wfn.org | "What's Globalization?" - WCC Assembly Participants

[CAROL_FOUKE.parti@ecunet.org (CAROL FOUKE)]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
Contact: NCC News, 212-870-2227
Internet: news@ncccusa.org

NCC12/18/98       FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

GLOBALIZATION: WCC ASSEMBLY PARTICIPANTS 
DESCRIBE DIVINE, DIABOLICAL ASPECTS

 HARARE, Zimbabwe ---- "Globalization" - it's fast 
becoming one of the popular "buzz words" of our day.  The 
8th Assembly approved a statement on globalization, and many 
speakers, including the WCC's moderator and general 
secretary, made reference to it in plenary speeches.  

 But what does it mean?  What are its implications for 
us and for our churches?  Interviews with Assembly 
participants revealed a wide range of definitions - some 
pointing to globalization's potential to lift up, others to 
its capacity to oppress.
 
 One thing is sure, globalization has implications for 
all of us, for our dignity, for evangelism - even for how a 
congregation calls a new minister or pays its electricity 
bill.
 
 "There are a number of interpretations," began Phambili 
ka Ntloko of the Church of God and Saints in Christ, South 
Africa, whose ministry is with industrial workers.  
"Globalization is a strategy of international capital to 
create more markets for itself and to restructure the 
relationships of production.
 
 "All companies are being pushed to be internationally 
competitive, so they 'downsize,'" laying off workers, he 
said.  Similarly, when state-owned companies such as 
transport and telecommunications are privatized, they fire 
workers "on the basis that the new owner will be 
'efficient.'  Workers work longer hours at a time capital 
needs them and when not needed they don't work."
 
 The church must respond holistically, Mr. Ntloko said.  
"We must be the voice that says an alternative society is 
possible, where there will be justice, equality, sharing and 
dignity.  And we must minister to workers and understand 
their needs and problems.  
 "People, when they lose their job, sense that their 
dignity as human beings is challenged," he said.  "Some go 
to the extent of hiding the fact that they are no longer 
working.  They go out carrying their bags as usual and come 
back in the evening, because not working hurts their 
dignity.  The church must restore that dignity.  The church 
must be an anchor of hope in their hour of darkness."
 
 Mr. Ntloko's International Committee for Industrial 
Mission offers such an anchor.  It runs job creation and 
employment programs "so people can live on their own, start 
a business and hope in life again."

 Rev. Kenichi Otsu, General Secretary, National Council 
of Churches of Japan, said that while most discussion of 
globalization centers on the economic aspects, "we want 
people to be aware of the military aspect."

 For example, Japan - which according to its 
Constitution has no Army but does have a civil defense force 
- and the United States have signed a new security agreement 
that commits Japan to support U.S. military action.  Japan 
must open space for military exercises and Japan's private 
sector - transportation, public facilities - also must 
cooperate.  "The U.S. already uses our base in Okinawa," Mr. 
Otsu said.  "Before it was under the United Nations' 
framework.  Now it's a bilateral agreement."

 Rev. Dr. Kathryn T. Williams of the Christian Church 
(Disciples of Christ), U.S.A., has "said for years that 
there's no such thing as a United States economy.  It's a 
global economy.  When Black Monday hit Wall Street, it also 
hit Japan and London."  
 
 Similarly, she tells her co-parishioners at First 
Christian Church in Corpus Christi, Texas, "There's no 
longer home or foreign, there's one world, we are the 
stewards and we are responsible for the whole world and not 
just the people of Corpus Christi.  You can't make decisions 
for this congregation except in the context of the whole 
inhabited world of God."
 
 For example, 25 years ago when Dr. Williams was 
associate pastor of First Christian Church, the congregation 
set the goal of spending 50 percent of its budget on its own 
needs and programs and 50 percent on others.  "We got up to 
42 percent," she said.
 
 More recently, she discovered that four or five months 
into the year, the congregation had not yet sent money to 
the denomination's basic mission finance.  "I was 
horrified," she recalled.  "I went to the chair of the 
Stewardship Committee and said, 'If this continues, I am 
going to divide my tithe and send my portion of the money 
directly.'"
 
 The chairperson responded, "But the light bills have to 
be paid."  Dr. Williams retorted, "At my house we tithe 
first and then we figure out how to pay the light bill."  
Until the problem was resolved another four or five months 
later, Dr. Williams wrote a check to the denomination's 
mission body and put it in the offering plate each week 
"with strict instructions to send it immediately."
 
