Dancing with God : 
Global Mission on the Edge

Ecumenical Mission in an Age of Empire:
The Galileans of the South and the Challenge to Churches in the North

Keynote Address for “Dancing With God: Global Mission on the Edge”
Stony Point Mission Conference, 9 – 11 September 2005

Philip L. Wickeri
San Francisco Theological Seminary

[9-13-05]

I really like the title of this conference – “Dancing with God” – although I am not exactly sure what it means. Dancing with God? Can North American Presbyterians dance? I did see North American and European Presbyterians try to dance, last year in Ghanaian churches in Accra. This was the occasion of the historic General Council of the WARC, which produced the confession, “Covenanting for Justice in the Economy and the Earth” as well as the mission statement which we will refer to at this conference. Yes, we tried to dance in Accra, but it wasn’t a pretty sight.

Then I remembered To a Dancing God, written by Sam Keen, a wonderful book that captured the spirit and the searching of the 1960s and 1970s, and influenced many men and women in my generation. To a Dancing God was a promethean tract, part biography, part social commentary, part spirituality, but it didn’t say very much about mission. Typical of the liberal churches and their secular counterparts like Keen. No, this conference is not for graying flower children or “tenured radicals,” it is for a new generation of those engaged with mission on the edge, or as I like to say, mission on and from the margins. (Note 1)

Dancing with God. My next thought was that the title must have something to do with Tom Kane and his video series on the dancing church around the world. Now we are coming closer to mission on the edge and mission from the margins. Tom is a liturgist-missiologist of sorts, a Paulist priest who has traveled the world to see the ways in which dance can revive liturgy. Tom is a Catholic, but we are in need of such a revival in our church as well – can there be dancing in the Presbyterian Church? – but this is not a conference about liturgy alone

My own church, the parish to which I am attached, is also a dancing church, SGN in SFO. I am an ecumenical Presbyterian, and I worship in all sorts of places, even with Episcopalians! Our church captures the spirit of what Tom has recorded in other parts of the world, we sing and dance to Jesus’ lead. That’s in our mission statement. Our liturgy is mission and our mission is, at least in part, liturgy. We are very much a church on the edge, a contextualized San Francisco Church, and we are involved in mission through in San Francisco itself – our food pantry has helped start several dozen others – in Laos, where the Jhai Foundation is involved in work for development and reconciliation, and in many other parts of the world.

Global mission on the edge means that God is calling us to push beyond where we now are, and reimagine new possibilities. In the months and weeks leading up to this conference, I kept getting e-mail and phone updates about the registration process for this gathering at Stony Point. The numbers kept creeping up, as Dave Zuverink and others became increasingly involved in the recruitment process. Many people were going out and telling people they were needed here. This going out and telling, in the highways and the byways, is what mission and evangelism are all about. But it is not something Presbyterians are always good at.

One of my favorite parables on mission is from the Gospel of Matthew, that most inclusive of all the books of the Bible. I am referring to royal wedding feast described in Matthew 22: 1-14. Matthew’s church was facing a situation in which all sorts of different people were coming in, and they had to decide how to deal with the new situation. These verses combine Matthew’s sense of the universality of God’s mission (1-10) with the internal problems that the church faces (11-14). I remember once hearing a Bible study in China which proclaimed that the main message of this text is that “The Church needs you, not you need the church.” The people who are invited in are invited in order to help us, we need them. We cannot have the banquet without them.

But the Church should not be tempted to feel too good about itself as the body which extends the invitation to God’s mission. Readers of this text in the well-endowed churches of North America must ask ourselves if we are not like the one at the wedding who is improperly clothed, and therefore unworthy of the banquet set before us and of participation in God’s mission. Are we among the many that are called, despite our profession to be among the few who are chosen? The author of I Peter 2 would have understood the question when he wrote that judgment begins with the household of God.

Mission involves criticism of where we now find ourselves as well as extending an invitation to others. This is what I will attempt to do in this address. I am not speaking on behalf of the Worldwide Ministries Division, the Witherspoon Society, or any other body. My assignment has been to state the issues as sharply as I can, and this is exactly what I hope to do here tonight.

