in Physics. He taught at Republic Polytechnic and resigned with great financial cost to serve in Cambodia. The Turkish people who are part of the Gulen movement are providing support in a count;ry where there is a minute minority of Muslims. In our discussion we were exploring how crucial it is for the students in their educational institutions to inculcate new values, to clarify the new vision, to engage in working together for a new Cambodian society. Students need to be exposed to the issues of poverty and immersed in the life of the poor rural community so that they can be sensitized to the suffering of their own people and later lead them to new future. I do not cease to admire these Turkish people who have been inspired to engage in significant service in addressing the issue of poverty and touching the lives of people without regard to race or religion. They are singularly committed to develop through education leaders imbued with a sense of purpose for the common good and inflamed with the desire to shape a caring and compassionate human communities. They are demonstrating in different parts of the world the key to overcome poverty and the way to live in harmony with one another.

THE POVERTY TRAP --Yap Kim Hao-- I was invited to a luncheon and fireside chat jointly organized by the NUS Greater Good Series and Asia Refuge Projects. Dr Yang Saing Koma who received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for his rural development work in Cambodia and Professor Kua Ee Heok of NUS spoke on the topic “The Poverty Trap: Challenge of the Mind”. Asia Refuge Projects has invited Ambassador Chan Heng Chee as the Guest-of-Honour. This was also attended by NGOs from Cambodia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. I was reminded of my involvement on behalf of the Christian churches in the world on the work of relief and rehabilitation in 1979 immediately after the conclusion of the war and Phnom Penh was re-opened for the people to return home where they were forcefully evacuated by the Pol Pot regime. The task of rebuilding the country was soon extended to development work. The new government that came into power then continues to the present which is a period of thirty-two years. Hun Sen was the Defense Minister. After meeting the whole Cabinet it was made known to us that he will emerge to lead and in 1985 became the Prime Minister till today. He is the longest serving Prime Minister in the world. Dr Koma who is actively engaged in agriculture and rural development in his own country now would have been confronted with the many of the same challenges then. In the fireside chat he shared his concern of the mind-set of his people in the development of the country. His call is to respect the thinking of the people and aid agencies should not impose their ways upon them. It was expected that the people will develop a new vision of their own future different from the Pol Pot regime. Recently the country has entered a new phase of urbanization and industrialization with a new form of expelling the urban poor to the countryside without adequate compensation and infrastructure to exist as a viable rural community. Foreign companies have invaded the country to grasp economic gains. It is not only the addressing of the mind-set of the poor especially those in the rural society but also those who hold economic and political power. Are they aware of why people are poor or how they have been made poor. What is the common mind-set of the citizens as they carve a future for their country? We cannot deal with economic growth without engaging in social and political advancements for the common welfare of the whole country. The poverty trap is not in terms of money but also that of social and political values. What is the vision of our global community of nations? What is the mind-set of the people within our own countries and how do we sustain one another in this inter-connecting world? This is the challenge we face for our common survival on planetary earth.

Transforming the Economy

Transforming the Economy: Linking Hands Across the Social and Environmental Divide

by Helena Norberg-Hodge
December 12, 2011


I share the deep concern expressed by Allen Kanner in “Why Extinction Matters at Least as Much as Climate Change” about what is happening to our planet, and I agree with him that focusing on climate change is too narrow in scope and effect. However, I don’t believe that shifting attention to extinction is the way forward.


"We now have a not-to-be-missed opportunity to link hands with the global Occupy movement," the author writes. "Their focus on the injustice and unsustainability of corporate capitalism is taking the debate rapidly in the direction of strategic action." Here, a sign at Occupy Oakland makes the link between environmental injustice and corporate power. Credit: Creative Commons/Rainforest Action Network.

If we are to have any chance of bringing about meaningful change, we urgently need to broaden and deepen our analysis. Climate change and extinction are both too narrow. We need to move beyond ecological concerns to reach out to the ever-larger proportion of society focused on eradicating injustice and poverty. We need to reach out to those who now live in fear of losing their livelihoods and homes. And, if we start addressing root causes, we will see that the corporate control of our governments, media, science, and even our minds is the single most important cause of both social and ecological breakdown.

