On Globalization: Part 2, Economics Trumps Democracy

Globalization is big word.  You hear it a lot, but few take the time to understand it.  So bear down.  Read closely (this second of four posts), and I bet you get it.

At the heart of economic globalization is the freedom of foreign investment from regulation, a freedom worked out by bilateral and multilateral national agreements.  So goods, services and capital (think money), that is, trade and investment, flow ever more easily across international borders.  But in order to ease that flow increasingly democracy – that is, the informed  will and action of the people – gives way to unaccountable economic power.  More and more significant decisions about life are removed from public discussion and influence and left to an elite few.  A growing portion of the global economy is now planned and directed in ways that are unaccountable to the public as a whole.  People elect governments, but not corporations.  So decisions made in a boardroom in New York or London may affect the people of, say, Bangladesh a whole lot more than those made by the elected government of Bangladesh.

And increasingly goods and services needed by everyone (such as water, electricity and education) are privatized; that is, they are owned by corporations and individuals usually not accountable to the people most impacted.  For instance, a foreign corporation can purchase the water supply of some impoverished South American country and export it at whatever price the market will bear to California.  Meanwhile, more and more life forms (for example, genetic materials or seed strains developed over centuries by indigenous people) and life experiences (experiences related to spiritual growth and happiness) are being commodified and marketed.  Western consumer-oriented ways of life spread around the world.  And money is increasingly commodified; that is, more and more wealth is created by speculative trade in money for short-term gain rather than by trade in goods and services and rather than by investment in long-term production of goods and services.  So sudden shifts in capital may dramatically affect the well-being of millions.

O.K. that was the hard part.  We can ease up just a bit.  But just a bit because perhaps you have detected that there may be some real problems associated with globalization.  And there are.  Local and regional systems of agriculture and other production may be crippled.  Transnational corporations that grow beans, beef and bananas for North American tables may dislocate many Central American farmers from their family plots.  And who knows where the dislocated may show up.  

Then there’s the issue of accountability as democratic political power gives way to unaccountable economic power in the hands of relatively few economic players.  There are also issues of sustainability as short-sighted economic interests assault the Earth’s life-support system.  And there is the matter of the richer nations dictating inequitable terms of trade to poorer nations. 

Having said all this, I am still optimistic.  More to the point, because I am Christian, I am hopeful.  But do I have reason to be?

On Globalization: Part 1, A World Coming Together as One

In our time, disciples are being made of all nations, though maybe not quite the way nineteenth-century missionaries may have supposed. The world is coming together.  The worldwide web is the metaphor of our time.  Ideas travel almost instantaneously around our globe.  In fact, the violence of certain conservative Islamists  can probably be best understood as part of a fearful reaction to the world becoming one.  But even rioters in the streets of Cairo or Teheran wear blue jeans and sip Cokes. 

The world is coming together, and it’s this process that is called globalization.  It bears watching.  It calls for understanding.  In this, conservative Muslims are not wrong.  If the world is coming together as one, then it matters a great deal on whose terms and at what cost to the human spirit.  And it is especially important that those who follow Jesus be paying attention.  We live today on the front edge of one of history’s greatest turning points.  So I offer my thoughts here as a brief beginning toward understanding globalization.  I will begin with some analysis of globalization and then in future posts turn to Scripture.  I will identify some problems and then sketch out a direction toward solutions.

Globalization is both cultural and economic.  One world culture, essentially Western, is spreading around the world.  At some cost to cultural diversity.  There are customs and languages that will not survive.  At some possible loss to perhaps all of us.  But primarily I will focus on economic globalization.  Ah, economics!  You may feel that economics has no place on a minister’s blog.  And I would essentially agree with you.  I would entirely agree with you if it weren’t for the niggling little matter of economics being the primary way life is structured.  So to rule it out of bounds for churches is to rule much of life out of bounds for spiritual discussion and to contribute to the ongoing moral paralysis and irrelevance of many, many churches.  Still, economics should be discussed with great care in church settings because in most cases those speaking in churches are not economically trained.  I’m not.  I’m trained in history but not economics.  I freely acknowledge my limitations.  Still I do my homework carefully.

Before saying another word, let me stake out my own perspective.  I am American.  By choice.  I believe that it is the verdict of history that the economic system called capitalism and associated with Adam Smith and his 1776 book, The Wealth of Nations, works.  I do not believe that greed works, not in the long run, but I do believe that free markets and free trade work.  The problem is that there are always those in both Big Government and Big Business who seek to restrict free markets and free trade to their own personal advantage.  And there are always dislocations; labor can never move as quickly as capital.  But over time truly free markets and trade work.  And so I am essentially optimistic.  Globalization is the future.  And while it has its critics (thank goodness, every system needs its critics), globalization is, in my judgment, more the solution than the problem.