The Presbyterian Heritage and the Contemporary Challenge

Presbyterians have been very good participants in God’s mission throughout our history. I am very, very proud to have served as a Presbyterian missionary. I was a VIM [Volunteer in Mission], a BNS [BiNational Servant] and a Mission Co-worker for a total of 23 years, serving in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Nanjing. I grew up in this very presbytery, in Huguenot Memorial Church, and that is why I like to return to Stony Point. This is the only place my daughter knew as home when she was growing up in Asia. My understanding that mission is about justice and that mission must be ecumenical was nurtured by the good people of Huguenot Church and sustained through my participation in various gatherings at Stony Point. I was inspired to become a missionary through the witness of two Presbyterians: Richard Shaull, of blessed memory, my mentor at Princeton Theological Seminary, and a long time missionary in Brazil; and Margaret Flory, now 91 years of age, who is still active and involved with students and people from many generations who are trying to promote global mission.

When Presbyterian global mission began in the nineteenth century, mission was intrinsically bound up with colonialism and imperialism against the peoples and cultures of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific. This is not to negate the tremendous contributions made by the churches and missionaries of the time, but to state a consensus view of this history. The Presbyterian Church was part of this history, even though many Presbyterian missionaries sought to change it. I do not want to dwell on the colonial nature of the missionary enterprise in this short address, but there is a revisionist view of that history now being promoted in some quarters, and I want to state my own position quite clearly. I believe our country has now entered a period of neo-colonialism, when the integrity of our mission is once again at stake.

The best of our Presbyterian mission heritage was represented by COEMAR [Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations], an organization that in 14 creative years (1958 – 1972) brought the church’s concern for mission and unity together.[2]  COEMAR was also an attempt to reject colonialism and missionary triumphalism in a new period of history. Mission and unity had to be together for there had to be respect for “all in each place” and for the church in other parts of the world. Ecumenical mission means that it is the whole church that brings the whole gospel to the whole world. For Presbyterians the church is a mission society, and there are no specialized agencies for mission. I know of several churches which didn’t have a mission committee, for the whole church was one. No separation of national and international, evangelism and social justice is allowed.

Internationally, the vision of COEMAR was captured in the title of John Coventry Smith’s book, From Colonialism to World Community: The Church’s Pilgrimage (1982). The book was both a self-criticism of the present and a vision of the future, written by one of the saints of the Presbyterian Church, also of blessed memory. The key text for the Smith’s vision was “An Advisory Study” (1961), which I have no doubt is the best mission statement ever produced by the Presbyterian Church. The text involves a critique of missionary triumphalism, and a call to what I would now term mission from the margins, or what we are calling mission on the edge.

COEMAR ceased to exist 1972, and the Presbyterian approach to world mission began to change as that decade wore on. Many factors help explain this: the activity of The Presbyterian Layman, which has continually sought to undercut ecumenical mission; the channeling of Presbyterian mission dollars to outside groups like World Vision; the rise of what used to be called Chapter 9 organizations, many of which had a conservative mission focus; and the decline of an interest in mission in the social justice oriented wing of the church. Presbyterian reunion, the bringing together of the UPC and the PCUS further compromised the cutting edge and justice-oriented mission, in my opinion. The Southern church also made outstanding contributions to global mission, but it had had no COEMAR experience, and many PCUS missionaries were less ecumenically inclined and more regionally based.

The changed political and economic atmosphere of mission also shaped the more conservative turn in Presbyterian mission outreach in the late 1980s and 1990s. The end of the Cold War; the growth of globalization and neo-liberalism as a world system that replaced the conflict between East and West; the rise of the United States as the last remaining superpower; and our response as a nation to 9/11 all had a bearing on this. Many of our church leaders have done the best they could to resist the conservative turn in world mission, but they have only been moderately successful. They now speak about a new “paradigm shift” in mission, but my question is whether this is a shift backward or forward.

What we are facing now is mission in a time of Empire, and all that we are involved in internationally must confront this fundamental fact.

