Globalization: Points of Fracture in Our Human Society

Introduction

It is a privilege to be in front of this august body to speak as an African woman, who is passionate about mission, on this important issue which touches on human existence today. Globalization, the subject of our reflection, affects every dimension of the human person. It is not a faceless myth; rather, globalization is an overwhelming reality which affects every sphere of human life – the socio-political, economical, psychological, cultural, religious and spiritual realities.

Succinctly, globalization as a contemporary concept can be defined as the widening, intensifying, speeding up and growing impact of world-wide interconnectedness (Kingsolver: 2001). As a result, we cannot deny its effects on our mission of evangelization today. True to its name it is a global empire which has ‘colonised’ every nation on earth and in line with the trajectory of empires throughout human history, there are victors and vanquished. Many scholars agree that in itself, globalization is neither good nor bad, but it is also indisputable that it is the major cause of growing imbalance in the world today.

There are a number of paradigm shifts in the concept of mission as the twenty-first century unfolds. For example, while Africa has been considered a mission field for over a century, African Christians are beginning to have an active participation in mission ‘ad extra’ and also attain a new consciousness of our responsibility towards mission ‘ad intra’. Today, Africa has to be missionary to herself and be generous enough, even in her poverty, to give and to share her enthusiasm for the Christian faith with the older Churches and with the up-coming communities of believers all over the world. This makes true a popular Yoruba proverb: ‘ti ina iba ku, a fi eeru boju, ti ogede ba ku a fi omo re ropo’, which means: ‘when the fire burns out, it is covered by the ashes and when the plantain tree is cut down, the young suckers grow in its place’. I hope that our ancestors in faith are proud of us and rest assured that their labour on African soil has not been in vain. Indeed we are grateful.

This paper is determined to raise a lot of questions, because I strongly believe that the fruit of our reflection during this seminar is capable of shaping the future of the universal mission in which we all, Europeans, Africans, Asians, Oceanians and Americans are called to share actively and responsibly together. No doubt, the religious bodies we represent have been major role players in the mission of the Church in different parts of the world and have played indelible part in shaping the history of human civilization in modern times. Our missionaries of past centuries have dared to go where no one would go; their passion for Christ and for humanity gave them courage to face all kinds of dangers and even death in order to reach out to those in need. Their traditional missionary apostolates included not only proclamation and catechesis but also the provision of education, health facilities and other basic needs of the people they met.

I praise the foresight of SEDOS who has invited us to re-discern our missionary strategies in this era of globalization. It is time to ask whether the old approaches are still life-giving to us and to the people to whom we are sent. What new challenges are being raised by human brokenness which accompanies the new imperial structure of globalization? How should we respond to the modern day slaves of human trafficking, the under-paid labourers of the developing world, the many consequences of mass immigration, the sufferings of ‘asylum seekers’ and of displaced people? How do we bring Christ’s healing touch to the victims of modern diseases like HIV and AIDS? How do we respond to the new thirst for God evident even where God’s name is denied or abused? What choices do we make as religious men and women who want to heal and console?

View from the Top: A Parable

There are many ways, even conflicting ways of viewing globalization. There is no one right description of this phenomenon or how it affects our world, the Church and her mission. I would invite each of us to choose his or her own position for analysing globalization and its effects on the men and women of the societies we come from or work in.

I have found a short parable that illustrates my own perspective. It is called a ‘View from the Top’ used by Peter McVerry, the Irish Jesuit coordinator for Justice and Peace:

Jack lives in a flat on the top floor of a house. 8 o’clock in the morning and he pulls the curtains – the sun shines in. He looks out of the window at the mountains in the distance rolling down to the sea. He sees the ships coming in and out of the harbour and the yachts on the sea. The mountains are sometimes covered in snow, at other times they present a luscious sea of green. The sun shows the scene in all its beauty. Jack says: “It is a beautiful day. It is great to be alive”.

Jill lives in the basement flat of the same house. 8 o’clock in the morning and she pulls the curtains – nothing happens. The sun cannot get in. She looks out the window and all she sees is the white-washed wall of the outside toilet. She cannot see the mountains, or the sea or the yachts or the sun. She doesn’t know what sort of day it is.

