wfn.org | Lutherans urged to face challenges of gap between rich and poor

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Churches need to face challenges of gap between rich and poor
Rajaratnam addresses assembly on a just society

HONG KONG, July 25, 1997 (lwi) - The earth has become "a heaven for a few,
and for the large majority of the globe's inhabitants, it has become a
veritable hell!" said Dr. Kunchala Rajaratnam. 

Rajaratnam, an economist, is director of the Gurukul Lutheran Theological
College and Research Institute and director of the Center for Research on
New Economic Order in Madras. He spoke to the Assembly during the plenary
on "Towards a Just Society."

"The gap between the rich and the poor has always been there since the
beginning of history, but today the gap is widening instead of closing," he
said. An unjust society is at the root of this widening gap. These
disparities between rich and poor prevail both among countries and within
them, he said. 

The gross inequality in income distribution leads to widespread hunger,
malnutrition, disease, death and homelessness, and "this depravity is not
confined to Third World countries," he said, noting many Americans are also
homeless.

"We have before us a sick and wailing world," he said. Despite progress in
such areas as science and technology, "the grip of base and cruel human
nature holds the society to ransom with hunger and malnutrition, disease,
death and poverty in a scale and intensity unknown in history, exploitive
economic mechanisms that trample down four-fifths of humanity in
inescapable fetters of starvation and misery."

There has always been the exploiting rich and the exploited poor with the
church leadership joining the rich in exploitation, he said. "Royalty used
physical power and the priests used mythical power to subdue the illiterate
and the innocent all over the world."

The combination of ruler and priest and the market economy including
globalization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World
Trade Organization, and external debt all contributed to the suffering.

Biblically "the church in any country has no choice but to take the side of
the exploited, be it in one's own country or outside! Otherwise the church
is an abetter of the crimes of the state. The market is globalized: the
mission to eradicate the evils of globalized market should also be
globalized. The mission is to identify the causes of the chaos in the world
and confront them," he said.

"The church in the whole world must confront the combine of the rich of the
rich countries and rich of the poor countries who have become a formidable
force against the poor. The international ecumenical church must challenge
this unholy alliance," Rajaratnam said.

"The church in poor countries has a challenge and an opportunity to join
the struggle against injustice and exploitation within their countries."

In India the United Evangelical Lutheran Churches in India have developed
action programs in response to the social challenges, he said. "Action
programs embrace transformation of the social, economic and cultural life
of men, women and children" and "enable them to assert their economic and
human rights and exercise their political rights."

Dr. Hanan Ashrawi of the Palestinian National Authority had been invited to
address the Assembly with Rajaratnam, but she was unable to attend.

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