Empire
(Our Country’s Place in the World and Its Implications for Mission)

The Mission Section Plenary report from the WARC 24th General Council was the first statement from an international body to describe the new world situation in terms of Empire. I urge you to read the four paragraphs in section one to get a sense of what is at stake here, and to consider these paragraphs alongside the far more important WARC document, “Covenanting for Justice in the Economy and the Earth.”[3]

The case for the United States as the center of a new empire has been made by neo-conservatives associated with the right wing of the Republican Party.[4] The idea of Empire came from them, not the ideologues of the Left. It no longer needs to be argued that our country has a new vision of Empire linked to neo-liberal globalization, a vision that is promoted by an activist foreign policy and a global military command. A wide range of analysts, from across the political spectrum in every part of the world, are urging churches and other NGOs to consider the vast implications of Empire and its important implications for our understanding of globalization at a new stage.

This is a different kind of Empire from empires of the past.[5]  There is no inside and outside of Empire. Empire has penetrated the internal political, economic, cultural and social structures of every country and region in the world. Empire reconstructs identities, crosses all boundaries; it overcomes nation states and reproduces cultures. The United States is the center of Empire, its financial organizer, political arbiter and military enforcer. But you can be a good citizen of Empire in Nairobi or New Delhi just as easily as you can in New York or Los Angeles. When Empire perceives itself threatened, its leaders will not hesitate to use whatever means necessary to bring things under control and extend its influence. The “war on terrorism,” therefore, is an extension of Empire, globalization by other means. In the words of President Bush, “the United States will ‘use this moment of opportunity’ (i.e. the war on terrorism) to bring democracy, development, free market and free trade to every corner of the globe.” The wars in the Afghanistan and Iraq and other places have direct consequences for every country in the world, and for the world mission of the church.

Let me call your attention to just one new document which describes the nature of this using the language of national security. How many of you are familiar with “The National Defense Strategy of the United States of America” (March 2005)?[6] This is an updating of the September 2002 strategy paper, and although it is cast in the same tone, there are significant new elements. The most important of these is the new policy of “the forward defense of freedom,” an activist approach that is designed to create security conditions favorable to the United States, not through the control of territory, but through a “networking of connections” making use of advanced communications strategies. Main operating bases (MOBs) will be supplemented by forward operating bases (FOBs) and a diverse array of co-operative security locations (CSLs). This will require the development of “international partnerships” that serve US interests. Such partnerships will be those directly instituted by the government, but also partnerships by other US interests. In the “National Defense Strategy,” international judicial and regulatory processes are rejected alongside terrorism (in the same paragraph) as the “strategy of the weak”. The Muslim world is specifically mentioned as a target for “counter ideological support” against terrorism. The key concepts used throughout the document are: flexibility, capacity building, comprehensive realignment, networking, building bases of support at home, and developing new partnerships. The first of the key challenges is that of relationships:

Our ability to co-operate with others in the world depends on having a harmony of views on the challenges that confront us and our strategy for meeting those challenges. Strengthening defense relationships at all levels helps to build such harmony…Changes in global posture seek both to strengthen our relationships with partners around the world and to help cultivate new relationships founded on common security interests.

Such a harmony of views will result in operations that extend “from everywhere to everywhere” around the globe. This, in any case, is its global vision.

This is an extraordinary document that has received practically no attention from churches, international aid agencies and theological seminaries in the United States. One recently published book entitled Anxious About Empire offers a theological critique of the 2002 National Security Strategy statement.[7]  I can assure you, however, that “The National Defense Strategy of the United States of America” has been subject to analysis and discussion among many theologians and Christian thinkers in other parts of the world, from Korea to South Africa, from India to Argentina. Churches and Christian leaders in the Global South know and understand that United States policy has direct and explicit implications for the ways in which they are engaged in mission and co-operative relationships with churches in the United States.

This is a time for decision about how we as Christian organizations and churches from North America engaged in international mission understand and relate to Empire. The impact of our country on the international order is greater today than it has ever been. Internationally, we are often seen as American citizens first, and as Christians second. Internationally, the US image abroad ranks below China and a host of other countries in terms of the way in which others perceive us.[8] Does this not call for a statement from our church on how we view US policy and “The National Defense Strategy of the United States of America” so that we can be clear about what we are witnessing to?

