Advocating for justice and reconciliation at Redcliffe College

Today marks another milestone in the development of Redcliffe’s new MA course, Justice, Advocacy & Reconciliation in intercultural contexts. Having completed the module, Just Mission, the students will be starting the Advocacy, Reconciliation & Peacebuilding module, which marks our engagement in some innovative partnerships, promising to bring a rounded and dynamic learning experience.

After working initially through the biblical basis of advocacy, the next few days will see visits by Dr. Marijke Hoek, Dr. Khataza Gondwe, Christine Allen & Sue Richardson. Dr Marijke Hoek, is co-author with Justin Thacker of Micah’s Challenge: The Church’s Responsibility to the Global Poor, and co-editor of the recently-published book Carnival Kingdom; biblical justice for global communities, and her experience working with Micah Challenge and the business and media world in Manchester will help the students to think of creative ways for the Christian community to engage positively and practically in civil society. Dr. Gondwe is Team Leader, Africa and Middle East at Christian Solidarity Worldwide, and will be drawing attention to religious freedoms and persecution. We will finish the week with visits from Christian Aid’s Director of Policy & Public Affairs, Christine Allen, and Sue Richardson, Regional Coordinator. The students will be critiquing the theology and approach of these organisations in response to the presentations made, as one of their assignments – a key dimension of this module is the praxis-focus and the tools that will be provided for students to learn how to connect rigorous theology with a practical missiology that has value beyond the classroom.

The second part of this new module takes us to Coventry Cathedral’s ministry of the Cross of Nails, and in particular to St. Michael’s House. Canon David Porter, recently appointed as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s new Director of Reconciliation, will lead a 2 day intensive course on reconciliation and peace-building. This new partnership is an exciting development for Redcliffe’s MA programme and will provide the students with a unique contextual learning experience.

If you, or any friends/colleagues, are interested in the Justice MA programme, we would be very happy to hear from you – more detailed course content can be found here, or email Carol or myself at akingstonsmith@redcliffe.org or ckingstonsmith@redcliffe.org, for further info. Essentially, this new course can be done full-time in 1 year, or part-time over 2 to 4 years. Modules are normally done in intensive blocks during the course of the academic year, or during Redcliffe’s May summer school, each year. This MA programme is accredited by the University of Gloucestershire.

Easter Shalom: from the Cross to the Wedding Banquet

Sieger Köder Simon of Cyrene

…we need that deeper narrative of the Kingdom which requires us to take up our cross and follow Jesus (Luke 9:23). The cross symbolises the heart of the character of the King of this Kingdom who was himself the ‘suffering servant’. Jesus brought liberty and healing to others but did not seek to preserve his own life in his contestation for justice and reconciliation for all, because he recognised that self-interest and self-preservation lie at the nexus of the fallen powers which breed fear, pride and selfish ambition. The cross reminds us that change begins in a changed perception of ourselves as agents of a powerful and non-violent resistance to an order manipulated by fallen powers.
These powers thrive simply because few actually do resist them ‘unto death’ (whether literal or metaphorical) with the clear-sighted vision and wisdom of the resurrection power of God’s Kingdom.
The cross opens the way to the hope of resurrection. It represents Christ’s ultimate negation of the fallen powers in their attempt to script his final destiny. Many of us forget that Jesus called us to share in his struggle for justice, which inevitably brings suffering as we take up our own cross. The apostle Peter reminds us that in order for the glory of this just Kingdom to be manifest, we are required to labour and share in the sufferings of Christ (1 Peter 4:13). This powerful Kingdom truth could be seen to represent the ultimate Carnivalesque in that it inverts even life and death in the new order of the Kingdom, where those who seek to preserve their lives will lose them and those who lose their lives for the sake of this Kingdom will find them restored (Luke 9:24). Where the ‘whitewashed’
tomb of the teachers of the law spoke only of death under the aegis of fallen powers, the tomb under God’s grace is the womb of resurrection life; the old has gone and the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17). Thus, we see that the cross is the ultimate inversion of the present order of reality as it guarantees both our death and resurrection. As such it represents the real hope for a new and enduring Kingdom. This Kingdom is not shaped by the fallen powers, where fear and death are the ultimate predators in the hierarchies of power, but rather, the kenotic power of self-emptying which gives way to resurrection and fullness of life.’

