Ann spoke of how on several occasions the campaign had no money left in the bank with bills coming in. Just then a large cheque would arrive and the campaign continued. She described being in New York in September 1999, deeply disillusioned with the lack of progress, and abandoning her team to have a coffee and a moan with a friend. In the café CNN was showing live as President Clinton came to Press Conference to deliver probably yet another bland reassurance that something would be done at some time. Instead he simply said that the U.S. would no longer take any debt payments from the most heavily indebted poor countries. Ann was dumbfounded. Later she heard that the U.S. Treasury had refused to back such a move, and Clinton’s presidential aides advised against it. He was still working on his speech as he went to the Press Conference. Ann saw his dramatic announcement as ‘miraculous.’

The event in 2003 felt much less than a miracle, more a damp squib. 5 years before the human chain had easily circled inner Birmingham in midsummer sunshine. 5 years on we only just managed to circle the small Cathedral precinct in persistent drizzle. The Mothers Union were well represented along with the mainstream churches. Homemade red chains adorned the railings and whistles were blown as we held hands and sang “We shall overcome.” It was a cheerful remembrance but we were aware how insignificant we now were. A few people asked what we were doing and why so many people were wearing rainbow coloured scarves. The Press kept away.

Michael Taylor, former Director of Christian Aid, spoke of sustainability. Can we keep campaigning even now? Less than 20% of the debt has been cancelled - not enough. Even Uganda who has had more debt cancelled than any other country still pays huge amounts in debt repayments. Virtually nothing has been achieved since 1999. With the price of many commodities falling, the problem is growing worse again. Michael Taylor encouraged us to keep going in friendship with people across the world. He recalled being in a village in India where there is no significant debt problem. The women were working on several problems of their own, including a home brew seller who enticed the men to spend too much on beer, and landowners who didn’t pay fair wages. But they were also travelling far and wide, further than they had been in their lives, to gather signatures for the debt petition. Michael asked them why. “Because we want to stand with our sisters in Africa” they replied.

The campaign has indeed been taken to heart in Africa. Many African countries now have organisations bringing together faith groups and NGOs to campaign for debt cancellation and to monitor closely money that has been released through debt cancellation. People are more involved in scrutinising national and local governments. A culture of accountability is being built up. The Fellowship of Christian Councils in Southern Africa has moved on from talking about unpayable debt to illegitimate debt - debt incurred by former corrupt leaders for which the present generation should not be held responsible. Responsibility lies more with the lenders who knew the kind of people they were lending to and what the money would be used for.

Africa and Britain took the Jubilee Campaign to heart. Europe however did not. After Birmingham 1998 came Cologne 1999. Great crowds were expected and the town was saturated with police. Thousands of Brits went over for the day. But numbers from Germany, France and other mainland countries were small. The G8 leaders announced the debt cancellation they had been working on since Birmingham, but probably breathed a sigh of relief that they could leave it at that. By the time of the 2001 Genoa meeting, the debt protestors had been swamped by violent anti-capitalists.

It seems that there is little more to expect from world leaders. The Americans suddenly started talking about debt cancellation for Iraq, but, as a Christian Aid spokesman pointed out, this is probably because the debt is owed mostly to France and Russia. George Bush is not sympathetic to debt cancellation, and for him to go against his advisors it would take a miracle of miracles. The European leaders do not have a popular groundswell behind them. There is talk of an annual World Debt Day to provide a focus for the ongoing campaign, but if this is only in Britain and Africa, what impact will it have?

2005 was the year to ‘Make Poverty History,’ with the UK hosting the G8 meetings again as well as holding the Presidency of the European Union. Once again British Christians turned out in great numbers for a pleasant, sunny, protest, this time in Edinburgh. Once again other people stayed away. Bob Geldorf attracted thousands to London for a concert, but hardly anyone to Edinburgh for the real protest. It seems that a little more debt has been cancelled but all the campaigners say it is too little.

Is it now time to be more radical? We have spent years calling on the lenders to cancel debts, could we not now help the borrowers to think about not paying the debts? If these are debts which God has shown us are not only unpayable but are also illegitimate, could we not follow His Word rather than the accepted financial conventions? Ann Pettifor pointed out that periodic cancellation of debt is a Biblical principle. We could be more radical in putting this into practice.

A common approach to personal debt in this country is for a debt counsellor to calculate what an individual can afford to pay in debt repayments, and to tell the creditor that they can have this amount or nothing. Could we not move towards setting up some kind of body to make these calculations for any country that wanted to avail itself of this approach? This International Body would calculate how much a country can reasonably afford to pay in debt servicing. The country would then pay this amount and no more. If the creditors tried punitive action, the International Body, and its contributing members, would help the debtor country as much as they could.

Jubilee Debt Campaign is working on a procedure for insolvency for countries which is similar to this idea but which depends on the unlikely agreement of all parties. It is high time we at least talked about a more radical approach. We cannot force any country to take any particular course of action but we could invite them to think about it with us. We could offer to campaign on behalf of any country which decided to default. We could encourage coalitions of defaulters to support each other. We could help to calculate the effects of any trade embargo against defaulters, and how the effects could be alleviated. (Most of what the West provides for Africa could now be provided by or through India or China.) We could at least commit ourselves to start talking like this unless the creditors offer more cancellation over the next 2 years. We could stand with those countries who decided to follow the God of the Bible and of miracles rather than the financial institutions of the Western Empire.

Roger Harper
May 2003 and May 2006

Grace to you and peace from God the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As leaders from the World Council of Churches member communions in the United States we greet the delegates to the 9th Assembly with joy and gratitude for your partnership in the Gospel in the years since we were last in Harare. During those years you have been constant in your love for us. We remember in particular the ways you embraced us with compassion in the days following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina just months ago. Your pastoral words, your gifts, and your prayers sustained us, reminding us that we were not alone but were joined in the Body of Christ to a community of deep encouragement and consolation. Even now you have welcomed us at this Assembly with rich hospitality. Know that we are profoundly grateful.

Yet we acknowledge as well that we are citizens of a nation that has done much in these years to endanger the human family and to abuse the creation. Following the terrorist attacks you sent “living letters” inviting us into a deeper solidarity with those who suffer daily from violence around the world. But our country responded by seeking to reclaim a privileged and secure place in the world, raining down terror on the truly vulnerable among our global neighbors. Our leaders turned a deaf ear to the voices of church leaders throughout our nation and the world, entering into imperial projects that seek to dominate and control for the sake of our own national interests. Nations have been demonized and God has been enlisted in national agendas that are nothing short of idolatrous. We lament with special anguish the war in Iraq, launched in deception and violating global norms of justice and human rights. We mourn all who have died or been injured in this war; we acknowledge with shame abuses carried out in our name; we confess that we have failed to raise a prophetic voice loud enough and persistent enough to deter our leaders from this path of preemptive war. Lord, have mercy.