 "Thinking globally" also affects "the way we call the 
minister," Dr. Williams said.  "Ask the candidates, 'Do you 
believe in the mission of the whole church?'  Some people 
say, 'We have so much to do here.'  But Jesus said, 'Go into 
all the world - Jerusalem, Samaria, to the ends of the 
earth.'  You have to do them all at the same time.
 
 "Every decision must be made in the context of the 
whole church and the whole world," she said.  "When it's 
easy to do that, it's one thing.  The crisis is the test of 
the effectiveness of an organization and of how seriously we 
believe." 

 Abigail Damasane, Family of God Church, Zimbabwe, spoke 
of the difficulties of taking advantage of the benefits of 
globalization.  She said, "We have been independent for only 
18 years.  Some of these international terms are 'new from 
the box' for us.  Globally, we are trying to walk before we 
have crawled, in order to catch up and to be on the global 
wavelength."

 A Harare taxi driver served as a case in point.  Since 
his father and older brother died, he has become responsible 
for supporting his mother and two younger brothers, along 
with his wife and their two children.  "I don't know how we 
are surviving," he said, describing his struggle to earn the 
about U.S.$240 a month needed.  A U.S.$1,200 roundtrip air 
ticket to the United States is virtually unthinkable, he 
said.

 As for globalization, "it's just a word," he said.  
"I'm not feeling any advantage."  For globalization to work, 
he speculated, it would take one currency, one economy, one 
president.  Noting that it now costs about 63 Zimbabwean 
dollars to purchase one British Pound, he said, "I don't 
think the British want to give up 62/63rds of the value of 
their currency."

 The Rev. Lala Biasima, a pastor of the Church of Christ 
in Congo and associate general secretary of the CCC's 
Department of Women and the Family, expressed stronger 
misgivings.  She said, "We feel very uneasy when we hear 
about globalization.  Part of the world is very powerful and 
the rest weak.  The strong will do what they want regardless 
of the effect on the poor."

 The challenge, she said, is to "make sure everyone 
benefits in some way, and to  redistribute the resources 
rather than widen the gap between rich and poor."  
 
 Assembly participants who were interviewed agreed that 
globalization is here to stay, and that the church "must 
fight against the bad side of globalization," said Bishop 
Hans Gerny of the Old Catholic Church in Switzerland.  "We 
should not be too adapted to society."
 
 "We can look at it and see how big financial powers can 
help the weaker ones," said the Rev. Oka Fau'olo, 
Congregational Christian Church in Samoa.  "They want to 
make money - (that's alright) as long as they don't take too 
much and as long as we have good mutual understanding and 
negotiation."
 
 Globalization also has good sides, several people said.  
"Would the WCC have met in Harare in 1948?," Bishop Gerny 
asked.  "People can have more contact, can help in areas 
where they could not help before. Christ says, 'Go and make 
disciples of all nations.'  It's a challenge to bring all 
nations the Gospel of liberation.  We can use new tools like 
the Internet to share the Gospel in word and deed, using the 
new tools that link us globally."

 Anglican Archbishop Walter Makhulu from Botswana, in a 
debt hearing, distinguished between "human" and "divine" 
globalization. He said the former "insists on privatization, 
currency devaluation, reduction of government subsidies and 
trade deregulation."  

 "We must agitate for the cancellation of debt," he 
said.  "Then we will rediscover the divine globalization of 
community, generosity, sharing and mutual caring."

 Rev. Dr. Kwasi Aboagye-Mensah, International Fellowship 
of Evangelical Mission Theologians, who will serve as 
General Secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana 
beginning January 1999, took a positive, "visioning" 
approach, along the lines of divine globalization.
 
 "My understanding is a linking of people of the world 
together in kind of a global village where we will become 
very much interconnected both in fulfillment of our needs as 
well as sharing of the world's resources," he said.  "As a 
Christian I see globalization as one of the many things in 
the Scriptures where God is seeking to bring all nations 
together in Christ through the enabling presence of the Holy 
Spirit.
 
 "Through technology I'm linked to what's happening far 
and near," Rev. Aboagye-Mensah said.  "I don't even have to 
go out of my house to buy stamps.  In a visionary form it 
will bring all nations together and have one language in a 
metaphorical sense.  So there's not the fear of you 
destroying me but the anticipation of how you can make me 
whole.  So that the meeting is much more positive."

For More Information: http://www.wcc-coe.org or 
http://www.ncccusa.org

-end-
 -0-