Sieger Köder The Wedding Feast of the Lamb

The banquet brings together the themes already discussed of solidarity and social equality and laughter around a table of plenty; a banquet for the entire world. The banquet is a fitting culmination of the work for justice–plentiful provision in community for all. In her book A Place at the Table: Justice for the poor in a land of plenty, Judith Ann
Brady makes the theme of ‘a place at the table’ a guiding metaphor for achieving justice for the poor and the oppressed. The table represents friendship, provision and nurture and it also represents inclusivity and agency, in that all who sit at the table can join in the conversation and decision-making which flows from that.

For people of faith, working for God’s Kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven, there are two stages of the biblical banquet feast. The first, the Eucharist, anticipates the second, the wedding feast of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9). Jesus’ recasting of the Passover feast with his disciples in the lead up to his own death links the justice themes of the people of Israel’s liberation from Egypt with his own work of liberation and justice as King of the new Kingdom and his anticipated culmination of that work on the cross. The Carnival banquet always contains an ‘element of victory and triumph’ which provides the symbolic pause between the celebration and completion of one cycle of labour for justice and the invigorated new beginning of another cycle of labour for justice…Even as we work for his justice and shalom, we need to remind ourselves frequently (‘for as often as you eat this bread and drink this wine’) both of the lament and suffering of the ‘whole of creation which groans’ and of the joy and thankfulness of the freedom we can taste in anticipation.

The Eucharist is truly ‘food and sustenance for the journey’ and, in addition, it marks out and reminds us that there is also material provision in true fellowship. There is a second biblical focus on the banquet theme which is that of the ‘marriage feast of the lamb’ in Revelation 19:6-9. This banquet is the ultimate celebratory closure of all cycles of work for the justice of God’s Kingdom and it acknowledges, interestingly, both the work of Jesus and of all of us who have taken up our cross and followed him:

Hallelujah!
For our Lord God Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad
and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready.
Fine linen, bright and clean,
was given her to wear.

(Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of God’s holy people)

For the person of faith, the Eucharist is a symbolic feast which celebrates repeated cycles of work for justice in God’s Kingdom. Yet it also points beyond the immediate travail for God’s Kingdom and recognises, in solidarity with ‘all who suffer the pains of childbirth’ (Romans 8:22) that there will come a time when the permanent and outrageous plenty of the wedding feast will replace the transitory nature of the Eucharist feast. This Eucharist itself marks the move beyond slavery to the world’s unjust systems, towards the liberation and laughter of pilgrim communion and feasting. Importantly too, the banquet table also reminds us of the concrete value of our material lives.

The banquet table reminds us to work for the justice of provision of the material well-being for all of humanity, but it also reminds us to open our lives to the hospitality of the Kingdom, which calls us to share so that those who have little have enough and those who have much, have less; the redistribution economics of the Carnival Kingdom which are a powerful reminder of our ultimate place within the context of a human family of faith.

[This blog is an excerpt from Carol's essay here from the book Carnival Kingdom ]

Business as Mission, Justice and Human Dignity

In the last chapter of Carnival Kingdom, Mats Tunehag explores how the entrepreneurial gift has the potential to bring social reform, model justice and equality, and reduce poverty. Amid complex historic, ethnic, climactic, economic and social dynamics of communities,
biblically-shaped enterprise holds the capacity to serve God and the common good. Historic and contemporary vignettes highlight the vitality of the entrepreneurial strands in our re-imagining and re-weaving of society.

Here are a few snippets from his chapter:-

“In just 100 years, this country went from ‘unreached’ to ‘churched’, with approximately 90 percent of the population attending church as members. It is the ultimate success story in the history of Christian mission— if the success criteria are church planting and church growth. In just over 100 days, nearly one million citizens (and church members) were killed—by other citizens and church members—in a brutal genocide in the spring of 1994. The country? Rwanda. It had seen tremendous success in evangelism and church planting but little penetration of the Gospel in ethnic relationships—it had people in church, but not church in people. How we define our mission has both short and long-term implications. Church planting and growth is not wrong, but clearly insufficient as a success criterion. As we look at sub-Saharan Africa today, it has some of the most Christian countries in the world (percentage of Christians), some of the poorest countries in the world, and some of the most corrupt countries in the world. What is wrong with this picture? Is this success? Is this in line with our mission as Christians? Is this what God wants? Our mission and success criteria must include transformation. We want people and societies to be transformed—holistically. The global Business as Mission (BAM) movement is aiming at transformed lives around the world through ethical business with integrity. This sounds grand, but what does it mean?“