My perspective has been greatly influenced by living in the non-Western world for much of the last four decades. In less industrialized countries the impact of corporate media and advertisements is stark and dramatic. People who previously exhibited tremendous self-respect and dignity, start speaking of themselves as “underdeveloped,” backward, and poor. I have witnessed the many ways in which conventional development and economic globalization manipulate people into becoming consumers. At the same time, the destruction of more self-reliant local economies unravels the fabric of community because it leads to a dramatic increase in competition and conflict for scarce job opportunities.

As Kanner points out, “The world’s dominant economic system, capitalism, not only assumes that people are fundamentally selfish, but goes to tremendous lengths to drive this point home on a daily basis.” This economy encourages competition, desire, and jealousy at every turn. It plays on our fears and insecurities to induce us to consume ever more stuff. It underlies the pressures in the workplace, the desperation to hold on to a job in this time of rising unemployment and the fear and despair among the unemployed. It pervades every aspect of our lives, even influencing how we think and feel about ourselves. It has separated us from each other and the natural world and created or exacerbated every environmental crisis we face today.

In my view, we need to go straight to this root cause by addressing the economic system rather than the symptoms it produces. To do so, it is vital that we link the harm that this system is inflicting on the natural world to the harm that it inflicts on human beings. This allows us to acknowledge not only the tragic loss and suffering in the nonhuman world, but also the suffering in society: our children who are pressured from a young age to consume in order to feel loved, special, worthy; the teenagers so beset with insecurities that they harm themselves or lash out violently against their peers; the millions around the world who deal daily with depression; the students graduating with massive debts, full of self-doubt and little hope of employment; the 99 percent that have had more than enough of it all.


"My perspective has been greatly influenced by living in the non-Western world for much of the last four decades," the author writes. "I have witnessed the many ways in which conventional development and economic globalization manipulate people into becoming consumers," as in this crowded KFC in Mecca. Credit: CC Al Jazeera English.

Seeing the global economic system that promotes rampant consumerism and waste as the root cause of our environmental problems also enables us to reject the personal guilt and self-recrimination that is so widespread today in the West. Instead of focusing on narrow, individual consumer choices, it’s important to raise awareness about the need for policy change. Our efforts to reduce our ecological footprint are small in comparison to the massive amounts of carbon emissions produced by big business in the blind pursuit of globalized trade. Few jobs exist where we can work for the benefit of people and planet, and environmentally friendly products are often prohibitively expensive. The products most readily accessible are overpackaged, overprocessed, and shipped halfway around the world.

The same applies to extinction. Even though we should certainly encourage a sense of empathy and care, few individuals have any direct influence on the survival of endangered species. We can grieve, we can support conservation organizations, but ultimately we must make fundamental changes to the economy to avert further destruction.

We now have a not-to-be-missed opportunity to link hands with the global Occupy movement. Their focus on the injustice and unsustainability of corporate capitalism is taking the debate rapidly in the direction of strategic action. And, once the critique of multinational corporations and banks gives voice to the need for a systemic shift away from globalization, toward economic localization, we may well be on our way to greater sanity and sustainability.

The corporate economy is so vast and so distant that it’s structurally incapable of representing the needs of people and the Earth. Increasingly, people are coming to realize that the future lies in reducing the scale of economy, so as to bring it under democratic control. In essence, localization is about shortening the distance between producers and consumers wherever possible and meeting our needs — especially our basic needs — from closer to home. In localized economies, the impacts of our choices are more visible and we end up using resources more efficiently, while producing less waste and pollution. Localization is neither about eliminating international trade nor stopping all industrial production. It’s about insisting that business be place-based, that they belong to a society and adhere to the rules of that society.

The first and most urgent task is to level the playing field through re-regulating big business. Currently, large corporations — including banks, agri-businesses, and energy companies — enjoy a range of subsidies and tax breaks that are out of reach of smaller businesses. Without these supports, it would be very quickly apparent that business at this scale is inordinately costly, wasteful, and in many ways nonsensical. For example, redundant trade — the importing and exporting of identical products in almost identical quantities — would cease to be profitable and we could immediately reduce global carbon emissions by millions of tons.



Alongside these policy changes, we can support the bottom-up localization movement, which is already demonstrating that it is possible to reduce our ecological footprint while increasing economic stability. A prime example is the local food movement. By shortening the distance between producers and consumers, food miles are lowered, local economies strengthened, and many more small, diversified farms are able to survive. Studies have shown that farms like these actually produce more food per unit of land than large-scale monocultures. This means that more localized food systems leave more space for wilderness, while also increasing niches for wildlife on the farms themselves.