Here you have two people, looking out of the same house, at the same time of the day, into the same back garden. But they have two totally different views. There is a view from the top and a view from the bottom. Both views are equally valid – although one is admittedly nicer than the other! You would have guessed by now from where I view globalization - from the bottom, a privilege which was been accorded to me by the fact that Africa is my land of birth, Latin America is my land of mission and my heart passionately holds the two very dearly. I cannot deny the good things that globalization has afforded us, such as my being here in Rome to deliver this paper which has been made easy by the globalization phenomenon (internet, flights etc). When well applied, globalization could be a powerful force for good, drawing people together and helping to forge all the inhabitants of the world into a truly human community.

In reference to our parable, View from the Top, it is worth noting that geographical demarcations have ceased to be the reference point for the bottom and the top views: there are many people in the developed world who are excluded and confined to the view from the bottom. Even though they live in the supposed advantageous geographical zones, unemployment, immigration and social exclusion make the advantages of globalization elude them. Conversely, the view from the top also exists in Africa and other parts of the developing world; the few who make it to the top in these countries actually make it impossible for others to attain the same height. They cheat, repress, destroy and even kill to maintain their advantageous position. There are situations of scandalous opulence in Africa; my own country Nigeria is a ring leader in this widening gap between the rich and poor, a concept totally alien to our traditional cultural values which consider all the members of the community to be socially bound one to another. A popular adage in our local language confirms this belief: ‘Olowo kan laarin otosi mefa, otosi di meje’ – meaning, if only one becomes rich among seven poor siblings, the seven of them are poor, since he is obliged to share his wealth with all. In other words, the siblings are bound together in poverty and riches; you cannot live in opulence while your brothers and sisters starve. This ‘was’ the traditional African belief but is fast becoming a thing of the past. Individualism and self-interest are disintegrating the fibre of our societies and local communities; while the traditional checks and balances fall apart in the wave of urbanization, the modern democratic system is not yet strong enough to check all the abuses.

At this stage, it is quite evident that this paper is biased in favour of those whose ‘view is confined to the bottom’. After all, if we sincerely collaborate in the mission of Jesus Christ, we cannot but allow our choices to be influenced by Jesus’ mission statement as expressed in Luke’s Gospel:

The spirit of the Lord is on me,
for he has anointed me
to bring the good news to the afflicted.
bHe has sent me
To proclaim liberty to captives,
sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord. (Lk. 4:18)


Globalization and Understanding the Contemporary World and Mission

The Second Vatican Council challenged us to respond to the ‘signs of our times’. However, the signs of times are ever shifting. Forty years after Vatican II, these signs can be said to be very ambiguous. In fact, the changes are so rapid that before we finish elaborating the manner and method of responding we have to start elaborating a new thesis to respond to the ‘newer’ challenges. It is therefore dangerous for our mission to spend too much time and energy in endless discernment, in the same vein, we cannot afford to fall into the danger of ‘un-discerned’ action, getting the right balance is a challenge. The ambiguity and every shifting paradigm shift has thrown mission of the Church in the world today into something near chaos. Albert Nolan, a South African social analyst and author, argues that we are living at the edge of chaos! (1) If this is true, I think we are privileged to belong to this historic period because chaos usually precedes great inventions; even the creation of the world as we know it from the book of Genesis was preceded by chaos (Gen.1: 1). The ‘signs of times’ are pointers to the future and since they are ambiguous, the great challenge for us is to be creative enough to elaborate a workable strategy to confront this uncertain future. Creativity enables to put hitherto unrelated pieces together to create something new; this demands courage, which in missionary terms may be translated as apostolic audacity, generosity and openness to the unknown. It is an act of faith and capacity not only to read and interpret these signs but also to bring new life out of its decay. I would like to outline some of the obvious contentions which the contemporary context of globalization has thrown to us as missionaries:

1) The boundaries between the global and the local are fraught with tension, because on the one hand, there is a situation of political and economic dominance of the western culture with accelerated communication at the international level while, on the other hand, there is a resistance from other cultures which leads to a struggle for identity and cultural survival at the local level. This unclear cultural boundary defies our hitherto neatly elaborated theories on inculturation. For example, we hear such remarks as ‘which of the London cultures do you enter into’? There is no longer one London culture; a taste of almost all cultures are found every big city. Even African, Latin American and Asian cities are so cosmopolitan that the whole world seems to converge in them. Many languages are spoken almost everywhere, even though there are still dominant languages; every ethnic group has its own corner in the shops, and on some streets only foods from certain areas of the world are sold. It can be said that the world is global and local at the same time, people move across the globe carrying along their distinctive cultural identities. They are in the big mass, but they do not want to remain anonymous or lost. People today suffer the tension of living with a sort of cultural homogeneity due to city life and with an intensified longing and search for identity. This is a challenging point for mission in our globalized world, especially when dealing with issues such as Inculturation and dialogue in the urban centers. How do we respond to needs of the immigrant communities without isolating them from others?