The rivers, oceans, lakes, rainforests, and wetlands that sustain us, even the air we breathe continue to be violated, and global warming goes unchecked while we allow God’s creation to veer toward destruction. Yet our own country refuses to acknowledge its complicity and rejects multilateral agreements aimed at reversing disastrous trends. We consume without replenishing; we grasp finite resources as if they are private possessions; our uncontrolled appetites devour more and more of the earth’s gifts. We confess that we have failed to raise a prophetic voice loud enough and persistent enough to call our nation to global responsibility for the creation, that we ourselves are complicit in a culture of consumption that diminishes the earth. Christ, have mercy.

The vast majority of the peoples of the earth live in crushing poverty. The starvation, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the treatable diseases that go untreated indict us, revealing the grim features of global economic injustice we have too often failed to acknowledge or confront. Our nation enjoys enormous wealth, yet we cling to our possessions rather than share. We have failed to embody the covenant of life to which our God calls us; hurricane Katrina revealed to the world those left behind in our own nation by the rupture of our social contract. As a nation we have refused to confront the racism that exists in our own communities and the racism that infects our policies around the world. We confess that we have failed to raise a prophetic voice loud enough and persistent enough to call our nation to seek just economic structures so that sharing by all will mean scarcity for none. In the face of the earth’s poverty, our wealth condemns us. Lord, have mercy.

Sisters and brothers in the ecumenical community, we come to you in this Assembly grateful for hospitality we don’t deserve, for companionship we haven’t earned, for an embrace we don’t merit. In the hope that is promised in Christ and thankful for people of faith in our own country who have sustained our yearning for peace, we come to you seeking to be partners in the search for unity and justice. From a place seduced by the lure of empire we come to you in penitence, eager for grace, grace sufficient to transform spirits grown weary from the violence, degradation, and poverty our nation has sown, grace sufficient to transform spirits grown heavy with guilt, grace sufficient to transform the world. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Amen.

Globalization is a historical process. As such, it does not happen suddenly. In the case of present-day imperial globalization, it is the culmination of a process which started five centuries ago and that, throughout this period, has had different Western countries as protagonists and has affected “all other living societies, whether pre-civilizational or civilized” in different ways. My intention in this lecture is to show the connection between the first moment of imperial globalization and its present-day moment. My claim is that, despite the very deep differences between these two historical moments, there is also a real continuity between them—a continuity which in fact makes of present-day globalization one of the greatest challenges to the Christian mission.

The Roots of Imperial Globalization
October 12, 1492, may be regarded as representing the beginning of the era of
Western worldwide expansion. The “discovery” of America by Christopher (“the Christ-bearer”) Columbus was not merely an amazing feat of navigation but also the opening of a new world of bountiful treasures which in time provided the economic basis for Western development. The Genovese sailor, whom John A. Mackay described as “a mystic in no small degree” (1933:24), saw himself as sent by God to fulfill the prophecy in Isaiah 60.9: “For the coastlands shall wait for me, the ships of Tarshish first, to bring your children from far away, their silver and gold with them for the name of the Lord your God.” Therefore, according to Bartolomé de las Casas in his Historia de las Indias (Book 1, chapter 28; 1981:149), he offered, first to the king of Portugal and subsequently to King Fernando de Castilla and Queen Isabel de León, to discover “extensive lands, isles, and beautiful solid lands, very wealthy in gold, silver, and precious stones, and many people,” and to reach the eastern extremities of the Asian continent, including India and the kingdom of the Great Khan.

The epic that followed Columbus’ accomplishment—the conquest of America—was marked by three ominous factors: greed, ethnocentrism, and religious justification.

The combination of economic exploitation and violence which marked the conquest is symbolized by the gigantic ransom that Francisco Pizarro demanded from the Inca monarch Atahualpa for his release: one room full of gold and two of silver. The ransom arrived in Sevilla in 1534. It was paid but Atahualpa, after being kept in prison for nine and a half months and “a farcical trial,” was sentenced to death by burning, with the offer to have that sentence commuted to death by strangulation if he became a Christian. He accepted, was baptized with the name of John in memory of the Evangelist, whose day it was, and then he was strangled “while the Spaniards stood around and chanted the creed” (Mackay 1933:38).

Silvio Zavala (1984) has marshaled the evidence to show that the Spanish conquest of the New World was not exclusively motivated by greed and exploitation. In his view, a decisive factor in the conquest was a classical political philosophy regarding the relationship between wise people and barbarians. On the basis of that philosophy, which had its roots in secular European culture and could be traced back to Aristotle, a number of scholastic thinkers maintained that since the native population was made up of barbarians and as such born to be slaves, the European conquerors had the right to rule over them.

Despite the implicit ethnocentrism of this philosophy, it was adopted by Christian theologians who claimed that the conquest was God’s means to put the Indian population and its lands under subjection to the Pope as Christ’s representative on earth. This thinking had already been taken for granted in the special Bull by virtue of which Pope Alexander VI, as early as 1493, delegated to King Fernando and Queen Isabel both temporal and spiritual dominion over the territories of the New World, since the See could not be directly engaged in spreading the Christian faith. Later on this thinking provided the basis for the so-called requerimiento, a document which the Spanish conquerors were supposed to read to the Indians explaining basic Christian doctrine and summoning them to recognize the Church and the Pope, and to accept the King and the Queen as legitimate owners of the land. The alternative responses were then clearly defined: the Indians could submit and be left free together with their wives and children, without being compelled to become Christian, or they could fail to submit and, as a result, face war, loose their family, and be enslaved and sold. As

Zavala has put it,
In fact, already in the sixteenth century one can see the choice that characterizes modern imperialism: either it is accepted that the resources of the land providentially or naturally assigned to the local people belong to them, making sure that the needs and justification for international commerce are preserved, or it is decided that the distribution of the land and the people are subservient to the absorbing interests of “superior” or stronger groups (1984:60).

Enough has already been said in the previous paragraphs to demonstrate thathat Christianity was co-opted to justify the conquest. The cross and the sword became close partners invested with the mission of conquering the New World for Christ and King Fernando and Queen Isabel. This partnership, vigorously defended by Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and other theologians, was based on the assumption that the war against the resistant Indian population was a just war because it opened the way to evangelization. In Sepúlveda’s own words,

For many and very serious reasons, these barbarians are obliged to accept the dominion of the Spaniards according to natural law, and this will be more profitable to them than to the Spaniards, because virtue, humanity and the true religion are more precious than gold and silver (quoted in Zavala 56).

In his well-researched work on this topic, Luis N. Rivera Pagán (1990:14-21) has shown how the cross and the sword working together turned the “discovery” of America into a supposedly legal “appropriation” of the new lands—regarded as res nullius, “nobody´s property”—on behalf of the Spanish empire. This sordid union of “evangelization and violence,” which may be regarded as a mark of Spanish Christianity, gave birth to modern Roman Catholic Christendom. “For the first time in history,” rightly says Rivera Pagán, “a genuinely ecumenical, global perspective of human reality is projected. It is, however, an imperial ecumenism, at the same time civilizing and enslaving, capable of the maximum religious sublimity and, simultaneously, the most terrible bellicose cruelty” (28, my translation from Spanish). Void of ethics, the Christianity which was thus portrayed failed to accomplish true evangelization among the Indian population. Against that background one can appreciate the relevance of the Dominican monk Bartolomé de Las Casas’ prophetic ministry and his insistence that the evangelization of the Indian population should be carried out on the basis of love (cf. Gutiérrez 1992).