Local farmer's markets such as this one in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, offer a concrete example of localized economies that are already functioning. Credit: Creative Commons/WBUR.

In more place-based, localized economies people reconnect with the natural world around them; this kind of reconnection is one of the best ways to engender compassion, whether for other humans or for other species. There are a number of projects that are already doing this with juvenile delinquents, prisoners, torture victims, and people with drug addictions. The personal transformation many of them experience in reconnecting with the source of life is truly inspiring.

Experiencing our deeper connections to the living world can certainly lead to feelings of grief and loss, but also to joy and an appreciation for what is still there. Even the tiniest worm and beetle can engender a sense of the miracle of life and remind us that we are deeply, spiritually intertwined with the magical complexity of the cosmos.

Ultimately, it is deeply inspiring to realize that the same changes that are essential for our ecological wellbeing are essential for human well-being. No matter what our main concern is — climate change, unemployment and poverty, social conflict, or extinction — we can be most effective by focusing on root causes. That way we can begin not only to reverse our countless ecological problems but also to start the journey of recovering our deeper nature, our life-purpose, and our joy.

(To read other perspectives on extinction, climate change, and the rights of nature, click here.)


Author and filmmaker Helena Norberg-Hodge is the founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture. She is a pioneer of the ‘new economy’ movement, and has been promoting an economics of personal, social and ecological well-being for more than thirty years. Her groundbreaking work in Ladakh earned her the Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize), and her book, Ancient Futures, along with a film of the same title, has been translated into more than forty languages.

Why Liberation Theology is Necessary

Why Liberation Theology Is Necessary for Us All

A Response to an Imagined Critic from North America

by Ulrich Duchrow

Peace be with you! I have received your letter from Minnesota raising important questions about our church endorsing and following up the decisions taken by the Assemblies of the Lutheran World Federation in Winnipeg in 2003 and of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in Accra in 2004. I'm happy to be in dialogue with a pastor from North America. The passages you particularly challenge are:

The Lutheran World Federation's Statement on Globalization in its 10th Assembly saying, "As a communion, we must engage the false ideology of neoliberal economic globalization by confronting, converting, and changing this reality and its effects. This false ideology is grounded on the assumption that the market, built on private property, unrestrained competition, and the centrality of contracts, is the absolute law governing human life, society, and the natural environment. This is idolatry and leads to the systematic exclusion of those who own no property, the destruction of cultural diversity, the dismantling of fragile democracies, and the destruction of the earth."
The Accra Confession of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in 2004 stating, among other thing, "We believe that God is sovereign over all creation. ‘The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof' (Psalm 24.1). Therefore, we reject the current world economic order imposed by global neoliberal capitalism.... We reject any claim of economic, political, and military empire which subverts God's sovereignty over life and acts contrary to God's just rule."

Your first argument against the intent of these passages is:

We have to be "realistic" and achieve something real, rather than utopian transformation. We weaken our ability and our "credibility" if we in the Christian progressive world use language that is anti-capitalist or that envisions global transformations, because the people with power in the political system, including people we believe really have goodness in their hearts and want to make whatever changes they think are possible, stop listening to us or taking us seriously when we talk in these broader terms or with what seems like the jargon of communist Russia -- socialism, anti-imperialism, or even anti-capitalism. So, though we know that you too have a good heart, we cannot publicly identify with you because you'll weaken our ability to accomplish what really can be accomplished, which is less than what we would want, but more than what the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Council of Churches, and your church can accomplish with your ideologically based language and political orientation.

Your argument would be correct if we were still in a situation like that after World War II. After the disaster of classical liberalism in the great recession in 1929 and the two world wars, it was possible to tame capitalism to a certain extent. The labor movement had some power because the Fordist economy needed the buying power of the people to buy the products of mass production, capitalism had to make compromises in order to cope with the competition of socialism dragging more and more countries into its camp, there were no limits to growth because the ecological problems were not yet seen, and it was still possible for the Western world to extract raw materials and other wealth from many colonies. The result was a kind of social contract between labor and capital in the form of what was called the New Deal in the United States and the Social Market Economy in Europe.

However, this situation gradually changed. What were the reasons?

