Economic injustice pounded at assembly
PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil – In prayers and plenaries, songs and scriptures, the word “justice” has rung in Portuguese, French, Spanish, German, English and other languages in the opening days of the 9th Assembly of the World Council of Churches here.
The council’s concerns reach beyond transforming churches and personal relationships. Christians are concerned about economic injustice in the world.
WCC general secretary Samuel Kobia said in his opening report that the image of “festa da vida” – Portuguese for “feast of life” – invites Christians to celebrate people’s joys and pains. He hopes to stir churches to work for transformative justice.
Kobia, a Methodist from Kenya, said human greed and thirst for power have created economic structures that increase poverty and undermine life.
He is appalled that, while there is enough food to feed everyone in the world, 852 million people are hungry and 25,000 starve every day.
While the global corporate economy commonly referred to as “globalization” brings people closer, it also exacerbates disparities of power and wealth, he said.
“Something is gravely wrong when the wealth of the three richest individuals on Earth surpasses the combined annual gross domestic product of the 48 least developed countries,” Kobia said. “Political arguments and economic rationalizations cannot counter the basic immorality of a world with this degree of inequality.”
For Kobia, “la festa da vida” invites all in God’s household to experience the suffering of others and build relationships of trust. In a common agape meal after a worship service in Bolivia, poor, indigenous women share the little they have to create a festive meal.
“Communal joy radiates. Life meets life in earnest. Sharing the little each has, no one goes home hungry,” Kobia said. “Feeding 5,000 is a reality among the poor. It’s how they survive in this cruel, merciless world.”
In a plenary on economic justice, Bishop Wolfgang Huber, of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg, Germany, said that while the world’s economy is improving life expectancy, living standards and education in some parts of the world, billions experience blatant, inhumane poverty. “Foundations of life are exploited in a way incompatible with sustainability,” he said.
He considers increasing poverty a scandal that should jolt Christians, because it is possible today to overcome structural poverty and make the world more just. He recommends seeing economic activity in light of God’s commandments.
“Human dignity, human rights and social justice are basic values against which economic activity is to be measured.” Huber said. “Christians should not surrender to pervasive economic thought.”
Nancy Cardosa Pereiro, professor of ancient history of the Porto Alegre Institute of the Methodist Church, described how some western Christian theology adopts “voracious consumerism.”
When believers pray to God for a Mercedes-Benz – or other possessions – products and corporations become gods, she said. “Who can condemn the spiritual aura conferred on economic systems?” Pereiro asked. “We assume it cannot be questioned as it sweeps us along to perpetuate inequality and violence without our realizing it.”