What resulted from the Iberian conquest in the first half of the sixteenth century was a colonial theocracy that lasted until the War of Independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century (cf. Mackay 1933:42-56). Fernando I, Carlos V and Felipe II were successively appointed by the Pope as Patriarchs of the Indies, a hierarchical title that authorized them to play the most decisive role in the propagation of religion and in the government of the Church, including the appointment of bishops. The Christianity that Spain established in the New World was a Christianity co-opted by the imperial power of the day—a corporate Christianity that covered serfdom with a religious veneer but failed to demonstrate the liberating power of the Gospel. As a result, among the native population, as John A. Mackay has put it, “The heart was not changed, the mind was not enlightened, and worship was offered to rebaptized idols” (47).

Neo-Colonial Imperial Globalization
For Protestant Christians in Latin America who are aware of the heavy restrictions that the Roman Catholic Church imposed in the past on the spread of their message and the establishment of their churches it is self-evident that Protestant missionary work, whose beginning coincided with the formation of republics politically independent from Spain within the first three decades of the nineteenth century, brought to the region a new era in the history of Christianity. To be sure, the restrictions continued in varying degrees well into the second half of the twentieth century, sometimes even with the support of the civil authorities in countries where the Pope passed the right of patronage from the Spanish king to the republican government. The fact remains, however, that independence from Spain was a serious blow to the Roman Catholic Church, “the mystic column of Spain’s colonial empire” (Mackay 1933:59).

What Protestant Christians in Latin America oftentimes fail to see is the similarities between the Roman Catholic colonial imperial globalization fostered by Spain beginning in 1492 and the basically Protestant neo-colonial imperial globalization fostered by the United States today. Admitting the need to explore the subject much more in depth than it is here possible, I would tentatively suggest that contemporary USA-based imperialism is marked by the same notes as those that we have seen in relation to Spanish colonial imperialism, though in a different key: greed, ethnocentrism, and religious justification.

The central place that material wealth has in Western culture does not need to be proved. Our concern here is, first of all, to show the philosophical rationale behind the capitalist system, which is built on greed, and the way in which economic interests become the determining value in contemporary USA-based imperial globalization.

Goudzwaard and de Santa Ana (2003) have summarized the basic characteristics of modern capitalism in three principles: 1) The Galileo-Descartes principle of the primacy of the mathematical method, which implies the possibility of reducing physis (nature) to a series of calculated entities and is directly linked with the operational or instrumental side of modernity. 2) The Hobbes-Rousseau principle of social-constructive rationality, which regards natural law as the basis for a logical (re)construction of human society. 3) The Locke-Spinoza principles of individual freedom and equality, which started from the recognition of individual rights, including private property, but were also related to a positive evaluation of self-interest. Eventually modernity and individual freedom came to be regarded as two sides of the same coin and found their way into the United States Declaration of Independence, into the new French Constitution, and into the structuring of economic life, for which Adam Smith laid the scientific basis. A further step was taken later on by Jeremy Bentham, the first thinker who used a mathematical method to check all types of social reconstruction with the motto, “the maximum happiness for the greatest number,” thus relating the ordering of society to the fulfilment of human wishes as the ultimate goal.

These Enlightenment principles became the basic assumptions of the ideology of modernity, which have permeated the Western spirit throughout the last three centuries. It was taken for granted that a rational approach would lead to socio-economic reconstruction, that the mathematical-mechanical method was the way to attain economic efficiency, that autonomous will, individual self-determination and private property were the main actors in economic development, and that utilitarian intervention in society was to be encouraged as long as it promoted the (material) well-being of all. On this basis, freedom and welfare became the political goals to be achieved not only in private but also in public life. Moreover, the relative rise in the standard of living and the achievements of science and technology led people to believe in the inevitability of progress—knowledge was increasing and, provided that the principles were faithfully applied, it would result in improvements in every area of human life. In time, this faith in progress through economy, science, and technology was firmly established and found its way into a modernization program, of which today’s imperial globalization, with its transnational concomitants, may be regarded as the latest stage.

According to Leslie Sklair (2002:8), the capitalist globalization which, as a result of a long historical process, emerged in the second half of the twentieth century, is a “particular way of organizing social life across existing state borders” and includes three inter-related transnational elements or (as he calls them) “practices”: 1) the transnational corporation, “the major locus of transnational economic practices”; 2) the transnational capitalist class, “the major locus of transnational political practices,” and 3) the transnational culture-ideology of consumerism, “the major locus of transnational culture-ideology practices.” The primary moving force of today’s economic global system is the transnational capitalist class—a class made up of globalizing bureaucrats, politicians, and professionals— that, according to Sklair (9), “derives its material base from the transnational corporations. . . and the value system of the culture-ideology of consumerism” and engages in “practices that cross [national] borders but do not originate with state actors, agencies, or institutions.”

There is plenty of evidence, however, to demonstrate that the validity of the assumptions of the Enlightenment, which underlie the inter-related transnational elements or practices of present-day globalization, can no longer be taken for granted. Far from attaining “the maximum happiness for the greatest number” through utilitarian individualism, the imperial globalization built on those assumptions has become the main contributing factor in both the deepening and the worldwide extension of a major scourge—poverty.

To a very large extent, the world economy is controlled by transnational corporations, the latest and most sophisticated embodiment of the assumptions that took shape in Europe before the eighteenth century. It is estimated that among the largest economies in the world today the number of corporations is higher than that of nations. The dominant role that the economic interests of these transnational corporations play in U. S. foreign policy would deserve much more attention than we are able to give here to this important subject, intimately related to present-day imperial globalization. Suffice it to mention two areas in which that role is strongly felt: the area of security and the area of international trade.

With regard to security, the problem is illustrated by the document issued in 1999 by the U. S. National Security Council on the use of violence in order to protect U.S. “vital interets”—“the physical security of our allies; the security of our citizens; our economic well-being.” This document affirms the intention to “knock down the commercial barriers abroad in order to create jobs in the country,” and concludes: “We will do whatever is necessary to defend our interests. We would even use our military power in a unilateral and decisive way, if that is necessary” (quotes in Bilbao 2001:1). The war in Iraq clearly demonstrates that the U.S. government is quite ready to implement that policy even if all the arguments to wage war are proved to be false. How can it be denied that, as in the case of the violence used by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century to conquer the New World, this war is motivated by greed? Is not this war a clear illustration of a foreign policy marked by state terrorism in the service of big corporate interests?