At the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, John Maynard Keynes, the famous British economist, proposed institutions and policies that took the European social market economy as the model for the postwar global economy. The United States, however, having become the hegemonic power after the self-destruction of the Europeans, refused. It wanted both the dollar as the world currency and trade liberalization for its big companies. This opened up space for neoliberalism to rise in various ways. In order to regain ideological hegemony in the 1930s, liberal economists had already started a transnational network leading to the foundation of the Mont Pelerin Society under the leadership of Friedrich von Hayek. Through think tanks, university institutes, journals, etc., they started a long-term campaign for privatization, liberalization, and deregulation.

At the same time, the United States put dictators in power, mainly through intelligence instruments (the CIA) and local collaborators. (Remember that the first case was Iran, where the democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh was toppled because he wanted to nationalize oil. The Shah was installed by grace of the United States -- starting the tragedies of Iran that have lasted up to the present day.) The first task of the dictators was to open up their national markets to transnational capital in order to give it access to markets and resources for its own interest; the second was to crush all political and social resistance against this interference (resistance was crushed not only in Iran in 1953, but also in Congo in 1960, Brazil in 1964, Indonesia in 1965/1966, Chile in 1973, and Argentina in 1975). These dictators were also to contract national debts by buying Western products, thereby instigating the over-indebtedness of their countries. These foreign debts were used by Western-dominated, undemocratic institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank, with the help of structural adjustment policies, to liberalize, privatize, and deregulate the economies and societies of these countries. In this way, the structural force of finance replaced direct military force. The result was massive impoverishment, expropriation of national resources, and increased violence among the people of these countries, now struggling bitterly for survival. Anyone who does not want to believe these facts should read the confessions of one of the "economic hit men," John Perkins, whose conscience did not allow him to continue working in this system and who, therefore, left his highly paid job in the hands of what he calls the economic Mafia (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: The Shocking Story of How America Really Took Over the World).

This development intensified after 1990, after the collapse of the competing system, state socialism (which in the same modern context as capitalism had in its own way concentrated political and economic power at the top and violated human rights): the neoliberal-capitalist model has now become globalized. Globally, mobile capital can play workers and governments of all countries against each other, leading to the dismantling of the welfare functions of the state and strengthening the security functions. The international aspect of this has been that the main military and political servants of capital empire -- the United States, the EU, and their allies -- are going back to methods of direct violence to steal and control resources in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, there is increasing social downgrading of more and more people, direct violent aggression, and destruction of nature around the earth. Human rights, originally formulated by the bourgeoisie, are increasingly being destroyed by global capitalism in the form of empire.

In this situation it is utopian and unrealistic to assume that some leaders with good hearts can save humanity and the earth from destruction. Finance capital is asking for maximum profits, at the moment up to 25 percent on the invested capital and even more -- a profit rate that no real economy can yield. That is why companies are forced to produce unemployment and to avoid all ecological care in order to save costs. Also all goods and services for the satisfaction of real needs are deteriorating in order to extract profit for capital. Politicians and media are being co-opted by both corruption and blackmailing, making democracy a farce. As capital by definition is the investment of money and other assets in order to create more capital, and as this is the driving force of the dominating economy, it is completely correct to call this system capitalism. And it is also correct to call the global political and military powers protecting this system imperialist.

As a pastor you know the Bible. Is it not the prophetic task of the people of God to name the powers, to unmask and engage them? But then the question arises: how to engage the powers and how to change the situation so that humanity and earth, God's creation, may live. If you look to the Bible for help, you can discover different strategies dependent on the context. If you look at the classical prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, they indeed try to change the situation of injustice by directly addressing the kings and the aristocracy. However, already in the case of the struggle for power after the deaths of Kings Manasseh and Amon (643-640 bce) the prophets join with the movement of the peasants who put the eight-year-old prince Josiah on the throne of David. Under his rule the faith in the liberating God of Israel and God's rules of solidarity for keeping freedom were restored, as you can read in the Torah's book of Deuteronomy. This situation can be regarded as an approximate analogy to the times of the New Deal and Social Market Economy. People had a common framework through which to address the elites.

However, by Hellenistic times the situation had changed completely. Particularly after the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV had taken power, he prohibited the worship of the God of Israel, YHWH, in the temple of Jerusalem, where he put a statue of Zeus. The economy was to be governed by the absolute rule of property, money, and slavery. No life according to the Torah was possible. In this situation there was no possibility of correcting the situation by speaking to the rulers. The Maccabeans took up arms for a liberation war and the Hasidim practiced passive resistance. A witness of this is the book of Daniel, the third chapter of which characterizes the situation by telling the parable of an emperor erecting a statue of gold and asking everybody to bow in front of it. All do so, except three Jewish men who are ready to suffer the consequences: martyrdom. So in this situation resistance against the absolutist system was the only way of following God and preparing for a future in dignity and faith for people.

