Rev. Dra . Ofelia Ortega

1. “Biblical – Theological Answers to Globalization” Rev. Dra. Ofelia Ortega

2. Our Church dilemma in front of FTAA (Free Treat Agreements of America): The most important thing of this class should be the unanimous purpose of raising our voices to prophetically denounce a process, which according to many economy experts, has been secretly dealt. The committee, which has been working since the end of the year 1999, integrated by the vice ministers of trade of each country (except Cuba), has totally worked without taking into account the demands of the civil society and the demands of the Second Summit of the People of the America in their declaration of April 19th, 2001 in which it is affirmed that:

3. “Neither the people of the region, nor the diverse group of union and social organizations, nor the parliaments have been able to participate on the debates nor to know the detail of the agreements. On the contrary, with great cynicism, the negotiators affirm that they have taken note of the recommendations of the Managerial Forum of the America.” “And these recommendations have been valuable contributions to the process of the FTAA. The governments prepare themselves, in a few weeks, to secretly sign a treaty behind the people’s back and threaten to radically deepen the terrible consequences that the effective neo-liberal politics afforded”

4. As Germán Gutiérrez, from the Ecumenical Department of Investigation of San José, Costa Rica, affirms: “The main objective of U.S. in the FTAA is to strengthen its domain over Latin America and the Caribbean, inside the context of their economic confrontation with the European Union and Japan and to exclude the latter from their influence in the region.” “It is about to narrow the control over Latin America in the conflict for markets or investments, for placement of speculative capitals, but mainly for the access to natural and energy resources, petroleum fundamentally, for the access to the drinkable water that is another great interest; and for the access to the wealth of biodiversity of the region.”

5. Another objective is to destroy the current intents of economical integration of Latin American and Caribbean that promote relationships with other economical areas of the world in order to attenuate its excessive dependence on the North American economy” We have to admit, that at the present time, winds of reaction prevail against the social values and the humanitarian attitudes. The power is in hands of those that manage the financial capital and control the most important markets in the world. These impose a neo-liberal vision, which attempts against the people’s expectations. Life is difficult, especially for those that lack privileges.

6. Those that dominate seek to impose a vision according to which we come closer to the “end of the history.” Or with other words; that the transition that we are experiencing is definitive and it can not be reverted. Simplifying their message, we can say that their vision is that of a world formed by winners and losers. The winners are those able to compete, to be aggressive and to be authoritarian. The losers are most of the population of the planet. However who sees history with the eyes of faith in the God that calls, has the conviction that the human beings can not definitively determine the historical processes. It is God who moves history, not the human beings.

7. This conviction was already expressed by a prophet in times that the life of the community of believers was extremely difficult, in moments that there was little or any hope. In their proclamation, the prophet called up the people to believe, not to give up. “Turn to the Lord and pray to him, now that he is near. Let the wicked leave their way of life and change their way of thinking. Let them turn to the Lord, our God; he merciful and quick to forgive”. Then the Lord says: “My thoughts are not like yours, and my ways are different from yours. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways and thoughts above yours” (Is. 55: 6-9).

8. The prophetic word points out to a mystery of history: the final result of the historical processes will always escape to the control of the established powers. This means that we have to expose the ideology that proclaims the end of history and the definitive character of the domain over the world on the part of the established powers. It is necessary to clearly establish that powers generate injustice! An incompatibility exists between its regime and the promises of the gospel, where it is said that Mary, Jesus' mother who praised the Lord after she received the news that she was conceiving the Son of God, went to see Elisabeth and sang: “He has stretched out his mighty arm and scattered the proud with all their plans. He has brought down mighty kings from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away with empty hands.” (Lucas 1: 51-53)

9. Different biblical traditions in different contexts: We have to recognize that the biblical texts were written in different historical periods. However, they are always related with very concrete economical and political contexts. In certain historical periods God’s message was directed to kings and feudal lords. From the century VIII b.c. the biblical texts confronted the new economy dominated by the private proprietors, the credit, the money and the mechanisms of debts. This new economy was developed in the political atmosphere of the empires of Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome.

10. The absolute power about the property introduced by Greece in the century VIII b.c introduced an endless chain of loans, interests on the loans, the debtor's slavery and absolute prevalence of poverty. It was necessary to pay tributes and taxes to the imperial powers; all these mechanisms led to poverty and hunger, to slavery and even to death (Nehemías 5; 1-5). When we understand the context and what happened in this historical period, we find many reading keys that can help us in our specific situation in front of the contemporary International Financial Institutions.