With regard to trade, the problem is made visible in terms of the enormous pressure on the part of the U.S. government to impose so-called free trade on a global scale through the World Trade Organization (WTO). In a world in which more than a billion people live with less than $1 per day, in 2002 the government of the United States allocated $180 billion to subsidize large agribusiness instead of small farming businesses in this country—20% of the farms received over 80% of the subsidies. These subsidies lead to the massive “dumping” of USA agricultural products on world markets, causing the bankruptcy of local farmers, who cannot compete with prices that are below their production costs. Should we be surprised at the strong resistance at the Fourth Presidential Summit recently held in Mar del Plata, Argentina, on the part of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela to the U.S.A. plan for the integration of the economies of this hemisphere on the basis of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)?

The economic power of the corporations is closely connected with the political power of the transnational class, made possible by a massive restructuring of society on the basis of economics. In fact, the most dramatic result of the free-market formula for economic development has been the emergence of what Leslie Sklair has called a “class polarization”: the polarization between the direct descendants of the Enlightenment—a transnational aristocracy of materially wealthy and politically powerful people—and increasing masses of poor and deprived people everywhere, unable to satisfy their basic needs. The disparity between the rich and the poor is epitomized on an international level by the amazing distance between the so-called G-8, with the U.S.A. as the largest economy on the planet, on the one hand, and the poor nations around the globe, on the other hand. Yet the class polarization becomes most visible in the Two-thirds World. At the top of the social ladder are “the elect” who benefit from the system—the owners and managers of transnational corporations and financial assets, the politically powerful, the market consumers par excellance. At the bottom are “the excluded,” the increasing mass of people whose role with regard to the market is limited to that of (largely uninformed) spectators. They are excluded from the market, although not from society, because they are regarded as totally redundant in relation to the national and international financial transactions that take place at the top of the economic system, yet at the same time they are fertile soil for the seed of social unrest and violence. They are the first to suffer the consequences of drastic budgetary reductions in education, health, housing, social security, retirement programs, etc., imposed by the power holders. Unable to cover their basic needs, they pay the so-called social cost of macro-economic development. They are the victims that the system sets aside for the human sacrifice required by the “idolatry of the market”! (Assmann and Hinkelammert 1989).

Modern world history would definitely not be what it is without the amazing scientific and technological accomplishments of Western civilization. As Toynbee claimed, these accomplishments, beginning with the conquest of the ocean five hundred years ago, made possible the contact, “on Western terms,” between the West and all other living societies, both pre-civilizational and civilized. As a result, “the frail social fabric of the surviving pre-civilizational societies . . . has been pulverized” and “the living non-Western civilizations too have been convulsed and corroded by this literally world-wide revolution of Western origin (1972:398).

As we have seen in the previous section of this paper, the success attained in the conquest of the New World laid for the conquerors the basis for ethnocentrism. From their perspective, the native population was made up of barbarians born to be slaves; consequently the European conquerors had the right to rule over them. Several philosophers and theologians took charge of articulating that position, sometimes appealing to supposedly Christian arguments, to justify the oppression of the Indians and the massive plundering of their natural resources.

A similar kind of ethnocentrism is behind neo-colonial imperial globalization. A few years before the end of the nineteenth century, at the height of “Manifest Destiny” in the U. S., Herman Melville wrote:

We Americans are the peculiar chosen people—the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of liberties of the world. . . . Long enough have we been skeptics with regard to ourselves and doubted whether, indeed, the political Messiah had come. But he has come in us, if we would but give utterance to his promptings. And let us always remember that with ourselves, almost for the first time in the history of the earth, national selfishness is unbounded philanthropy; for we cannot do a good to America but we give alms to the world (quoted in Minear 1975:28)

A contemporary reiteration of “Manifest Destiny”, revised in order to justify the war in Iraq, was provided by President George Bush, Sr. in his speech on February 3, 1991, declared a national day of prayer on behalf of Operation Desert Storm, when he said:

As one nation under God, we Americans are deeply mindful of both our dependence on the Almighty and our obligations as a people He has richly blessed. . . . Entrusted with the holy gift of freedom and allowed to prosper in its great light, we have the responsibility to serve as a beacon to the world—to use our strength and resources to help those suffering in the darkness of tyranny and repression (quoted by Scott 2003:141).

The role played by Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda in the “academic” defense of ethnocentrism in the colonial period is played by Michael Novak (1985), the well-known representative of the neoconservative intelligentsia in the United States, in the “academic” defense of ethnocentrism today. He claims that in the face of poverty in Latin America “The question is not, what causes poverty, the question is how do we create wealth?” (18). He then goes on to answer his own question with an impressive array of arguments intended to prove that the U.S. has been able to create wealth on the basis of democratic capitalism, which allows people to use their minds—“the only one, basic, natural resource”—in the context of a free political system, without government interference. In the final analysis, he says, “it is not nature but system and intellect that make people wealthy” (21). Clearly, the implication is that the poor are poor because they lack both the system and the intellect that would make them wealthy. Novak does not say that in so many words; after all, his purpose is not to discuss the causes of poverty but the creation of wealth. Nevertheless, his thesis seems to lead to that conclusion because it does not take into account that, under the rule of imperial globalization, so-called democratic capitalism does not by any means affect all people in the same way: the very same system and the very same intellect that make some people wealthy make many others—the large majority—poor!

In light of the foregoing discussion, it is obvious that present-day imperial globalization is destroying human life around the world. Add to this the undeniable ecological unsustainability of the neo-liberal economic system, and one cannot avoid raising the question as to how it is possible that the myth should persist that laissez-faire capitalism will lead the whole world into an era of bonanza in which “the maximum happiness for the greatest number” will be attained. The answer lies in a revised version of modernity, which Sklair has aptly denominated the “transnational culture-ideology of consumerism,” effectively spread all over the world through the mass media (2002:108-115). As he has put it,

Without consumerism, the rationale for continuous capitalist accumulation dissolves. It is the capacity to commercialize and commodify all ideas and the products in which they adhere, television programmes, advertisements, newsprint, books, tapes, Cds, videos, films, the Internet, and so on, that global capitalism strives to appropriate. Habermas. . . pointedly termed this “the colonization of the lifeworld” (116).

In fact, the mass media today play a predominant role not only in creating a global consciousness of participation in a supposedly developed world but also in facilitating the wide acceptance of the values of the consumer society, including the priority of money and material things in all areas of life. When public opinion is subjected to manipulation on the part of big economic interests, questions regarding social justice, quality of life, and ecological sustainability are indefinitely postponed for the sake of short-term profit-maximization and economic growth. To this end, the mass media make a very big difference as to the way in which power is today exercised by the powerful.

At the initiation of imperial globalization in the fifteenth century, Roman Catholic Christianity was used to legitimise the Spanish conquest. Contemporary neo-colonial imperial globalization finds religious legitimacy in what Michael Budde and Robert W. Brimlow have rightly called “Christianity Incorporated” (2002)—a type of Protestant Christianity that has privatized faith and has exchanged the values of the Kingdom of God for the values of the consumer society.

Christians who have privatized faith and reject the call for Christian involvement in issues of social and economic justice may appeal to Scripture in order to support their arguments. They may, for instance, quote Jesus’ saying according to John 18.36, “My kingdom is not of this world,” or Paul’s injunction in Romans 13.1 to submit to the governing authorities, “for there is no authority except that which God has established.” Taking texts out of context is a common way to defend one’s own position. A much more difficult task, however, is to marshal Biblical evidence to provide a rationale for the massive accommodation of the church to the consumer society—an accommodation which may be the strongest factor disabling many Christians living under the rule of contemporary imperial globalization, not only in the United States but all over the world, to show in practical ways a real commitment to justice.