US foreign policy has a direct impact on shaping, structuring and dividing world Christianity. And so we must ask a series of difficult questions. Do our mission policies, consciously or unconsciously, reflect a kinder and gentler side of an American foreign policy that seeks to promote its own “mission” all over the world? Does American support for religious freedom overseas represent a dimension of foreign policy by other means or a genuine concern for peace and the religious rights of all? Are we teaching our church members who work overseas to be “good citizens of Empire” or pastors and prophets who reject empire?[9] Does our development work push for a new international order or perpetuate the dependency cycle?

Churches involved in global mission must make a choice about how we understand international mission in an age of Empire. We cannot be all things to all people in our mission outreach and still be involved in mission on the edge with a sense of integrity. Our decision and our choice cannot be taken lightly, for it will inevitably lead to polarization of the Christian community. In the words of the American historian Howard Zinn, you can't be neutral on a moving train. Globalization is a movement which, says Thomas Friedman, divides the world into a fast world and a slow world. Empire seeks to incorporate both worlds into its own orbit. In some very direct ways, global mission can help facilitate this. How transnational Christian communities like our own relate to forces that seek to structure and order the international community will affect our churches for decades to come.

Mission: The Choices Before Us

A few years ago, a friend of mine at the World Council of Churches proposed a project on the political economics of the missionary and ecumenical movements. His detailed proposal was rejected because it was felt that it might alienate potential donors in an already strained time of downsizing. If this can happen in the WCC, imagine what the situation is like in churches which are at the heart of Empire.

Mission today more often than not reflects rather than challenges the political economic order. One can argue that it has always been this way, but as Christians we still need make a prophetic critique.

There are some very explicit ways in which some churches and para-church organizations in the United States are developing programs based on globalization and empire. In the United States, some Evangelicals now emphasize the convergence of neo-liberal globalization and "the business of missions."[10] They see new and unprecedented opportunities for Christian growth through so-called “Great Commission” companies that combine business and evangelistic interests. The Good News of Jesus can be conveyed through the Good News about globalization. Now I want to assure you that the WMD is not thinking in this way, but many Presbyterians are. Critical theological work needs to be done on the role of business in missions – and the mission business – for interest in the subject is growing.

Globalization has not been kind to the nonprofit and non-governmental sector. Although many international Christian organizations in the North have made great strides in “marketing” their products, they have often done so at the expense of churches and Christian organizations in the South. Everywhere, the ecumenical movement is facing a serious economic crisis, and ministries of justice, advocacy and solidarity are particularly hard hit. This is sometimes understood as a struggle for survival that provokes cost-cutting measures and downsizing in churches, denominations, ecumenical organizations and theological seminaries. It never ceases to amaze me how easily churches adopt the language and the decision making style of the corporate world. Church leaders worry about stock market decline, interest rates and currency fluctuations, even as they issue statements critical of globalization. We are part of a global market economy, and we are affected by the increasing privatization of social programs, the end of the church tax in Europe, fluctuations in investments and the need to develop marketable programs. Our church pays a steep price for participation in globalization, but many of our leaders still feel there is no other choice.

We should be proud as a church that our Stated Clerk was elected president of WARC, one international ecumenical organization that has taken a clear stance against neo-liberal globalization and empire. The challenge is to see this same prophetic spirit reflected in our mission policies and programs. We need to take a long and hard look on the extent to which economic realities and the presence or absence of funding determines or shapes the ways in which the PCUSA now assigns mission personnel. Mission leaders today speak of “donor driven mission” as a way in which churches in North America impose their agenda internationally, through the exercise of economic power.

