Prophetic Rage by Hill Johnny Bernard;

Author:Hill, Johnny Bernard;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Published: 2013-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

The Prophetic Call for Just Economics

While the current system of economics privileges profits over human life, what is the role of the prophetic heritage of the Christian narrative in helping cast a new economic vision steeped in love, justice, human dignity, solidarity, and reconciliation? Recent declarations like the World Council of Churches’ Alternative Globalization Addressing Peoples and Earth (AGAPE) Document, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches’ Accra Confession, and statements from the Lutheran World Federation and from ecumenical gatherings around the world express the growing movement of voices crying out for change and revolution.11 This symphony of voices is calling for a prophetic alternative to the kind of destructive and dehumanizing form of neoliberal globalization that now leaves millions dead and destitute. The present crisis of neoliberal globalization and capitalism demands that the common good become the telos of any global economics. In No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics, and the Future, Joerg Rieger says the only way to measure the justice and equity of the current system is through the lens of the most vulnerable and weakest in society. The common good is best measured and critiqued from the vantage point of the bottom. For it is from the perspective of those at the bottom — economically, politically, and socially — that the problems and challenges of the system are exposed.12

The AGAPE Document calls for an economy of life in which the following are true:

The bounty of the gracious economy of God (oikonomia tou theou) offers and sustains abundance for all.

God’s gracious economy requires that we manage the abundance of life in a just, participatory, and sustainable manner.

The economy of God is an economy of life that promotes sharing, globalized solidarity, the dignity of persons, and love and care for the integrity of creation.

God’s economy is an economy for the whole oikoumene — the whole earth community.

God’s justice and preferential option for the poor are the marks of God’s economy.13

The need for a new global vision for economics that is driven by human flourishing and not the accumulation of profits is reflected in all dimensions of society. It is perhaps most felt in the ghettos, shanties, slums, and depressed urban communities around the world. Since the groundbreaking work of William Julius Wilson in the book The Declining Significance of Race, critical social analysis of the urban poor has claimed serious attention. Wilson makes clear that the economic disparities being generated across the globe are deeply interwoven with the disappearance of work and its consequences to social, economic, and cultural life in inner-city ghettos.

Ironically, the nation now remembers both the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement and the 40th anniversary of the Poor People’s Campaign, the final pilgrimage of hope envisioned in the prophetic leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. King saw on the horizon a radical decentralization of European power and the movement of power in the world to America and the thrust of free market capitalism. The intensification of technological advances and the promulgation of mass media and access

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.