Imperial globalization promoted by the wealthy countries and especially by the wealthiest of all, the United States, is the culmination of a historical process which started five centuries ago and is deeply affecting “all other living societies, whether pre-civilizational or civilized”. Characterized by greed, ethnocentrism, and religious justification, it has become the greatest threat to life on the planet Earth and, as such, the greatest challenge to the Christian mission around the world. If Jesus Christ came in order that people may experience shalom—that they may have “life, and have it abundantly”—how can Christians participate in the fulfillment of that purpose in a world under the sway of Pax Americana?

by Brian McLaren

I wish that C. Rene Padilla were wrong in his article "Why Do People Hate Americans?" But my experience traveling widely over the last decade requires that I say, with sadness, that he is right.

When I hear my fellow Americans discuss this question, they have very different answers from Rene’s. “They are just jealous of our success,” is the most frequent response I hear. “We have worked hard and become powerful and prosperous, and so they resent us.” Perhaps there is some truth to this diagnosis in some cases, although the psychology assumed by this defense doesn’t make sense to me. For example, I believe that Costa Rica has great natural beauty, that France and Greece have extraordinary cultural treasures, that Canadians and Brits have a tremendous sense of humor, that South Africa has charted an amazing course of truth and reconciliation over the last decade. Their extraordinary features don’t make me hate them or resent them, but rather appreciate and admire them.

“They’re just jealous of my strength,” sounds like exactly the kind of thing the bully in Rene’s school might have said to comfort himself when the nice kids in the class didn’t invite him to their birthday parties.

One of the most important books I read in 2005 was Richard T. Hughes’ Myths America Lives By (Univ. of Illinois, 2003). This professor of religion from Pepperdine University details six myths that have arisen over our history, myths that may have a grain of truth to inspire, but also have great power to self-deceive. They are:
1. The Myth of the Chosen Nation
2. The Myth of Nature’s Nation
3. The Myth of the Christian Nation
4. The Myth of the Millennial Nation
5. The Mythic Dimensions of American Capitalism
6. They Myth of the Innocent Nation

Supported by a range of quotes from the founding fathers to our current president, the book argues that America has “absolutized its myths” and as a result has entered, or is at great risk of entering, a deep state of denial or willed ignorance about “the suffering that American policies might inflict on poor and dispossessed people in other parts of the world.” He calls for “a true revolution of American values” which will “encourage Americans to see the world through someone else’s eyes, perhaps even through the eyes of their enemies.”

As a leading Latin American theologian and leader in the mision integral movement across Latin America, C. Rene Padilla is telling us what the North American Distinguished Professor of Religion Richard Hughes has also concluded. Until we move beyond an immature and unchristian defensiveness (strengthened, no doubt, by the “warrior trance” that has overtaken our country since September 11, 2001), and until we seek with great humility to see ourselves as others see us, we will not experience a true revolution of American values. We will instead become more and more entrenched in the myths that we have become dependent on – that some might say we have become addicted to.

I hope that increasing numbers of Americans will heed the Biblical call to self-examination, that we will recognize the dangers that the Bible tells us successful people and nations are particularly susceptible to. I hope that we will remember what the Book of Proverbs and James both say characterizes wisdom – notably, a humble willingness to listen to correction and rebuke. I hope that we will aspire to something far better than being feared as a bully. Rather, I hope that we will aspire to be a good neighbor in the global classroom … with a reputation for wisdom, humility, honesty, cooperation, justice, and the kind of strength that is displayed not in violence but in kindness and compassion.

There is probably no other topic that has attained such world-wide diffusion  during the past decade as that of globalization. At the same time, we would be mistaken to assume that everyone who speaks or writes on the topic uses the term with the same connotation. For the sake of clarity, the least we can do at the outset of our reflection on the subject is to admit that “globalization” is an ambiguous word and that the phenomenon to which it points in general terms may be considered from differing perspectives.

The globalization with which we are concerned in these lectures is the globalization of the economic system predominant in the world today—the neo-liberal capitalist system, which is intimately related to modern technology and the culture-ìdeology of comsumerism and which has the West, especially the United States of America, as its geopolitical center. This understanding of globalization involves at least two presuppositions. In the first place, that the economic factor plays a decisive role in the shaping of the globalization with which we are dealing. In effect, the net result of the present globalization is that the world becomes a global shopping center controlled by commerce, finance, and production, in partnership with modern technology and the culture-ideology of consumerism.

In the second place, our understanding presupposes that the principal promoter of today´s globalization is the West, paradigmatically represented by the United States. This is not to deny the importance of other centers in the growing interconnectedness of nations; it simply recognizes that at present the West, and particularly the United States, is the most powerful force in the creation of a world dominated by the market. Already, in the early 1970s, Arnold Toynbee stated that...

Since this distinguished historian wrote these words, this process of globalization based in the West has rapidly spread and deepened its influence, and it has become evident that what has been taking shape is, in effect, an imperial globalization with its geopolitical center in the United States of America.

It is not surprising if for many of my listeners the use of the term “imperial” in reference to this country is not acceptable. That is understandable. After all, isn’t this country the most impressive model of democracy that history has known? Isn’t democracy, closely connected with individual freedom, one of the outstanding characteristics of this great nation? And if it is, how can democratic ideals ever be combined with the concrete reality of an empire?

It all depends on our view of the practice of democracy in the United States and of just what constitutes an empire. In regard to democracy in the United States I will refer my listeners to the investigation entitled Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election2000 (2001). In it Alan M. Dershowitz clearly shows that when the Supreme Court–“the most powerful court in the world—the envy of judges in every other country” (3)—declared the triumph of president George W. Bush in the Bush-Gore election it sent to the White House the less-voted candidate, in clear contradiction to principles applied in previous decisions. What basis do we have to speak of democracy in a country in which the vote of the majority of the members of the Supreme Court “reflected not any enduring constitutional values rooted in the precedents of the ages, but rather the partisan quest for immediate political victory” (4)? Someone will want to object that what happened in the instance mentioned was an exception. I am afraid, however, that it is simply an example of the way in which democracy is oftentimes practiced in the United States.

On the other hand, several factors that characterize this country justify considering it a true empire, in effect the most powerful empire that has ever existed throughout human history. In the words of Walsh and Keesmaat, 
 
empires are (1) built on systematic centralization of power, (2) secured by structures of socioeconomic and military control, (3) religiously legitimated by powerful myths and (4) sustained by a proliferation of imperial images that captivate the imagination of the population (2004:58).
 