2) Traditional modes of community break down as a result of urbanization and immigration which affects our point of reference and contact for mission. For example, one mission strategy was to establish rapport with the local community heads and gain entrance into the people’s lives by rendering community services. Nowadays, the government structures we deal in the cities do not directly link us with the people, and our missionary activities might become another business enterprise in the city. The situation is more alarming when we consider the fact that one of the goals of globalization is to turn every village to city. Community building thus becomes another challenge for mission today.

3) There is a break down of ideologies. Political ideologies were thrown into turmoil with the fall of communism and the failure of capitalism to bring the human race to the ‘promised land’ of wealth and equality. Religious ideologies have suffered the same fate with scandals caused by religious authorities and wars in the name of religion. Even the scientific rationalism of the past that excluded the spiritual person is being questioned; people today are fascinated by spiritualities of all sorts, magic, vampires, the occult and the supernatural that cannot be scientifically explained. These breakdowns have created a vacuum. There is a new need to discern values, to find a new sense of right and wrong. There is a new need to understand justice which is not confined to a particular doctrinal teaching or ideology, but in the concept of a renewed humanity.

4) Globalization is not new, but there is a shift in the carrier of the global power. It has moved from political empires or national based powers to market controlled and transnational companies. This reality has forced many countries to abandon socioeconomic systems that have sustained them for centuries in favour of a new system that, even if it provides some short term benefits to a privileged part of the population, endangers the very survival of the people in the long term. The consequences for our mission are that a hundred years ago we had to negotiate with the specific colonial powers of mission territories, but today who do we negotiate with? Again this touches on the ambiguity of globalization.

These are but a few of the challenges that globalization poses for mission today. We only become effective in announcing Christ in the twenty-first century if we creatively design our missionary response to these challenges. The long track of human history with its stories of successes, discoveries and landmark inventions often hides the untold tales of the ‘losers’ who bear the burden of each generation. For instance, the great pyramids of Egypt were built upon the sufferings of slaves; the ‘New World’ of America was built upon the blood of native Americans and the humiliation of African slaves; the Industrial revolutions of Europe were founded on the unwritten pain and deprivation of the miners, factory workers and their families.

It is not out of place therefore to ask who are the victims who pay the high price of the new revolution in today’s globalised world? Are they the executive managers who have to battle day and night to keep up with the competition? Or the families who live permanently disintegrated as a result of inhumanly long working hours? Or the women and children caught up in the Asian sweat shops? Or the farmer who cannot survive the ever lowering prices of his/her products due to open market policies? Or the Africans who bear the weight of debt of which they knew absolutely nothing? Will it be right to say that we are all victims, and that we are all broken by some invisible force which is seemingly beyond our control?

Tourism has become a big business as a result of globalization and promoting it has become a measure for development even when the facilities to sustain it are not readily available. For example, I am only a few months old in Abuja, the new capital city of my home country, Nigeria. It is a city many of us are proud of, it is beautiful and neat with a well laid out road network, unlike many of our other cities which cry out for maintenance and are overcrowded. In central Abuja, street hawkers and ‘okada’ (our local commercial and dangerous motorcycle taxis) have been totally prohibited leaving many people all of a sudden unemployed. Many officially ‘unplanned’ ramshackle houses were ruthlessly bulldozed a few months ago leaving hundreds of thousands homeless for the sake of ‘Abuja Master Plan’.

The Catholic Church, which had pitched her tent among the ‘illegal’ and the ‘unwanted poor’ who were considered a menace in the new capital, was also badly affected - schools, community centres and Churches which served these poor working class sectors were all pulled down. It is clear that the desire of our government is to turn Abuja into a first class city so as to attract tourism and get global affirmation. While the houses of the poor are torn down, luxurious hotels, shopping malls, neat and beautifully planned houses, gardens, and so on, are springing up. Good taxis and buses still remain in the imagination of many Nigerians. Only a very small and perhaps negligible part of Abuja’s population can enjoy all the luxury the city offers. The vast majority are condemned to live in the suburb slums – unplanned township settlements with no sanitation system, poor housing, lack of adequate means of transportation to get to work in the city, and low paid jobs to maintain the elite system which is being installed in order to enter into the fast lane of development of the capitalist economy. The image of the African continent and her people who live simple country life is becoming a thing of the past as urbanization is now the order of the day. We have to join the globalized world and the market economy or we relocate to another planet!