In the PCUSA and other American churches, we increasingly find the need to put our denominational name on things so that we can compete for a declining market share. Presbyterian missionaries now spend more time than ever before “interpreting” (read selling) their programs for the home base. Funds development has become an integral part of the job description for many of our mission personnel and leaders. Different mission programs are geared to different markets, and in the process, you can bet that justice ministries more often than not loose out to international evangelism or other less controversial programs. We now speak of creative new mission networks (more than 120 country networks so far), and continue to use the language of “partnership in mission” that was first introduced 60 years ago and has long since been out of date.[11] I am not arguing for a rejection of these new patterns of mission out of hand, but I do want to state the case as sharply as I can in order to call attention to the choices before us.

Even though the PCUSA has maintained a better and more progressive mission understanding than most other American churches, much of what we do sounds to others suspiciously like the language of “The National Defense Strategy of the United States of America.” We speak of “networking of connections” in international mission (which might just as easily be called participatory neo-colonialism) that makes good use of advanced communications strategies. We speak of “international partnerships” that serve the interest of mission fundraising at home. In a few weeks time, the WMD is co-operating in another global mission gathering entitled “From Everywhere to Everywhere: The New Global Mission.” I am sure that this conference will also offer many useful insights into global mission, but I will also want to see the extent to which it sees globalization and Empire as problematic for the mission of the church.

There has been far too little analysis in recent years of the power relationships implicit in international mission sharing. The El Escorial Guidelines for Sharing of the World Council of Churches (1987) were rejected by many churches in the North as being impractical, yet they clearly indicated a way forward that encouraged more justice in international sharing. Discussions of partnership in mission; bilateral versus ecumenical inter-church aid; and transforming the structures of mission have made little progress in recent years, and they have not taken into account new challenges to Christian sharing in recent discussions of globalization and Empire. Much greater concern for the ways in which transnational Christianity structures itself economically is needed.

A great deal has been made in recent years of the shift in the axis of Christianity from the North to the South. As I argue in Mission from the Margins, this is indeed an important new fact of our world. However, we have to remember that the institutional strength of Christianity, the funds and resources, are still controlled by the church of the north. This fact is glossed over in most discussions, as conservative groups in the north try to argue that they are working on behalf of the South. Sam Kobia, General Secretary of the WCC, has been making the point that international Christian resources are still controlled by the north again and again in recent months.

Many local forms of Christianity in the South are sui generis, independent and locally oriented. At the same time, from the Roman Catholic Church to the Pentecostals, from ands-on mission projects using the Internet to the rapid spread of Christian music and new liturgical forms, many Christianities in the South are supported, subsidized and manipulated by Christian initiatives which have developed elsewhere. To what extent do Christian churches and institutions in Europe and North America provide theological, ecclesial, and material resources that continue to shape and structure Christianity in the South? To what extent have Christian theologies and cultural expressions from Asia, Africa and Latin America influenced churches in Europe and North America? Hasn't it more often been the other way around?

We who are concerned about ecumenical mission and mission as justice need to reclaim lost ground. We need to envision creative alternatives to the ways in which churches relate to one another in the oikumene. We are servants and co-workers in God’s mission (the missio dei) of creation and redemption, a mission entrusted to us as gift and task, a mission that offers healing and wholeness to a divided world. But the credibility of our message is at stake if we do not respond to the religious, cultural, political and economic situation that confronts us, and unless we work for change in the structures of which we are a part. The gospel frees us to respond in new and creative ways to the crisis we face. It forces us to once again ask the question: if we are part of one worldwide body of Christ, how do our churches relate to one another and engage in mission for peace and community-building in the world today?

“What Does the Lord Require of Us?”

My analysis thus far has focused on our own context, the global north. This is as it should be for we must begin with the mission in our own context. But we must also listen to the voices of those whom I like to call the Galilieans of the South. They provide us with different interpretations of a globalized missiology from below that we need to be alert to. Without any attempt to be comprehensive, allow me to offer just one example of such a perspective, drawing on the work of the Indian theologian Felix Wilfred, and his reflection on the Tsunami aid and its missiological implications. We can see some of Wilfred’s same concerns in this country coming from African American churches who have been speaking out on the impact on minority communities of Hurricane Katrina, and the ways in which churches have responded.