The world is becoming more and more economically interconnected.  Of the world’s one hundred largest economies, forty-nine are nations and – get this – fifty-one are multi-national corporations.1  And this offers the remarkable hope that nations will be increasingly disinclined to go to war with other nations.  Their economies are too dependent on one another.  But – and here’s the rub – the process of globalization involves some real risks and vulnerabilities.2 

What are your thoughts on globalization?  Does church – does faith – have a say in this?  Should it?

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1 Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda, Healing a Broken World: Globalization and God, 20.

2 Ibid., 19ff. 

On Postmodernism, or THE WAY WE THINK TODAY: Part 4, Back to our Beginnings

Postmodernism is thought by some to be avant-garde, perhaps dangerously so.  But, in fact, it takes us, as Christians, back to our beginnings.  I think of Paul writing to the cerebral, brilliant, sophisticated, highly educated, worldly wise Greeks in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5.  He’s already written: “Where is the wise man?  Where is the scholar? … God choose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.  God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”  He sounds Postmodernist, and this is no surprise.  Postmodernism goes way back, long before Modernism.  It seeks origins in their context.  It seeks to go back to beginnings.  Then in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, Paul writes, “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.  For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.  I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling.  My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”  Exactly.  Instead of a God preached and argued about, we offer a God who became human and who lived amongst us and now lives in us! 

For us, truth is to be incarnate not intellectualized, lived not argued.  We offer not definitive, unarguable answers but transformed life lived in conscious awareness of the Spirit of God.  We own up to our own premises – that all this is by faith – but we also  recognize, as all Postmodernists do, that all thought systems are based on faith commitments.  What we ask is that everyone get their presuppositions on the table, and then we narrate the story of Christian faith.  It’s a reasonable story.  It makes sense.  It answers life’s biggest questions.  How do we best account for life as it is?  What works?  What offers hope?  Down on street level and out in real life, what are the real human needs?  And how are they best satisfied?  How do we best make sense of human experience as a whole?  But this story is not so much intellectual as it is spiritual.  This story is not so much about building institutions as building community.  It’s a story to be lived not argued.

We know that context matters.  Circumstance matters.  Yes, people will interpret in different ways.  What matters most is what we do with our differences, how we treat those who are different and think differently than us.  We know that many of life’s deepest truths do not lend themselves to scientific verification.  And inspired by Jesus, and open to his Spirit in our lives, we know that there is much to be learned from the stories of others, especially the marginalized, the powerless, the widows and orphans, the previously silenced and unheard.  These are all things Jesus knew and taught.  And now this thing called Postmodernism leads us back home to what we once knew.  For too long now, modern men and women have lived in a spiritual desert, a dry and dusty place, filled with argument and conflict over whose little goodness is most good, over whose little rightness is most right.  And we are so thirsty.

But God offers us a fresh wind of the Spirit bringing life back again to the dry bones of the church, a world open to mystery, to awe and wonder, to miracle, a world gloriously re-enchanted, life open to the sacred all around us, minds surrounded by grace and with this consciousness being able to see so much more than we ever could before.  And this one thing more.  Now it just might be possible that all people might one day come together in love and understanding.

So, really, to whom is Postmodernism a threat?  Well, other than to those who don’t like any of the above?

On Postmodernism, or THE WAY WE THINK TODAY: Part 3, Truths Such Churches Know Not Of

Postmodernism or the way we think today, say, in the past thirty years or so, is not so much a threat to faith as a threat to Modernism and to churches steeped in Modernism, to churches that ignore historical context and turn truth into universal, timeless abstractions, that accept as true only those things that are held up to “scientific” standards, that thereby define, list and categorize everything, that in their quest for certainty downplay mystery, awe, multiple perspectives and diversity.  More and more people today coming to such churches cannot make sense of what they are hearing.  Over and over their hearts know truths such churches know not of.

But emphatically Postmodernism is not a threat to faith.  In fact it opens the world back up to faith.  For those with eyes to see, it is a fresh wind of the Spirit bringing life back again to the dry bones of the church.  It’s wide open to the deep past, to ancient and medieval sources, to premodern ways of knowing, being and doing, to the stories of the marginalized, the poor and persecuted, the widows and orphans, the previously silenced, to the truths that the heart knows best: what is loving, what is decent and honorable, what is caring and wise. 