On the basis of this description of the characteristics of empire, these authors proceed to study Colossians in the context of the Roman empire and the imperial realities of the United States. The result is a powerful “remixing” of the Pauline letter that updates its message for today’s world—a globalized world in which
 
        (1) “Global economic structures reveal centralization of power “(59);
        (2) “Through mechanisms such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, powerful nations in the North are able to dictate the economic terms by which the South is kept firmly ensconced in the cycle of international debt and development aid” (61);
        (3) “The ‘American Empire’ finds salvation in economic progress and global control” (62), and
        (4) “Corporate logos and corporate advertising not only shape the public space of our culture but also permeate our private lives” (63).
 
This is not the appropriate moment to show the soundness of this description of the U. S. empire—this is something that will become clear as we proceed. Suffice it for now to state that there is enough evidence to claim that present-day globalization is the globalization of a powerful empire—it is imperial globalization.

My purpose in these lectures, however, is not to provide a mere description of the global situation under the dominion of United States imperialism. My purpose is to answer a question concerning the role of the church of Jesus Christ in the context of this globalization, the effects of which extend to all areas of human life on both the personal and the social levels. In the first lecture I will try to show the connection between West-based globalization which began five centuries ago and present imperial globalization. In the second lecture I will consider the deadly impact of this imperial globalization on the poor. Finally, in the third lecture I will attempt to outline a Christian response to the problem of imperial globalization, a response in terms of what has come to be called integral mission, with emphasis on God’s call to solidarity with the victims of the Neo-liberal economic system.

Although it has recently become fashionable to use the term integral mission, the approach to mission that it expresses is not new. The practice of integral mission goes back to Jesus himself and to the first century Christian church. Furthermore, a growing number of churches are putting this style of mission into practice without necessarily using this expression to refer to what they are doing: integral mission is not part of their vocabulary. It is clear that the practice of integral mission is much more important than the use of this new expression to refer to it.

The expression integral mission (misión integral) came into use principally within the Latin American Theological Fraternity (FTL) about twenty years ago. It was an attempt to highlight the importance of conceiving of the mission of the church within a more biblical theological framework than the traditional one, which had been accepted in evangelical circles due to the influence of the modern missionary movement. In the last few years the expression has been used so widely that the literal translation into English, integral mission, is gradually becoming a part of the vocabulary of those who are pressing for a more holistic approach to the Christian mission, even outside Spanish-speaking evangelical circles
What is this approach to mission? In what aspects does it differ from the traditional approach?

The Traditional Approach to Mission

In the traditional approach, which took shape within the modern missionary movement especially since the end of the eighteenth century, the Christian mission was conceived of mainly in geographical terms: it consisted in crossing geographic frontiers for the purpose of taking the gospel from the Christian West to the mission fields of the non-Christian world (the heathen). In other words, to speak of mission meant speaking of transcultural mission.

The purpose of missions was to save souls and to plant churches, mainly in foreign countries, by means of the preaching of the gospel. The agents of mission were principally the missionaries, the majority affiliated to missionary societies, either denominational or interdenominational (the faith missions). The qualifications of the missionaries varied, but it was taken for granted that the first requisite (in addition, of course, to the experience of conversion to Jesus Christ) was to feel, generally on an individual subjective level, called by God to the mission field. To answer God’s call to missions, as in the case of the call to the pastorate, was usually considered the highest calling, the maximum commitment that a Christian could make in serving God. By no means was it ever considered to be something to be expected of all Christians.

What was the responsibility of the local church in this pattern? With the exception of a few churches (especially among the Plymouth Brethren) that sent out missionaries without the intervention of missionary societies, the role of the local church was reduced to providing personnel and spiritual and economic support for missions. Even the preparation and training of the missionaries was delegated by the local church to specialized institutions.
It should be pointed out, however, that with all its weaknesses, this concept of mission, characteristic of the modern missionary movement, inspired (and in many cases continues to inspire) thousands of transcultural missionaries to do what Abraham did centuries earlier: he left his homeland and his family and went out to the land God showed him. They went out to spread the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ, and thus have written some of the most moving pages of church history. Thanks to the work of these traditional missionaries true heroes of the faith, many of whom gave their lives for the sake of Jesus Christ-- , today the church is a world-wide movement with congregations in practically every nation on earth. Praise God!

On the other hand, it must be recognized that the identification of the mission of the church with transcultural mission has resulted in at least four dichotomies that have had a negative effect on the church.
1. The dichotomy between churches that send out missionaries (generally located in the Christian West) and churches that receive missionaries (almost exclusively in countries in the so-called Two-thirds World: Asia, Africa, and Latin America). This pattern is changing, with the growing number of transcultural missionaries being sent from outside the West (or from the periphery of the West, in the case of Latin America). It must be recognized, however, that until a short time ago (transcultural) mission was that carried out from headquarters in Europe (for example, England, Scotland, Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway), or in the United States, Australia or New Zealand. The transcultural missionary movement with headquarters in Asia, Africa, or Latin America is relatively new.

2. The dichotomy between home, located in some country of the Christian West, and the mission field, located in some pagan country. It is not surprising that the majority of career missionaries (sometimes with years of service) decide to retire in their home country.

3. The dichotomy between missionaries, called by God to serve him, and common ordinary Christians, who can enjoy the benefits of salvation but are exempt from sharing in what God wants to do in the world. I would dare to suggest that the dichotomy between clergy (including missionaries and pastors) and laity lies at the root of the problem of the masses of Sunday Christians that are part of the evangelical church.

4. The dichotomy between the life and the mission of the church. If, in order for a church to be a missionary church, it were sufficient to send and support a few of its members to serve in foreign missions, it is possible that such a church had no significant influence or impact on its surrounding neighborhood: the life of the church was carried on in the local surroundings (at home); mission took place in another setting, preferably in a foreign country (the mission field).
All these dichotomies were the result of the reduction of mission to transcultural missionary efforts. Consequently, mission was reduced primarily to the task of evangelization carried out by missionaries sent from Christian countries to the mission fields of the world; thus they fulfilled representatively or vicariously to put it bluntly-- the missionary responsibility of the whole church.

Integral Mission, A New Paradigm

From the perspective of integral mission, transcultural mission is far from exhausting the significance of the mission of the church. Mission may or may not include a crossing of geographical frontiers, but in every case it means primarily a crossing of the frontier between faith and no faith, whether in one’s own country (Aat home) or in a foreign country (on the mission field), according to the testimony to Jesus Christ as Lord of the whole of life and of the whole creation. Every generation of Christians in every place receives the power of the Spirit that makes possible the witness to the gospel in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1.8). In other words, every church, wherever it may be, is called to share in God’s mission a mission that is local, regional and world-wide in scope-- beginning in its own Jerusalem. In order to cross the frontier between faith and no faith, crossing geographical boundaries is not indispensable; the geographical factor is secondary. Commitment to mission is the very essence of being the church; therefore, the church that is not committed to the mission of witnessing to Jesus Christ and thus to crossing the frontier between faith and no faith is no longer the church, but becomes a religious club, simply a group of friends, or a social welfare agency.

When the church is committed to integral mission and to communicating the gospel through everything it is, does, and says, it understands that its goal is not to become large numerically, nor to be rich materially, nor powerful politically. Its purpose is to incarnate the values of the Kingdom of God and to witness to the love and the justice revealed in Jesus Christ, by the power of the Spirit, for the transformation of human life in all its dimensions, both on the individual level and on the community level.