“Many people live and work in the insecure, informal job sector, which is often filled with survival activities in the form of subsistence businesses. Most people hope for a formal job, but many have little or no prospect of finding one. And the problem is increasing. 50 million new jobs need to be created in the Arab world alone by 2020 and there is no indication of that happening. According to the Economist, unemployment rates are 24% in Egypt, 27% in Jordan, 30% in Tunisia, 39% in Saudi Arabia and 46% in Gaza. 44 million people in the so-called rich world are unemployed and another 11 million are underemployed. The human costs are enormous, for joblessness increases depression, divorce, substance abuse, etc. Youth are disproportionately affected and this goes for both rich and poor countries. In Spain, for example, 46 percent of young people under the age of 25 are out of work. In South Africa it is over 50 percent. The challenge is huge and global. What must be done?“

“Human trafficking, modern day slavery, is the second biggest organised crime in the world. It is worth many billions of dollars and involves very sophisticated transnational operations. Some estimates indicate that about 27 million people have been tricked, shipped, deployed to slave-like work and are held against their will. This is happening all over the world. It is big business. It is organised. The trafficking operations involve all kinds of professions and skills and they are very interconnected;…To adequately address and combat human trafficking we need to build critical mass…and build strategic alliances… I see two major challenges for anti-trafficking initiatives. One problem is that it is mainly two categories of people and groups who are involved: Firstly, legislators, policy makers, and government agencies. Secondly, NGOs, non-profit and volunteer based organisations. These people and groups are good and needed. They are not the problem. The problem is the people and groups who are not involved or not even invited to combat this evil. We know that unemployment makes people vulnerable to traffickers. It is also a fact that we cannot talk about restoration of victims of human trafficking unless we can offer them jobs with dignity. Thus adequate prevention and restoration must include job creation. This means that business people must be a part of anti-trafficking networks…The second problem is disconnectedness. Local and national disconnected anti-trafficking measures are not sufficient to tackle big, organised crime, to initiate preventative steps and to plan and effect rescue and restoration of the victims of these criminal gangs.“

Mats Tunehag is a freelance consultant, speaker and writer from Sweden. He has worked in nearly half of the countries of the world, developing global strategic alliances for various constituencies, including Business as Mission. He is a senior Associate on Business as Mission for both the Lausanne Movement and World Evangelical Alliance Mission Commission, and has lectured widely on Business as Mission as well as published numerous articles and papers on the topic. He initiated and co-led the first global think tank on Business as Mission (BAM) 2002 – 2004, and he is now co-chairing the second global think tank on BAM. He also serves with a global investment fund based on Christian values that helps SMEs to grow in size and holistic impact in the Arab world and Asia, by providing financial, intellectual and human capital. He is also a global spokesperson on Religious Liberty & Freedom of Speech for the World Evangelical Alliance. He serves on the Global Council of Advocates International, a global network of 30,000 lawyers in over 120 countries. He has lectured to lawyers in Europe, Latin America and North America on Human Rights issues and lessons learned in building strategic and influential alliances shaping public opinion and legislation. He wrote editorials on international affairs for ten years for a national newspaper in Sweden.

Peace and Violence – the minority Christian experience in India

“The Church has not been able to
successfully articulate the development
needs of the Christian community.” – John Dayal

How do minorities get justice? Judging from the study of minority rights (or thelack of them) in contemporary India in chapter 5 of Carnival Kingdom, the answer seems to be–with great difficulty! In this chapter, Dr John Dayal details the way that justice for minorities, originally skilfully written into the Indian constitution, has become increasingly problematic.

Here are 3 excerpts from his writing:-

“The Asian Centre for Human Rights called it ‘India’s Christianophobia’. ‘That secular India suffers from entrenched Christianophobia is well established but not publicly acknowledged by the State and the society at large. Nothing reflects it more than the denial of reservations to the Dalits who converted into “Christianity” solely because of their religion’, ACHR director Suhas Chakma said in a special report in January 2012. ‘Dalits’ is what the former untouchable Indian castes now call themselves in a militant rejection of the system crafted three centuries ago, and codified by Manu, the Hindu law giver.”

“The impact of a fast globalised economy on the lives of Tribals living in poverty in a land flush with mineral wealth, and an acceleration of large migrations to the six megalapolises of Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chennai, collectively become a short fuse to the powder keg of this nation of 1.2 billion people on the cusp of the second decade of the twenty-first century who see, but do not share in, the oil, land, and digital booms. The emergence of a powerful Maoist movement in a third of the Union’s 35 States and central territories is the violent response to exploitation of resources by multinationals and the mass displacement of people by government acquisition of their homelands.” 