The same can be seen in the Roman Empire. Many Judeans took up arms against the occupation forces, others tried to politically bargain; others engaged in passive resistance. One particular strategy was used by the Jesus movement. Building on the book of Daniel -- where in chapter seven the seer had envisaged the kingdom of God with a human face, overcoming the empires, characterized as wild beasts -- Jesus proclaimed and practiced God's coming kingdom as already happening among people. He liberated people from the demons of the oppressive powers of Rome and Mammon, the God of accumulating wealth, and built with them small cells living according to the life-giving Torah of solidarity. Thus he created leaven to penetrate the whole people, followed later by the apostle Paul building new communities of Jews and gentiles, living peacefully together in the whole oikumene of the Roman Empire. So in the midst of an absolutely exploitative and oppressive system, the realistic policy is to resist and develop concrete alternatives among the people.

But you have a second argument. You say:

We have learned that large-scale changes have unintended consequences that can often be disastrous, and that they too often lead to the rise to power of people who care more about power than about healing the world. We've learned from Reinhold Niebuhr and other Christian theologians that it is really more in accord with the Gospel to frame our vision in ways that are not utopian.

Your point is well taken. You could see this tendency of perverting liberation into oppression already when the Maccabeans came to power. They quickly developed into normal Hellenistic potentates. Also when the Christians got to power with the help of the Roman emperor Constantine in the year 312, they applied violence against Jews, later also Muslims, witches, and whole peoples through colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism, from 1492 up to this day. Minority Christian groups who did not follow this path were accused of being heretics and persecuted, too. The only way to overcome this heritage is to learn from leaders like Gandhi. The key point here is that the means in the struggle for justice and peace have to mirror the end. If you want justice and peace, these have to be the guiding criteria on the way. This is why Gandhi claimed that the strategy to achieve these goals is satyagraha (holding fast to truth) and ahimsa (active nonviolent direct action). With these you do not tolerate injustice but confront the perpetrator (in his case the British Empire), forcing it to react. By reacting with increasingly open violence, it discredited itself, losing legitimacy. As no power can survive without legitimacy, more and more people joined the struggle, encouraged by the pioneers who had been risking their lives.

But, finally, you have a third argument:

We also have learned from the Gospel that human beings were conceived in sin and have a strong tendency toward sin. For that very reason, we want to avoid giving any person or group of people the power to shape our lives. We know that human beings are so tempted to fall for their own egos, their own shadow side, and their own evil instincts that we cannot allow them to get the power to do that. By fighting for small incremental steps, we can be sure that each step is carefully measured and doesn't push human beings beyond their current capacities, and that provides us with much more safety than we could possibly get from large-scale changes.

In this argument I see two strands. The first one puzzles me. Are you not contradicting yourself? Is not the present situation exactly characterized by "giving persons and groups of people the power to shape our lives"? Is it not the owners of capital and their agents -- the bankers, the managers, the business consultants, etc. -- who determine the lives of the people and even the whole earth? Do they not determine the decisions of the governments? What about the lobbyists in the capitals of the States and Washington, D.C.? In Brussels, the headquarters of the EU, there are 15,000 of them, highly paid, while the poor majorities have no money to make their voice heard. Have they not indebted our public budgets to an incredible extent in order to take our democratically elected governments hostage and blackmail them for their own purposes, i.e., making money at the cost of people and earth?

In order to really make governments accountable, you have to democratize the economy. Therefore, social movements and faithful parts of the faith communities around the world are developing alternative ways of doing economy: people form cooperatives; they take over companies that have gone bankrupt from the neoliberal policies like in Argentina after the crash in 2001; they develop networks of solidarity economy and participatory communal budgets like in Brazil; they produce their own decentralized alternative energy (sun, wind, water, biomass) at the communal level like in Germany; they stop the privatization of public goods and services like water, energy, public transport, health, and education. In Uruguay, after the social movements had achieved the change to a socially oriented government five years ago, the first action of the new government was to write into the constitution "Water must never be privatized."