11. Examining the biblical texts from the perspective of justice, four fundamental biblical traditions can help us to be able to define how to settle down and to maintain fair economic relationships, which can serve as specific points of reference and guide even nowadays. The biblical writers affirm that God can mobilize different against-strategies in front of the mechanisms that lead to poverty, to hunger and slavery in its people, creating, at the same time, alternatives for what we can call the structural and corporate sin.

12. This biblical tradition calls us to: 1. To criticize the injustices prophetically and to create new visions. 2. To support all the possible legal reformations so that the political and economical structures serve the theology of life. 3. To courageously resist the totalitarian and globalizing powers and to try the alternatives that the Kingdom of God offers us to live. 4. To live and to promote those alternatives that we have to go discovering in the practical daily experience of our people.

13. Prophetic Critic of the injustices and creation of the new visions: A great number of churches have begun to follow the examples of the prophets, criticizing the injustices and creating new visions. The “Cry of the Excluded Movement” in Latin America constitutes a sign of hope in the Continent. We have among us Bishop Federico Pagura that has been one of the initiators of this process. The Churches in the Pacific have developed a alternative vision called “the Hope Island” as an answer to the challenge of the economical Globalization.

14. The World Council of Churches, in an answer to this economic dominance, responds that: 1. The vision of globalization should be challenged by the vision of our faith. 2. The logic of globalization should also be challenged by alternative forms of life in community. 3. The dominance of globalization should be challenged by the creation of effective institutions of global ruling - (United Nations). A concrete form of responding to this dominant phenomenon of the economical globalization is to support the United Nations as a structure that tries to carry out a fair world order).

15. The World Alliance of Reformed Churches is wrapped in a “process confessions” in connection with all the economical injustices and the ecological destruction considering this process as an integral part of the reformed faith and of the confession of that faith nowadays. The Lutheran World Federation has expressed the same commitment in a process that they call “Facing the Economical Globalization with the concept and the practice of our Communion” The prophet Isaiah (5:8) criticizes the accumulation of wealth through property, credit, interests and mechanisms of debt. In the same way Jesus challenges the rich proprietors of the earth in Marc 10: 21 indicating that he knows that the wealth in that system is derived from the exploitation of the poor. At the same time the prophets also present us the vision of justice in all moment (Isaiah 60:21-22)

16. The basic ideological pattern in which the International Monetary Fund and the World bank is based should be prophetically criticized in the light of the biblical teachings. Of course the economists of those institutions affirm that they are based on the science and not in the ideology. They try to force us so that we believe that the pattern of mercantile growth that they offer leads to the good common, this is opposed to all the empiric evidences that manifest the opposite. The rhetoric of the IMF and the World Bank is simply distorted in the analysis of the reality that our live.

17. The alternative vision should be: - The human beings are not for the economy but the economy is for the human beings. - No economy can be considered successful if it is not socially ecologically and democratically successful at the same time. Consequent with our ethical principles we should reject all the “Programs to reduce Poverty” from the IMF and the World Bank until they stop imposing the structural adjustments and the continuous collection of interests and payment of the debts for the benefit of the rich at the expense of the poor.

18. Defence of the legal reformations: There is a theory that the money was historically linked to a new economy related to the property that was created in the VIII century b.c. In the first place, the emphasis in the property (the land) was a fruit of the fight of the peasants against the feudal lords that possibly led to the formation of the polis (city-state). But the value of the property led to the credit system by means of which those that requested credit had to pay not only the capital but also the interest.

19. On one hand as the work force and the land of the family they had to be a guarantee for the credit, if families could not pay the credit they had to suffer the loss of the land and slavery, on the other hand, the moneylenders could accumulate more and more lands, slaves and money. The prophets strongly criticized these mechanisms (Isaiah 5:8). Also the legal reformations of the “The book of Covenant” (Exodus 21-23), Deuteronomy and the Priestly Code (in the book of Leviticus) provide measures that were taken in Israel to counterattack these mechanisms, for example, the prohibition of the interests charge and the regulation of guarantees (Exodus 21:27) the regular cancellation of the debts every 7 years (Deuteronomy 15:1-2) and the redistribution of the land every 50 years (the “jubilee” of Leviticus 25).