“The established Church [in India] finds itself cornered, partly because of its need to protect the large number of educational and medical institutions it runs, which can be put under pressure either by the majority community or by the state apparatus, as Bishops have found in the past sixty years. This also is the reason why the Church has not been able to successfully articulate the development needs of the Christian community, and explains the many ways its progress has been hindered in the past years. In fact, there is no collective statement made by the Church impressing on the government the need to focus attention on the economic development of a micro-minority which has given to the nation so much in the important fields of education and medicare. The Church has had no success in articulating the crisis in tribal areas where the implementation of the Forest Act in an arbitrary manner and several other administrative actions, have led to large scale deprivation, alienation of land, and mass migrations.” 

Dr John Dayal is one of India’s foremost voices on human rights, and particularly the situation of religious minorities, having been a writer and activist for the past four decades. He is a member of several governmental bodies, including the National Integration Council, and holds senior roles in numerous non-governmental organisations and networks, including as co-founder and Secretary General of the All India Christian Council, and a member of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference. He has had a long and distinguished career in the media and in academia. He has authored and contributed to several books, and regularly writes articles on human rights issues in India. He has a long record of investigating and producing substantive and influential documentation on communal violence in India, including Hindu-Muslim rioting and violence against Sikhs, Muslims and Christians. He is one of India’s leading experts on the situation in Orissa state, following the communal violence in 2008.

Human Dignity, Equality, and Liberty in Classic Protestant Perspective

Lat week we profiled some excerpts from John Witte Jr.’s chapter in Carnival Kingdom.

His chapter offers a historical angle on the concept of human dignity as a precursor to contemporary notions of human rights. Luther is not generally known for theologising on such issues, so John Witte Jr. helpfully examines some of Luther’s 16th Century writings to argue that freedom and rights not only have a long-standing tradition in Protestant thought, but find their culmination in God’s perfect law in the new heavens and new earth. Until then, egalitarian notions of equality and liberty still require significant development for a just societal order.

Here are some extracts from his chapter:-

“the current ubiquity of the principle of human dignity testifies to its universality. And the constant proliferation of new human rights speaks to their power to inspire new hope for many desperate persons and peoples around the world. Moreover, the increased pervasiveness of these norms is partly a function of emerging globalisation. Since the first international documents on human dignity and human rights were issued, many new voices and values have joined the global dialogue, especially those from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and from various Buddhist, Confucian, Hindu, Islamic, and Traditional communities.“

“The task of defining the appropriate ambit of human dignity and human rights today must be a multi-disciplinary, multi-religious, and multicultural exercise. Many disciplines, religions, and cultures around the globe have unique sources and resources, texts and traditions that speak to human dignity and human rights. Some endorse dignity and rights with alacrity and urge their expansion into new arenas. Others demur, and urge their reform and restriction. It is essential that each community be allowed to speak with its own unique accent, to work with its own distinct methods on human dignity and human rights. It is also essential, however, that each of these disciplines, religions, and cultures develops a capacity for conceptual bilingualism; an ability to speak with insiders and outsiders alike about their unique understanding of the origin, nature and purpose of human dignity and human rights.“

“Luther’s Freedom of a Christian thus became, in effect, his Dignitatis Humanae; his bold new declaration on human nature and human freedom that described all Christians in his world regardless of their “dignity or lack of dignity,” as conventionally defined. Pope and prince, noble and pauper, man and woman, slave and free, all persons in Christendom, Luther declared, share equally in a doubly paradoxical nature. First, each person is at once a saint and a sinner, righteous and reprobate, saved and lost, simul iustus et peccator, in Luther’s signature phrase. Second, each person is at once a free lord who is subject to no one, and a dutiful servant who is subject to everyone. Only through these twin paradoxes, Luther wrote, can we “comprehend the lofty dignity of the Christian.”“

“The heart of the Protestant theory of equality is that we are all priests before God. “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people” (1 Pet. 2:9; Rev 5:10, 20:6). Among you, “[t]here is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28; Col 3:10-11; Eph 2:14-15). These and many other biblical passages, among Luther’s favorites, have long inspired a reflexive egalitarian impulse in Protestants. All are equal before God. All are priests that must serve their neighbours. All have vocations that count. All have gifts to be included. This common calling of all to be priests transcends differences of culture, economy, gender, and more.“