All of this and many more things show that there is a great cultural paradigm shift in the making. More and more people realize that the present way of life and economic system has no future. The population of the United States already has a lifestyle that needs six planets; the Europeans use up three planets. How long can that last? The crisis we are in is not just a financial crisis, but a deep crisis of modernity that builds on a presupposition, formulated by the philosopher Descartes in the seventeenth century: "Man is lord and owner of nature."

This touches upon the last part of your argument: Who is the human being? You say you are following the Gospel. But in reality you are following Thomas Hobbes, the seventeenth-century philosopher who first projected what he saw in the capitalist market economy onto the nature of the human being: everyone, being an atomistic individual, strives for more wealth, power, and reputation. The Bible has a different view. Humans are created as relational beings, men and women, in the image of God, blessed by God and called to be stewards of the earth (Gen. 1:26-28). Indeed, sin is tempting them but they are called to control it (Gen. 4:7). God gives them rules about how to stay in the blessing and in freedom (Deuteronomy). And Jesus reinforces this reality by radiating the spirit of solidarity to make the beginnings of God's kingdom happen among people, to penetrate humanity like salt and light (Matt. 5). So pinning people down in the inescapability of sin is not in accordance with the Gospel.

Nor is it in line with the latest scientific findings. Brain research shows that human beings have so-called mirror neurons that enables them to feel empathy with other creatures and make them enjoy cooperation. Relational psychology tells us that from the original relationship between mother and baby onward we become (strong) selves only in relationships of mutual recognition. Even economic happiness research shows that, having reached a certain standard of living, people do not become happier by accumulating more and more money. Instead, people's happiness increases by living in good relations at all levels. The same is experienced in other faiths like Buddhism. Happiness is achieved by living with empathy.

Besides all this scientific and spiritual evidence, the overcoming of the Western modern ideology of possessive individualism and the war of all against all is a question of survival of humanity and the earth. If we continue to declare the Western model "realism," we will not only kill the earth but also commit suicide. Therefore, the Jewish-Christian central call, "Love your neighbor as yourself," must be translated differently (in the tradition of Buber and Levinas): "Love your neighbor -- he/she is yourself." Bishop Desmond Tutu says the same idea is expressed in the African philosophy of ubuntu: "I live only when you live." This, of course, has to be organized within participatory institutions of power control, starting from the local level. But the basis is to overcome the illusionary suicidal Western utopia of the limitless growth of the individual and to become realistic with the spiritual and wisdom traditions and sciences of humanity.

So, dear brother, join us in AGAPE -- the Greek word for love; it is taken up by a program of the World Council of Churches, but here AGAPE is translated as Alternative Globalization Addressing People and Earth.

Ulrich Duchrow is a professor of systematic theology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, specialized in ecumenical theology and theology-economy issues. He is also cofounder and moderator of Kairos Europa, an ecumenical network striving for economic justice.

An expanded version of this document, that includes a Statement of Reasons, is available on http://www.oenid.net/IOeFK/Engl_FinalProposalDeclarationOnJustPeace.pdf).

Source Citation: Duchrow, Ulrich. 2011. A European Revival of Liberation Theology. Tikkun 26(1): 74

Liberation Theology

Life in Just Peace

A joint statement by a group of twenty-six European initiatives and networks, including Kairos Europe, Pax Christi (German section), INKOTA, Christians for a Just Economic System, Pleading for an Ecumenical Future, Winds from the South, and several regional ecumenical grassroots networks, working together in the "German Ecumenical Network" in preparation for the May 2011 International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in Kingston, Jamaica.

Humanity and the earth are undergoing a unique crisis. Above all, this is manifested in the form of the financial and economic crisis, the food crisis, the social crisis (the growing gap between those who are becoming poorer and those becoming richer), the energy crisis, the climate crisis, the crisis of the extinction of species and the crisis of increasing violence at all levels -- from the family and schools to imperialist wars. The causes of these crises are clearly related to the dominant civilization, which from the "West" has conquered the entire globe in the areas of economics, politics, ideology, and the understanding of what it means to be human. This crisis is threatening life itself. As we see it, just peace must therefore be understood as leading toward a new culture of life at all levels -- from institutional to spiritual life.

The necessary turnaround toward a life in just peace includes at least three dimensions:

A spiritual vision of a new, emerging culture of life, based on faith or a humanist motivation.
The fundamental rejection of the dominant economic, political, violence-producing culture and world order, for the sake of the integrity of faith and the very being of the church.
Short-, medium-, and long-term steps toward realizing this vision.