The accomplishment of this purpose presupposes that all the members of the church, without exception, by the very fact of having become a part of the Body of Christ, receive gifts and ministries for the exercise of their priesthood, to which they have been ordained in their baptism. Mission is not the responsibility and privilege of a small group of the faithful who feel called to the mission field (usually in a foreign country), but of all members, since all are members of the royal priesthood and as such have been called by God that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light (1Pet 2.9) wherever they may be. As Brian D. McLaren aptly states,

For Christ, his "called ones" (which is what the Greek term for "church" really means) will also be his "sent ones" [or missionaries]. . . . In this line of thinking about the church, we don’t recruit people to be customers of our products or consumers of our religious programs; we recruit them to be colleagues in our mission. The church does not exist in order to satisfy the consumer demands of believers; the church exists to equip and mobilize men and women for God’s mission in the world.

According to this view, what is the role of the local church in mission? We have already expressed the answer in McLaren’s words: to equip and mobilize men and women for God’s mission in the world not exclusively in the church building, which may or may not exist, but in all fields of human life: in the home, in business, in the hospital, in the university, in the office, in the workshop . . . in conclusion, everywhere, since there is no place that is not within the orbit of the lordship of Jesus Christ.

Understood in these terms, this Anew paradigm for mission is not so new; it is, rather, the recovery of the biblical concept of mission since, in effect, mission is faithful to the teaching of Scripture to the extent that it is placed at the service of the Kingdom of God and his justice. Consequently, it is focused on crossing the frontier between faith and no faith, not only in geographical terms, but in cultural, ethnic, social, economical and political terms, for the purpose of transforming life in all its dimensions, according to God’s plan, so that all people and human communities may experience the abundant life that Christ offers them. As such, integral mission resolves the dichotomies mentioned above in the following ways:

1. At least in principle, all churches send and all churches receive. In other words, all churches have something to teach and something to learn from other churches. The road mission follows is not a one-way street Bit does not go only from the Christian countries to the pagan countries--; it is a two-way street. A good example is seen in the missionary movement from the countries in the South, which is sending a growing number of cross-cultural missionaries even to countries in the North.

2. The whole world is a mission field, and every human need is an opportunity for missionary service. The local church is called to demonstrate the reality of the Kingdom of God among the kingdoms of this world, not only by what it says, but also by what it is and by what it does in response to the humans needs on every side. Francis de Assisi was right when, as he sent his followers out to proclaim the gospel, he exhorted them to proclaim it by every means at their disposal, and that if it was really necessary they should use words. The proclamation of the gospel includes everything we do moved by the Spirit of Jesus who, when he saw the crowds, had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd (Mt 9.36).

3. Every Christian is called to follow Jesus Christ and to be committed to God’s mission in the world. The benefits of salvation are inseparable from a missionary lifestyle, and this implies, among other things, the practice of the universal priesthood of believers in all spheres of human life, according to the gifts and ministries that the Spirit of God has freely bestowed on his people. It is the responsibility of pastors and teachers to prepare God’s people for works of service [diakonia], so that the body of Christ may be built up (Eph 4.12).

4. The Christian life in all its dimensions, on both the individual and the community levels, is the primary witness to the universal lordship of Jesus Christ and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. Mission is much more than words; it involves the quality of life it is demonstrated in the life that recovers God’s original purpose for the relationship of the human person with his Creator, with his neighbor, and with all of creation.

In conclusion, integral mission is the means designed by God to carry out, within history, his purpose of love and justice revealed in Jesus Christ, through the church and in the power of the Spirit.

Terrorism, say the authors, creates fear in those who are victimized, whether those acts are committed by governments, special interest groups, or individuals. In the eighteenth century, the term usually referred to governments while in the present it is more frequently applied to the two latter agents. Since governments use violent acts to keep their own or other peoples in subjection, the word is still properly used in the broad sense. Senator J. William Fulbright so uses the word when he decries the intervention of the United States in the internal affairs of Third World countries, albeit in the name of freedom and democracy. “We and some of our friends,” he says, “have initiated some of the worst aspects of modern terrorism” (p. 65). Senator Fulbright chaired the Senate Committee on International Relations for almost thirty years (1945–74).

The subtitle of the book under discussion emphasizes that the authors’ is not the final word of truth in the matter; it is “a” not “the” Christian word. Rather, it represents the testimony of a part of the Christian Church (from Latin America) given in the interest of the message of peace and justice that our Lord came to proclaim and to initiate. René Padilla, an Ecuadorian who has lived in Argentina since 1967 and studied in the United States and in England, is a theological, literary, and pastoral leader. Perhaps, along with José Míguez Bonino, he is the best known lecturer and writer among Latin American Protestants. Lindy Scott taught for fifteen years in Mexico, has written and edited a number of books, and continues an active role in Latin American religious affairs. Christians, the authors believe, owe it to one another to speak with clarity and conviction on the matters discussed in the book in order to further kingdom righteousness.

The book begins by citing the testimonies of many churches and Christian organizations in Latin America, all in opposition to the current war in Iraq. Protestant groups, the majority of which have historically been silent on such divisive political issues, have made themselves heard from the whole spectrum of denominations, from the Pentecostal to the historical. The concerns expressed in the many documents cited include the following: the sacrifice of so many innocent lives, including women and children; the hypocrisy of having been allied to Iraq in the 1980s when the worst atrocities were committed; the prospect of winning the war but losing the peace; the fomenting of more reactionary fanaticism which breeds more terrorism; the use of resources for destruction rather than for meeting basic human needs; the violation of international law; the unilateral rather than United Nations-approved action; and the furthering of hostilities with the Muslim peoples which impedes the communication of the gospel message of peace and reconciliation to God and our neighbor. No document was found from Latin American church groups which favored the war in Iraq.

The third chapter presents the interventions of the United States in Latin America as acts of governmental terrorism for the affected populations. Here “terrorism” is used in the broad, original sense of invoking military intervention in order to achieve economic and political ends. Senator Fulbright used the term in this way in the quote given above. Mexico, Panama, Cuba, and Puerto Rico serve as early examples, followed by Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. After World War II, when the fear of communism dominated the decades from the sixties to the eighties, the United States provided arms, training, and support for military dictatorships in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Panama, and other nations.

The authors plant the question as to why there were so many military interventions by the United States in Latin America. The answer involves history, economic theories, and the hearts of fallen human beings. The Monroe Doctrine, which established that there would be no intervention from outside the hemisphere in the Americas, resulted in reserving Latin America as an economic resource for the United States’ hemispheric prosperity. The authors recognize the corrupt structural system inherited from colonial times in Latin America and the gross inequality between the rich elite and the impoverished majority. A rich section of debating Michael Novak’s theories follows and merits careful attention. The tragic effects of the dominant economic system, which has impoverished the southern lands, subjected them to military dictatorships, and burdened them with large external debts, are clearly outlined.

