WCC looks for alternatives to globalization
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A UMNS photo by Paulino Menezes, WCC
Bishop Wolfgang Huber of the Evangelical Church in Germany addresses a session on economic justice.
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| Bishop
Wolfgang Huber of the Evangelical Church in Germany opens a plenary
session on economic justice at the 9th Assembly of the World Council of
Churches in Porto Alegre, Brazil. One of the speakers, Rev. Nancy
Cardoso Pereira, a Brazilian Methodist, said globalization has been
particularly hard on Latin America. The issue of economic justice will
be a topic of continuing discussion during the Feb. 14-23 assembly. A
UMNS photo by Paulino Menezes, World Council of Churches. Photo #06160.
Accompanies UMNS story #093. 2/17/06 |
Feb. 17, 2006
By Linda Bloom*
PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil (UMNS) — In the Lord’s Prayer, Christians say, “Give us
this day our daily bread.”
But where does that bread come from?
Increasingly, as the Rev. Nancy Cardoso Pereira, a Brazilian Methodist, pointed
out to participants at the World Council of Churches 9th Assembly, bread and
cereal items — along with meat and dairy products — come from transnational
corporations located in the United States and Europe.
“So, ?on earth as in heaven,’ globalized capitalism ? is punishing farmers in
poor countries, whom they are treating as permanent debtors, while at the same
time, the debts of agriculture in rich countries are being cancelled in the form
of subsidies, tariffs and free trade treaties — and there is no one who ?can
deliver us from that evil,’” she declared.
Cardoso spoke during a Feb. 16 plenary session on economic justice. That issue
will be a continuing topic of discussion during the Feb. 14-23 WCC assembly in
Porto Alegre.
In a press conference before the session, Cardoso said globalization has been
particularly hard on Latin America. “What we call globalization is the new face
? of a savage capitalism,” she explained.
It’s an economic system created by a specific policy first developed in the
1980s by former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, according to Yashpal
Tandon, an economist from Uganda and executive director of the South Centre, a
think tank in Geneva, Switzerland.
The policy has only generated more poverty in the past 20 years, he said, and
the assembly “must challenge this ideology that masquerades as
science/economics.”
Bishop Wolfgang Huber of the Evangelical Church in Germany opened the session by
noting that the Christian faith cannot be neutral on issues of economic justice.
“Economic decisions do not produce ethical values,” he added.
The WCC has been discussing the phenomenon of globalization since its 1998
assembly in Harare, Zimbabwe, and developed a document called Alternative
Globalization Addressing People and Earth (AGAPE), which was finalized by the
executive committee last September.
Written in the form of a uniting prayer, AGAPE invites the churches “to act
together for transformation of economic injustice and to continue analyzing and
reflecting on challenges of economic globalization and the link between poverty
and wealth.”
Alternatives to the current system can be achieved and are already happening in
some places on the local level, according to Tandon.
“People are experimenting with creating their own currencies or exchanging goods
and services using the barter system,” he explained. “They are pooling their
labor together to build boreholes and damming rivers to generate electricity.
They are growing food in abandoned lands to fight against hunger and poverty,
collecting waste and turning them into assets for survival.”
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A UMNS Web-only photo by Paulino Menezes, WCC
Terauango Beneteri, of the Kiribati Protestant Church, offers a presentation on "The Island of Hope."
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| Terauango
Beneteri, of the Kiribati Protestant Church in the Pacific Islands,
presents an alternative to current economic systems called "The Island
of Hope." It emphasizes communal life and ownership. Beneteri spoke to
the plenary session on economic justice at the 9th Assembly of the World
of Council Churches. Economic justice is an ongoing topic of discussion
at the Feb. 14-23 gathering in Porto Alegre, Brazil. A UMNS Web-only
photo by Paulino Menezes, World Council of Churches. Photo #W06025.
Accompanies UMNS story #093. 2/17/06 |
One specific alternative, called “The Island of Hope,” can be found in the
Pacific Islands, according to Terauango Beneteri of the Kiribati Protestant
Church.
The program emphasizes communal life and ownership of resource bases, family
ties, spirituality, traditional economy and cultural values. “The Island of Hope
represents life-center values deeply rooted in Pacific communities, which
provide an orientation for a just and sustainable economy and a life of
dignity,” she said.
“We don’t have to have globalization,” Cardoso told the assembly. “All we have
to have is solidarity and passion for life.”
Churches also have discovered that trade issues must be considered “if our fight
against poverty is going to make a difference,” according to Baffour Amoa, chief
executive of the Fellowship of Christian Councils and Churches in West Africa,
who was part of a press briefing organized by the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance.
Atle Sommerfeldt, chief executive of Norwegian Church Aid — which has partner
relationships with the United Methodist Committee on Relief and Church World
Service — said the World Trade Organization is the only realistic way to
regulate the “most powerful actors” in free trade. But churches need to find a
way to ensure the WTO process becomes more focused on justice to the less
powerful nations, he said.
“The true measure of trade should be the measure of its impact on those already
on the margins,” added Mary Corkery, executive director of the KAIROS: Canadian
Ecumenical Justice Initiatives.
*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.
News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.
Video Summary
Plenary on Economic Justice
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