Last year's tsunami in Asia highlights the concerns which have been voiced for decades about the debt crisis, environmental degradation, Third World tourism. These concerns have generally fallen on deaf ears. Their voices suddenly became audible in the tsunami tragedy, but we have not listened for long. Imperialism is clever, writes Felix Wilfred, and it knows to instantaneously don the Samaritan robe. He writes that the churches of the south are in search of David's sling. They are looking for weapons with which to confront the injustices of globalization and empire, the weapons of the weak. He invites churches all over the world to help in this process, to be in solidarity with Christians in other parts of the world on their terms.

We all need to learn from the churches response to the tsunami aid efforts. To what extent will they be able to pressure their governments to provide new sources of aid? And, for the longer term, what impact will such efforts have on transnational Christian relationships for the countries involved?

A more direct religious concern is the combination of aid giving with Christian proselytizing, coerced conversions and disrespect for non-Christian religions. Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia have already voiced concerns about the activities of Evangelical groups from the United States that are using the tsunami tragedy to further their evangelistic goals. Such global aid may set back local interfaith co-operative initiatives that have developed over the past decades, and could encourage a backlash against Christian communities from local Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu groups. Christian proselytizing efforts build on concepts of civilizational conflict promoted by neo-liberal globalization and fundamentalist theologies.

Christian solidarity with the people of the South and resistance to neo-liberal globalization and Empire is built on the hope that a different world is possible. In January of this year, Christian theologians from around the world gathered for the World Forum on Theology and Liberation in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The subtitle of the conference is theology for another possible world, a world in which transnational Christian relationships are not at the service of globalization and Empire. In the words of Felix Wilfred,

The hope for tomorrow lies in the resistance of today. But the resistance against the Empire and globalization often assume an ambivalent character. On the one hand, there is the practical necessity to comply with the existing order of things; on the other, there is the refusal to surrender and acquiesce to the inevitable. What appears as compliance out of the necessity of survival coexists with the practice of resistance?[12]

The ambivalence and forced acquiescence that Felix Wilfred describes is present in any movement of the weak against the strong. But forced acquiescence is not the same as willing accommodation. For Wilfred and others in Porto Alegre, the clear option for resistance, drawing on local resources for hope and change from below, represents an approach to globalization and Empire that is fundamentally different from that discussed in the previous section.

In the words of the WARC statement “Covenanting for Justice in the Economy and the Earth”: “We believe that the integrity of our faith is at stake if we remain silent or refuse to act in the face of neo-liberal globalization…The root causes of the massive threats to life are above all the product of an unjust economic system defended and protected by political and military might…We live in a scandalous world that denies God’s call to life for all.” WARC has called on churches to bring this statement to their constituencies and commit themselves to working for change.

This has direct and immediate relevance to our understanding of mission, mission partnership, international programs of service, development, education, medical work, social justice and evangelism. We need a missiology of solidarity and resistance, and we need to build on the work of other ecumenical organizations resistant to globalization and Empire. This will mean strengthening the relationships we have developed with churches in other parts of the world; insisting that the language of faith and the language of justice cannot be separated; developing new methodologies for the analysis of the wide variety of questions about mission that we face today; and introducing new practices.

My friend Preman Niles speaks about “mission as contestation.” Just as we need to invite others to join with us in working for mission as resistance and mission as justice, so we need to contest those forms of mission which we see as dehumanizing.[13]  We can move forward in our hopes for another possible world only insofar as we learn from the insights of the Galileans of the South. Their insights will facilitate our remapping of global mission in an age of empire, and the possibility of envisioning another possible world. Thank you.

