for the Spanish version go to
La Vida en el Espíritu - Hacia una Teología de la Globalización

[2-22-03]

Life in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Globalization

by Brice Rogers

What do a child living on the streets of Austin, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico and a refugee from Iraq have in common? I asked myself this question one Sunday morning, before Town Lake in Austin, Texas, during a worship service of remembrance dedicated to the victims of the streets of Austin this year. Sixty-two people dead in 2002. Currently there are between four and eight thousand people living on the streets of the Texas capital. I found myself surrounded by people of different social, economic and political backgrounds, business people, professional musicians, people living in the streets - all together in the cold air next to the lake, with heads bowed, praying to God. A perfect image of the way the people of God should be: a community without barriers.

Unfortunately, this service happens only once a year and is focused on "the problem of the homeless," as if they were the problem. In one week I have participated in several activities that have to do with one group of people or another: two conferences about the war with Iraq that threatens us and that will probably leave millions of people as refugees, English classes for immigrants in Austin who speak only Spanish, and the worship service for homeless people. Different contexts, different worlds. In a world that is made up of many worlds, Christ tells us, "seek first the kingdom of God and God's righteousness, and all these things will be given to you" (Matthew 6:33). In which of these worlds, then, should I seek the kingdom of God?

Many of us are conscious that we live in a world that is in a process of globalization. Since my parents' generation, for the first time in human history, we have lived in a global economic system that touches almost every country in the world in one way or another, facilitated by worldwide networks of communication and transportation. Once Martin Luther King Jr. said, "by the time you eat breakfast, you have already depended on half the world." Every day, our life depends on the work of millions of people in other countries, whose names we do not know. Millions of workers with and without documents come to our cities in the United States every year, ready to construct our houses, prepare our meals and take care of our children for almost ridiculous wages. It is simply impossible not to participate in the worldwide system, because the world has come to our door.

Despite the fact that we live in a world system, our churches still do not reflect that reality. When I arrived at seminary, I expected to find a community that was conscious of the global reality of the world and preparing to confront it through the churches. Instead, I found myself in a confused institution following the lead of churches that don't understand their context and that seek a way of turning back the clock about fifty years to the time when we "had folks." In the seminary we talk about rural and urban churches, big and small churches, and "ethnic church development," but we don't take the time to consider what it means to live in a global world. A world in which we kill our enemies (or better said, their children and grandparents) through economic sanctions and medicine embargoes, and in which our enemies can kill three thousand people without firing a single shot. What does it mean to be Church in this world?

I think it's time to develop a theology of globalization. Maybe it sounds strange to say it this way, but it seems to me that only a global theology can confront a globalized world. And only a theology that directs itself to the current global reality can sustain the peacemakers, those disciples that Christ sent to the world with the goal of "making disciples of all nations." To answer my original question, only a global theology recognnizes that those who live on the streets of Austin, the undocumented immigrants from Mexico, and refugees from Iraq are all equal because they are all children of God, and none of them deserves to live in fear of death caused by systematized evil.

What difference might there be between a globalized theology and the theologies we already have? I'm not sure, because a theology of globalization has still not appeared. But such a theology should include the following:

1. Injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere, because God is a God of justice.

2. There is no struggle against evil in this world, be it environmental, or labor, or human rights, or political, that does not deserve the attention and support of Christians.

3. The experience of God of every believer everywhere is just as important as ours.

4. No believer can be good with God and have "peace" while our brothers and sisters in other countries suffer poverty and persecution, especially when the politics of our nation contribute to their suffering.

What would be the basis of a theology of globalization? I think that it must be based on the presence of the Holy Spirit. We must believe, as Gustavo Gutierrez suggests, that the Body of Christ exists wherever the Spirit is present. And as Jurgen Moltmann says, only the Spirit of God can join the victims of injustice and their abusers and guide us in the restoration of our societies and nature itself.

Well, I will continue studying in seminary and seeking a theology of globalization. And in the meantime, I will be learning from those who live on the streets, and the undocumented, and the refugees, because I believe that the kingdom of God is theirs. And when they inherit it, I want them to remember me.



The author:

Brice Rogers is a senior at Austin Presbyterian Seminary. He worked with Presbyterian Border Ministry at Reynosa, Mexico for 5 ½ years, and is originally from Jacksonville, Florida.