We therefore present the following declaration, which is based on the biblical message and affirms decisions by the assemblies of ecumenical organizations, inviting all churches, congregations, and Christians to embrace it and to publicly advocate for the implementation of its demands.

1. Which god shall rule?

We believe that God created the whole universe in love, inviting all people to cooperate with God's ongoing creative work in mutual solidarity and respect for God's gifts. "The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it" (Ps. 24:1). With faith in God's Trinitarian dynamic we confess with all Christians the sociality of God as the source of the unity of all creatures.

Therefore, we reject the current world economic order imposed by global neoliberal capitalism -- using both structural and direct violence. We reject every claim to an economic, political, and military empire that attempts to subvert God's order of life and whose actions stand in contrast to God's love and justice. We reject an economic system and way of life that exploits nature and propagates unlimited growth so that the conditions of life for future generations are forcibly destroyed and the survival chances of the entire earth are threatened.

The power of God's Spirit frees us as individuals and churches to resist the ruling political-economic-cultural system and to work for crucially necessary alternatives.

2. God's good gifts for all should not be privatized by force.

We believe that God is a God of life and desires the fullness of life for all creatures. "I came that they might have life and have it abundantly" (John 10:10).

Therefore we reject a policy that through the privatization of collective and common goods produces wealth for the capital owners but scarcity and poverty for the vast majority of the world's population -- the worst kind of violence (Gandhi) -- and which exploits and even destroys nature. With particular emphasis we reject the patenting of seeds and of medicines that are necessary to meet people's basic needs. We say no to the privatization of genes as well as acts of biopiracy; no to the privatization of water and other gifts of nature; no to the privatization of services of general interest such as energy, transportation, health, education; also no to the destruction of solidarity-based social insurance systems through privatization; no to their submission to profit-oriented insurance companies and at the same time to speculative finance markets. All of this is structural violence at the service of the rich. But especially we reject the direct violence of a policy that wages wars to realize these private interests and wastes immeasurable resources on armaments.

The power of God's Spirit frees us as individuals and churches to work for the democratizing of the economy and the solidarity-based social systems toward serving life, among ourselves and in society, so that all might have enough, so that neither hardship nor excessive consumption prevails and that the earth can remain intact for future generations. Economic systems should be for the common use and not for the expansion of capital. For this reason goods and services for basic needs as well as global common goods must be publically run for mutual benefit, so that in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights all governments recognize their responsibility for the welfare of their citizens. We pledge to struggle for an order at all levels, in which economics and politics are put at the service of life for all and thereby overcome the fundamental causes of violence.

3. God's good earth should not be destroyed by greed.

We believe that God entrusted human beings with a rich and beautiful earth. "The Lord took the human beings and put them in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it" (Gen. 2:15).

Therefore, we reject an economic and social order that converts God's gifts into commodities and in so doing increasingly destroys them. We especially call on Christians, congregations, and churches in the industrialized countries to recognize their enormous ecological debts, particularly their destructive climate debts, toward people who have been living in impoverished regions for the past five hundred years, and at least to offer symbolic compensation, to radically reduce their harmful greenhouse emissions, and to oblige their governments to pass national and international laws to keep global warming under two degrees and to stop the extermination of species.

The power of God's Spirit frees us as individuals and churches to set an example and reduce our consumption of energy and the environment as well as to force our governments to establish binding rules for reduction under international law (allowing for transitional arrangements for newly industrialized and developing countries). All in all, we will work for a cyclical economy that makes the gifts of nature available for just and sustainable use.

4. God liberates working people from violent exploitation.

We believe that God intends human labor to become participation in God's creative power and as a means for self-sufficiency in human societies, without exploiting working men and women. "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other Gods before me" (Gen. 20:2).

Therefore, we reject an economic order in which working people, especially women, are (structurally or directly) violently exploited and driven into unemployment. We reject governments that tax workers more and more but levy less and less taxes on capital gains from profits and fortunes and refuse to abolish tax havens.

The power of God's Spirit frees us as individuals and churches to struggle in cooperation with labor unions for legal systems and economic decisions in which those able to work can find useful employment and socially meaningful jobs and -- owing to increased productivity -- comprehensive reduced working hours. In reaching these decisions, all of those involved in the productive process must have a voice.