 Postmodernism does not suppose that wisdom began with seventeenth-century science and philosophy.  It’s wide open to mystery, to awe and wonder, to miracle, to paradox and multiple perspective.  It’s wide open to the glorious re-enchantment of the world, to the sacred being seen and experienced everywhere.      To either/or it offers both/and.  It suggests that being strictly rational is not necessarily the same as being reasonable: that to the penetrating light of cold logic, one wisely adds the warmth of intuition.  To boundary-markers it adds bridge-builders.  In place of what is authoritarian, it honors authenticity.  In place of conformity, it celebrates diversity.  In place of the quest for certainty, it offers intellectual modesty and openness to others.  It makes it conceivable the all people might one day come together in love and understanding, learning from their differences.

Now who could be afraid of that? 

On Postmodernism, or THE WAY WE THINK TODAY: Part 2, There’s No Way Around It

So what is this Postmodernism that creates so much fear and trembling in many churches today?  Bear down now.  I will try to simplify this message in every way I can.  I will mention some unrepeatable names (don’t bother trying to repeat them, or remember them), and then I will highlight three concepts.  I will name the concepts, and you may feel for a moment ready to give up, but hang in here.  If you’re in High School and catch all this, you’ll be able to wow ’em in your Senior seminar or your college essay.  I will name these three concepts first and then develop them, and as I develop them, you will realize that they are all concepts that are almost second-nature to us now.  In fact, they are concepts the heart has long known.

Historically Postmodernism arose out of post-war Paris – which was probably reason enough for some to suspect it – and the thinking of men like Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard and Michel Foucault. All French.  And I will note in passing that unless you have recently brushed up on your High School French, seeing these names will not help you pronounce them.  But never mind.  For our purposes right now, you’ll not need to.  I will not mention them again.

What’s important is what they were saying.   Their thought, which would come to be known as Postmodernism, was associated with three large concepts: (1) deconstruction of the text; (2) skepticism toward metanarratives; and (3) the notion that power is knowledge, or more simply stated, that power corrupts knowledge.  Each of these concepts have been turned into “bumper-sticker” slogans and used to deride Postmodernism.  But, in fact, each of these concepts when looked at more closely and in context makes sense. Let’s take them one at a time.1

#1 – Deconstruction of the text, that is, deconstruction of all that is written or communicated.  What Postmodernism is saying is that the meaning in a “text” (or any form of communication) is often found not in its surface reading, but in its deeper readings, in what it implies, in what its premises are, in its historical context.  To this end, to interpret a text well, you deconstruct it.  It’s important to notice not just what a text says but also what it does not say.  It’s important not just to read its words; you also need to “read” the gap between its words.  In brief, Postmodernism is saying: Context matters.  Circumstance matters.  The circumstances of both the writer and the reader matter and need to be taken into consideration to interpret well.  And every “text” – every form of communication – requires interpretation and, as such, is subject to the possibility, indeed the inevitability, of different interpretations.  And there is no way around this.  And there isn’t.

#2 – Skepticism toward metanarratives.  Postmodernism is skeptical of any large controlling narratives that claim to explain everything else, that claim to be abstract, universal, timeless truths apart from context or circumstance, and that will not own up to their own premises and presuppositions.  Postmodernism sees such metanarratives as controlling; it will speak of such metanarratives as imperialistic, colonizing, and totalizing.  Many church leaders leaped to the conclusion that this was a threat to Christianity, but again they failed to see the context of what was being said.  Postmodernism directs this skepticism primarily at science as the ultimate theory of everything.  It challenges the hegemony of science.  It notes that technology often outstrips morality, and that there are many truths that do not lend themselves to scientific verification.  Rather than attacking faith, it opens the world back up to faith, to mystery and miracle.  And it recognizes that sacred texts, in fact, contain multiple perspectives and narratives.  And they do.

#3 – The notion that power is knowledge.  Postmodernism understands that what passes for knowledge is often what those in power want passed for knowledge, leaving out other perspectives, other insights and other stories.  It observes that what passes for knowledge is never neutrally determined.  Much of what passes for knowledge is what serves the best interests of political, societal or church leaders.  Stated simply, Postmodernism stresses that power corrupts – that power even corrupts knowledge.  And it does.

So what’s the real reason for fear of Postmodernism?  Who would really contest any of these points? 

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1 This organization of thought I owe largely to James K. A. Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?  Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church, a book I recommend to anyone wishing to look more deeply into these matters.