Appendix
“The People of God Among All God’s Peoples” (1999)

Section 5.1 Approaches to Mission which We Affirm:

a.   Mission as sharing the gospel to establish the peace of Christ on earth as well as God’s Messianic reign over against the powers of war, destruction and exploitation;
b.   Mission as the “incarnational presence” of the church with and among people; and the practice of mission and missiology arising from such participation;
c.   Mission as solidarity with the marginalized, and our creative response to their experience and narratives providing the seeds of new missiologies;
d.   Mission as participation with others in the processes of humanization, and missiologies arising from that search for the good of the whole community;
e.   Mission as a process of discernment of the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of people and as finding appropriate ways to speak in depth about that reality;
f.   Mission as understanding the many and distinct ways in which salvation is experienced in the lives of religious communities;
g.   Mission as the emergence of the Kingdom of God within history in which all religious traditions participate until the Reign of God is established;
h.   Mission as sharing the gospel which embraces the wisdom of all religions, because all religions contain gifts of God to the nations for true and good life;
i.   Mission as proclaiming the gospel, which includes both the celebration of life in all its fullness as well as lamentation, grief and mourning;
j.   Mission as kenosis, where self-emptying, total self-negation, or emptiness becomes the starting point for missiological reflection arising from that praxis;
k.   Mission drawing on such themes as the “foolishness of the cross” and “becoming a slave to be crucified as a slave” provide images for a mission as resistance, hope and transformation;
l.   Mission as restoration of the sovereignty of God, the creator of life and messianic “diakonia” as the stewardship of new and eternal life in Christ.

Section 5.2 Approaches to Mission which We Reject:

a.   Missions aimed primarily at increasing numbers and the power of the church;
b.   Missions that rely on an alliance between churches and political power;
c.   Missions that collude with economic powers that impoverish peoples’ lives;
d.   Missions that make peoples who respond to the message into an exclusive and alienated people within their larger religious community;
e.   Missions that target particular groups and use unethical practices for conversions;
f.    Missions that ignore the well-being of the total community;
g.   Missions that alienate peoples from their cultures and religions, and thus isolate the transforming power of the gospel from the context into which it is brought;
h.   Missions that ignore or deny the presence and activity of God among all people;
i.    Missions that refuse to recognize the witness given by people to their life in God before their contact with message of the gospel;
j.    Missions that concentrate on the individuals over against their community;
k.   Missions that refuse to admit the power of the gospel to address and transform oppressive structures and practices;
l.    Missions that refuse cooperation and dialogue with other religious traditions.

Notes

1. See Philip L. Wickeri, Mission from the Margins, Theology and Worship Occasional Paper No. 18, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), 2004.  PDS# 70420-04-009.

2. For a history of COEMAR, see Donald Black, Merging Mission and Unity: A History of the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations (Philadelphia: Geneva Press, 1986).

3. http://warc.jalb.de/warcajsp/side.jsp?news_id=180&part_id=0&navi=1 (WARC Mission Section Plenary Report, the 24^th General Council, Accra)

4. The best background reading here is Gary Dorrien, Imperial Designs: Neo Conservatism and the New Pax Americana  (New York and London: Routledge, 2004).  [Use the box to the right to order this book from Amazon.com]

5. In my understanding of empire, I am drawing on the work of Michal Hardt and Antonio Negri in their two books Empire (2000) and Multitude: War and Democracy in an Age of Empire (2004).

6. The document may be accessed on: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2005/d20050318nds2.pdf

7. Wes Avram, ed., Anxious About Empire: Theological Essays on the New Global Realities (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2004).

8. See “U.S. Image Abroad: Even China is Better,” International Herald Tribune (24-25 June, 2005).

9. This is from The Brandywine Review of Faith and International Affairs, 1:2 (Fall, 2003),  where Robert Seiple, a Presbyterian Elder and former US-Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, speaks of “the ambassadorship of all believers.”

10. See Steve Rundle and Tom Steffan, Great Commission Companies: the Emerging Role of Business in Missions(Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2003).

11. Philip L. Wickeri, Partnership, Solidarity and Friendship: Transforming Structures in Mission (Louisville: Worldwide Mission Division of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), 2003).

12. Felix Wilfred, “Searching for David’s Sling: Tapping the Local Resources for Hope” Concilium (2004:5), p. 86.

13. Only one mission statement that I know of has done this, “The People of God Among All God’s Peoples (1999),” produced by a theological roundtable sponsored by the Christian Conference of Asia and the the Council for World Mission. I include sections 5.1 and 5.2 of this report as an appendix to this paper.