20. The basic theological argument is: “the land belongs to God” (Lev. 25: 23); therefore, each family should have its means of production, for the support of its family. The same thing is true for all the human beings. They should not be enslaved. They belong to God who freed them from the slavery of Egypt (Lev. 25: 29). The Bible is very clear in connection with the legal reformations that have to break the absolute will of property and money and to create a fair distribution of the wealth created in the society. In consequence the states should be agents that facilitate the common good of the countries. This means that they have to regulate the economy according to social, ecological and democratic approaches.

21. To resist with anger: The resistance can be the only option when the prophecy and the legal reformations fail and the economical and political powers become totalitarian. This was the case in the time of the Hellenistic-Roman empires. The Book of Daniel tells us the history of the three men that refused to lean before the statue of gold that symbolized the absolute, political, economical and ideological power of the imperial power. The risk was that they would be burnt alive. They are miraculously saved from the fire but this is not enough guarantee in the resistance. The resistance can lead to the suffering.

22. Jesus suffered in the cross for his “civil disobedience.” He challenged the central economical power of the priests of the temple of Jerusalem, who betraying their people, were protected by the Roman Empire. Jesus attacked those that supported the sacrificial system exploiting the poor (Marc 11:15). This resistance can take different forms: 1. To reject the legitimation of the neo-liberal pattern. This system serves to the totalitarian power of the transnational capital through the mechanisms of the global economy and the instruments such as IMF and the World Bank. 2. To let know the feet of mud of the system exposing their vulnerability and the present and future disasters (Daniel 2: 43-45), to follow strategies that ridicule the system and help us to conquer fear that we can show of their absolute power.

23. 3. To not cooperate with the terms that the IMF and the World Bank impose. 4. To participate in campaigns that lead us to a fundamental transformation of the mechanisms of control of the IMF and the World Bank. 5. It is necessary to resist all cooperation with the macro-economic paradigm of the IMF and the WB; that imposes the impoverishment of the poor at great scales and the global enrichment of the rich. We should also help to dismantle the apparent democratic genuineness of these global financial institutions.

24. Visions and alternative projects of life: The system tells us: “there is not alternative.” Jesus helped the poor and hungry multitudes guiding them to share what they had at hand building this way what we call “The economy of the Grace of God” (Marc 6:35 and 8:1). The Primitive Church challenged the system of the private property and emphasized the necessity to share all the possible resources, what allowed that those primitive communities became witness of the full life in God (that is to say the resurrection), trying that there were not poor among them (Facts 4: 32). There are local and regional alternatives that can be implemented and supported by the churches and the congregations.

25. Conclusion: We would like to finish with the proposals of Franz I. Hinkelammert and Henry M. Mora in “Coordinación Social del Trabajo, Mercado y Reproducción de la Vida Humana” book on which they say the necessity that we have of an ethic of good common. This ethics of common good has to be of resistance, of interpellation, of intervention and of transformation. This ethics introduces values. Value to which any calculation of utility (or of own interest) has to be subjected. They are the values of the respect to the human being, to its life in all dimensions, and of respect to the life of nature.

26. They are values of the mutual recognitions among the human beings, including in this recognition the natural being of all human being and the recognition on behalf of the human beings toward the external nature to them. They are values that are not justified for calculable advantages in terms of utility or of the own interest. Nevertheless, they are the base of the human life, without which this is destroyed in the most elementary sense of the word. Its principle is: Nobody can live, if the other can not live. These values question the system, and on their behalf it is required to exercise resistance to intervene it or to transform it. The common good is this process in which the values of the common good are faced up to the system to question it, to intervene it and to transform it.

27. The values of the common good are not laws or norms; they are approaches on laws and norms. In consequence, their force is the resistance, the interpellation, the intervention and the transformation. We have to actively work around concrete and feasible alternatives to the neo-liberal pattern of economic integration to the service of the great transnational corporations.

28. The calendars of the social movements will go appearing, strengthening the great dream to which we, all the Latin Americans and Caribbean, aspire that are able to live in a society where we all fit, in a society even more humanized and involved, in which the values and approaches of life, peace, solidarity and coexistence are always imposed to the values of war, power and domain, vanity and vengeance.