5. God does not want any accumulation of wealth beyond that which is necessary for life.

We believe that God despises the accumulation of wealth for the few at the cost of the majority. "No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth" (Matt. 6:24). "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, nor ox nor donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor" (Exod. 20:17).

Therefore we reject an economic order that stimulates and rewards greed, which is dependent on nature-destroying and socially antagonistic growth, because it makes money and capital a commodity and its increase an end in itself.

The Spirit of God frees us as individuals and churches to overcome the violent power of money and especially its speculative misuse as a "financial weapon of mass destruction." We ourselves will only use money at the service of genuine economic activity. In concert with social movements we will struggle to induce political institutions to make money a national and international public good that only serves useful economic activity, and to ensure that all use of property becomes socially and ecologically beneficial to all.

6. God wants to create human security through justice rather than through military means.

"This is the word of the Lord to Zerubabbel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts" (Zech. 4:6). "Until a spirit from on high is poured out upon us, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is deemed a forest. Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field. The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness, and trust forever" (Isa. 32:15-17).

Therefore we say no to the institution of war, which -- under the conditions of present-day weapons technology -- cannot be justified under any circumstances; no to the more than 1 billion U.S. dollars wasted annually for armaments while more than 30 million people die from the causes of hunger. Arms do not murder only when they are used, but already while they are being produced. In particular we reject the imperialist wars, which stand in violation of international law, such as those against Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the unlimited "war on terror." Therefore we reject the presence of more than 800 U.S. military bases, under whose protection authoritarian and pseudo-democratic regimes such as those in the Philippines and Colombia commit notorious violations of human rights, and also the arming of the European Community with international rapid intervention forces. When the international community needs to intervene in individual countries and regions because of notorious violations of human rights, this must be done only by police forces under the umbrella of a democratized United Nations.

The power of God's Spirit frees us as individuals and churches to refuse to cooperate in any way with waging war. Instead, in the spirit of Jesus and Gandhi we wish to confront all injustice with readiness to accept conflicts and suffering, to cooperate in reconciliation processes therapeutically and in terms of prevention, and to contribute to a political stance that seeks to outlaw war.

7. Weapons of mass destruction are blasphemy against God.

We believe that weapons of mass destruction are blasphemy, since human beings are created in the image of God. "Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person's blood be shed; for in God's own image God made humankind" (Gen. 9:6).

Therefore, we reject unequivocally the production, deployment, and use of means of mass destruction, which always shed innocent human blood and can even eliminate all life on earth. We reject the strategies of the United States and NATO, which claim the right to a nuclear first strike and already are making use of enhanced munitions with disastrous effects for the people targeted.

The power of the Spirit of God frees us to refuse to collaborate under any circumstances in the production, deployment, or use of weapons of mass destruction or to vote for any political party that has not declared its support for the complete abolition of any means of mass destruction. We call on all members of Christian churches to do likewise. Especially we call on the government of the United States as well as on other governments to make deeds follow their words and to create a nuclear-free world. Only then can governments now working to achieve a nuclear capacity be prevented from realizing their plans.

8. God has created a people, which has invited all peoples to a life with a just peace.

We believe that God has called us to be a people that lives a life of justice and peace and can so become the light of the world, the city on the hill and salt of the earth (Matt. 5:13-16). "Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that God may teach us God's ways and that we may walk in God's paths.' For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem" (Isa. 2:3-5, NRSV).

Therefore, we reject all misuse of the name of God and Christ for achieving power, be it by governments, political parties, groups, theologies, or churches. We especially reject prosperity theologies, fundamentalist crusade theologies, and ideologies that in the name of freedom increase the wealth of capital owners and even support the use of imperialist violence to this end.

The power of God's Spirit frees us as individuals and churches to follow Jesus and to participate in building God's domination-free kingdom, God's life-affirming order with a human face. This includes collaboration in developing

(1) a new economic approach based on solidarity and serving life;

(2) the practice of nonviolent behavior for conflict resolution and therapy, avoiding and reducing violence at all levels, from the family to a world peace order; and

(3) a style of life that promotes ecological and social justice.

We seek the company and cooperation of people of other faiths or of none, who respect and promote the lives of the most humble human beings and of the endangered earth. In the name of Jesus we ask God for the spiritual power to rejoice at the wonderful gifts of creation, to lead a life of justice and peace, and to work toward the day when this will be enjoyed by all people