“The great American jurist Grant Gilmore once wrote: “The better the society the less law there will be. In Heaven, there will be no law, and the lion will lie down with the lamb. In Hell, there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed.” This is a rather common Protestant sentiment, which Luther did much to propound in some of his early writings. But a Protestant, faithful to Luther’s most enduring insights, might properly reach the exact opposite projection. In Heaven, there will be pure law, and thus the lamb will lie down with the lion. In Hell, there will be no law, and thus all will devour each other eternally. Heaven will exalt due process, and each will always receive what’s due. Hell will exalt pure caprice, and no one will ever know what’s coming.“

John Witte, Jr., B.A. Calvin College, J.D. Harvard, is Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law, Alonzo L. McDonald Distinguished Professor, and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion Center at Emory University. A specialist in legal history, marriage law, and religious liberty, he has published 220 articles, 13 journal symposia, and 26 books. Recent book titles include: Christianity and Law: An Introduction (2008); The Sins of the Fathers: The Law and Theology of Illegitimacy Reconsidered (2009); Christianity and Human Rights: An Introduction (2010); and Religion and Human Rights: An Introduction (2012). Professor Witte’s writings have appeared in fifteen languages, and he has delivered more than 350 public lectures throughout the world. He has directed 12 major international projects on democracy, human rights, and religious liberty, and on marriage, family, and children. These projects have collectively yielded more than 160 new volumes and 250 public forums around the world.

Food for Thought

Reblogged from Vinoth Ramachandra:

Joseph Ratzinger, who steps down this week as Pope Benedict XVI, was not as popular, let alone as saintly, as his predecessor John Paul II. But he has acquired a well-deserved reputation as the “Green Pope”, making the Vatican the first carbon-neutral country in the world, putting thousands of solar panels of Vatican rooftops (a project which won the 2008 Euro Solar Prize) and committing the Vatican to having 20 per cent of its energy come from renewable sources by 2020.

Read more… 830 more words

Some food for thought from Vinoth Ramachandra. Let's continue to think critically about what we consume and how we live - Vinoth refers to some of the 'answers' from agribusiness - the topic of GM foods, and its ethical and theological implications will be considered at this Saturday's Environment Day conference, starting at 9:30am at Redcliffe College, Gloucester. Here is a link to the programme; http://www.redcliffe.org/Events/vw/1/ItemID/99. Do come and join us if you can - it will be a Saturday well-spent, if it leads us to engage more thoughtfully with some of the justice issues Vinoth discusses, and more importantly corrects our skewed thinking around the purpose of Lent too.

Yeasting the Public Debate with Good News – part 2

In part 2 of this post, we continue the theme from yesterday, considering how the Christian community can engage constructively, imaginatively and creatively in the public forum. So often injustices result in the perpetration of further injustices (retribution and revenge), whereas the teachings of Jesus offer us a more positive and life-affirming approach, without diluting the seriousness of the impact of injustice on the oppressed. Rather than being irrelevant, the Christian community has much to offer society in the challenging times in which we live. Economic challenges call out for creative and modest grass-roots responses, which a true community has in ample supply – the good news and good acts of the Kingdom!

Marijke will also share some brief insights from her chapter and the concept of the book, Carnival Kingdom, at the launch on the 2nd March (Redcliffe College, Gloucester, UK).

Some further excerpts from her chapter are set out below:-

“Dickens is considered to be one of the most persuasive advocates for the poor of his time. His style of writing belongs to Realism. Contrary to the Romantic Movement of the 18th century that gave an idealistic representation of life in literature and the arts, Dickens’ novels vividly describe the world as he knew it, shining a light on dark realities such as the destitution and exploitation of children and the oppression of women. Capturing the imagination across social classes, his books raised awareness and created a vein of sentiment, not merely entertaining Victorian society but giving it a progressive impulse for change.”

“Our sonship and our discipleship need to shape our citizenship in the social, economic, cultural, and political complexities of our world. Whereas it is commonly thought that a ‘critical mass’ is needed to bring about social change, most change occurs through strategically placing ‘critical yeast’ into the wider society.”

“Proverbs reflects that when God’s people thrive it does society good: ‘When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices.’ Wise living generates blessedness, riches, peace – in other words, shalom (11:10; 3:13-14). And so, our influence is not so much determined by our position in the pecking order or our status, but rather by living our lives through Christ as they are founded on biblical truth.”

“Blessed are the shalom seekers, the peacemakers. Blessed are they who have a glimpse of the renewed earth they will inherit, the first rays of which already illuminate their lives. For it disturbs, challenges and inspires them today, invites to new frontiers, awakens the hopeful imagination and makes them gloriously creative.”