The underlying ideologies (and idolatries) that support militarism as a means to homeland security and prosperity are materialism and ethnocentric patriotism. Chapter four treats both from a biblical point of view and then applies them to the present situation. The over-simplification of the gospel message and the divorce between belief and social ethics are seriously questioned. Though we US Americans pride ourselves on how much we do for the poor of the world, the statistics show that we are eighteenth (last on the list!) in the industrialized world with respect to proportionate giving for poverty. Consumerism, as illustrated by the advertising propaganda to which we are constantly exposed, turns the gospel on its head. The well-known warning of General-turned-President Ike Eisenhower against the military-industrial complex has become a reality. Even more serious, many citizens consider the United States to be God’s emissary and identify its military decisions with his will.

The book closes with a plea for responsible Christian reflection and action. Three conditions are set forth: a revolution of values, a new spirituality, and a restructuring of the Church. The prophetic vision of peace is set forth: there is no peace without justice. Justice requires a bias towards the needs of the poor. To achieve the righteousness-justice of the Kingdom of God, we need a consciousness-raising among both rich and poor, a cross-fertilization between all sectors of the Church and the world, and a personal and social transformation. Religiosity is not enough since prayer and praxis must be joined to work together.

Though neither the writing style nor the political perspectives presented in the analysis are flawless, my evaluation Terrorism and the War in Iraq is strongly positive because the book sensitively insists on questions the Church needs to face but would rather avoid. Some of these questions include the following: When the Scriptures tell us that peace is the fruit of justice, what does that mean concretely? Can peace, shalom, be best achieved through violence and war? Do the historical conditions for just war still hold value today, or are they to be disregarded? If they are to be considered valid, who can best decide when they are satisfied, single nations or the united judgment of many nations? Why does free-market liberalism not produce a better life for all citizens instead of steadily increasing the disparity between the rich and the poor, both in Third World countries and in the United States? What can be done to increase our awareness of the tragic effects of our foreign policies on poorer countries? How can we overcome the unbiblical divorce between soul saving and concern for the whole welfare of persons (shalom)? Are we guilty of “ethnocentric patriotism,” that is, identifying our military and economic practice with God’s program for the world?

Many more questions could be added. Along with materialism (i.e., consumerism) and ethnocentric patriotism, one could add individualism (me-ism) as our national ideology. This obsession rings true for us as persons as well as for our country among the community of nations. Several decades ago, acclaimed sociologist Peter Berger affirmed that individualism was rapidly becoming a dominant characteristic of US American society. Who can deny that the self-chosen isolationism of our land causes resentment and anxiety among other nations? We refuse to accept the measured judgment of the world community, whether in matters such as going to war in Iraq, military intervention in Latin America, the Kyoto accord to reduce global warming, the international court, nuclear reduction treaties, the economic embargo of Cuba, and whether or not Cuba should be part of the Organization of American States. All of these examples communicate to the rest of the world that we do not need its experience, maturity, wisdom, or companionship in the search for true peace in our world.

As a resident of Latin America for nearly four decades, I can empathize with its peoples’ general feeling of anti-Americanism. The sentiment is not directed against the people of the United States but against the country’s political, military, and economic programs which reflect a concern for its own national interests at the cost of much suffering by and resentment from the majority of Latin American people. Latin Americans find it difficult to understand why the people of the United States, whom censuses report are mostly “Christian,” permit such aggression; they wonder why their northern neighbors reject others’ convictions and judgments about which are the most just and compassionate actions to pursue.

Let me give an example from personal experience. First, during Argentina’s so-called “dirty war” (1976–83), the United States supplied the military dictatorship with its arms, the training of elite anti-subversion agents (including torture methods) in Panama and Camp Benning, the large economic loans of the World Bank to finance its oppression, and strategic cooperation of the CIA. The military government was anti-democratic: all media was censured, personal rights of habeas corpus were suspended, inhumane torture methods were used to the extent of causing death, children born of pregnant women were adopted by military personal when the mother died under torture, between twenty and thirty thousand people disappeared after being taken from their homes in the dead of night, and some were put to sleep with drugs and then dropped from planes in the ocean. No wonder a young man on a city bus shouted at us one day, “Yankee, go home!” We understood. How thankful we were when President Jimmy Carter cancelled all arms to the military dictatorships in 1979. For that and for his treaty with Panama, both of which were widely hailed as constructive in Latin America, Carter still is criticized by some here at home.

This example could be multiplied many times over. For this reason, this book is most appropriate for serious consideration. Neither Padilla nor Scott pretends to be an expert on Middle East politics or on Islam, and weaknesses in the book’s analysis of the situation in Iraq perhaps owe to this limitation. However, they write humbly and perceptively on what they do know: just war theory and Latin America’s experience of the United State’s foreign policy. Both authors offer a welcome and profound analysis of a subject begging for US Christians’ serious consideration.

Sidney Rooy, Florida

As a North American pastor I am often involved in discussions about what it means for the church to be the church. There are lots of versions of this discussion floating around. Some churches seem to hide within themselves. Some focus on Evangelism, some pride themselves on their "External Focus", some describe themselves as "Missional". And while I would not say the discussion among church people in North America is completely academic (I see many churches doing meaningful ministry), I would say that it has been somewhat frustrating and limited. It seems to fall victim to an all-too-common polarization. Either we have churches that are involved in evangelism and are concerned about the condition of people’s souls, or we have churches that are concerned with social issues like poverty and injustice. Seldom do we encounter churches that are willing or able to embrace both ends of this biblical spectrum.

As a pastor connected with some of what God is doing in Latin America, I have, for the last 10 years, been both humbled and inspired by what so many churches in Central and South America understand as the nature of church. Many of these churches have had to forge their existence in difficult environments. Systemic poverty and corruption are a fact of life in many places in the Third World. The claim that one has "Good News" rings much differently in an environment where human suffering is more pervasive and visible. There must be Good News for both body and soul.

As a result, one of the beautiful things the Latin American church has given us in the last half-century is a rich theological basis from which we can build discipleship and ministry which embrace the fullness of what church should be. For decades now, Churches in Latin America have been talking about the mission of the church as an "integrated mission". The following is a brief description of the concept written by a group leaders who have been practicing Integral Mission for a long time.

From the Micah Network Declaration on Integral Mission:
"Integral mission or holistic transformation is the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel. It is not simply that evangelism and social involvement are to be done alongside each other. Rather, in integral mission our proclamation has social consequences as we call people to love and repentance in all areas of life. And our social involvement has evangelistic consequences as we bear witness to the transforming grace of Jesus Christ. If we ignore the world we betray the word of God which sends us out to serve the world. If we ignore the word of God we have nothing to bring to the world. Justice and justification by faith, worship and political action, the spiritual and the material, personal change and structural change belong together. As in the life of Jesus, being, doing and saying are at the heart of our integral task."

This blog will seek to provide postings and discussion which explore this concept of churches bridging the divide and ministering to the complete range of human needs. We will seek to foster dialogue among church leaders in South and North America in an effort to promote Integral Mission not just in the Americas, but everywhere.