Our preoccupation is not that our world is very inter-connected due to the speed of communications or to other factors of today’s global networks. In fact, it would be a great gift to humanity if the right things were distributed around the globe. Computers, mobiles phones, (Global System of Mobile Communication – GSM) and so on have been poured out on every continent and almost on every village; diseases like HIV and AIDS have also spread. But today’s form of globalization is incapable of being the fast tool for spreading clean water, vaccination, electricity or good transportation systems to the whole world. How do we convince the powers of today’s global world, which saw the mobile phone spread to almost every corner of the globe in three years, that the millennium goal to end poverty is really achievable?

Collaborating in the mission of Jesus requires a serious reflection on the manner in which poverty presents itself today – as diverse forms of blindness, lameness and imprisonment. As Donal Dorr suggests, analysing the victims of globalization is not a simply identification of villains and victims; everybody - workers, managers, entrepreneurs, shareholders and even nations - is seemingly trapped in a system which is damaging to all (156). There seems to be an urgency to be attentive to human brokenness, to be near to those who are blind not only by ignorance, but by their desperate pursuit for more profit and financial security; to be attentive to those who are imprisoned at the bottom of the ladder and who, no matter how hard they strive, are so crushed that they cannot even take the first step upwards.

At this juncture, I would like to state that our generation occupies a vital stage since we are at the cross-roads of civilizations. Mission is not an event, it is not attained as a once and for all achievement. It is a continuous engagement with reality; it is journeying, not simply arriving; it is questioning, not providing a simple answer; it is searching, not finding a once and for all solution.

The points of Fracture and New Social Sufferings

The recent encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, Spes Salvi, recognises the reality and the enormity of suffering and proposes a Christian attitude which does not pretend to completely eliminate suffering from the world, but which attempts to transform it with hope:

‘Like action, suffering is a part of our human existence. Suffering stems partly from our finitude, and partly from the mass of sin which has accumulated over the course of history, and continues to grow unabated today. Certainly we must do whatever we can to reduce suffering: to avoid as far as possible the suffering of the innocent; to soothe pain; to give assistance in overcoming mental suffering. These are obligations both in justice and in love, and they are included among the fundamental requirements of the Christian life and every truly human life. Great progress has been made in the battle against physical pain; yet the sufferings of the innocent and mental suffering have, if anything, increased in recent decades. Indeed, we must do all we can to overcome suffering, but to banish it from the world altogether is not in our power. This is simply because we are unable to shake off our finitude and because none of us is capable of eliminating the power of evil, of sin which, as we plainly see, is a constant source of suffering. Only God is able to do this: only a God who personally enters history by making himself man and suffering within history’ (SS:36).

I therefore invite each and every one of us to bring into this hall that awareness of human suffering and brokenness of the people we encounter in our apostolates. We cannot minister to the suffering in our world if we ourselves have not entered in some ways into that mystery in our own personal and community realities. To be effective ministers to human brokenness, we must first acknowledge and assume our own brokenness, not with a sense of self-pity, guilt or shame, but with hope. Only then can we become what Nouwen called ‘wounded healers’. Therefore, as Pope Benedict said, our mission is not to remove suffering from the world since this is not in our power to do; rather our mission is to transform suffering and help it become life-giving and fruitful. We might learn some wisdom from the words of Helen Luke, that Christian psychologist whose life experience gave the testimony of the transformative power of suffering:

‘…real suffering belongs to innocence not guilt. As long as we feel misery because we are full of remorse or shame over our weakness, all we experience is a loss of vital energy and no transformation takes place. But the minute we accept objectively the guilt and shame, the innocent part of us begins to suffer… we bleed, and the energy flows back into us at a deeper and more conscious level… For Christians, it is easy to give lip service to the “innocent victim”, to Christ carrying in innocence the sin and suffering of the world. But rarely do we even think of the essential practical application of this truth in the smallest of our pains.’
(110 – 111).

While we attempt to uncover the evils in the contemporary world, the goal is not to demonise globalization; rather it is to discern how we can be effective prophets to end the needless and absurd suffering which is being inflicted on millions of our brothers and sisters in the world.

One of the myths of globalization is that it brings prosperity to persons and to our planet; however, the reality tells another story: The major consequence of the process of globalization is the absolute poverty of over a fifth of humanity; even the developed countries are hit by structural poverty due to a high level of unemployment and the deepening of differences. Even the countries who are at the vanguard of the new global capitalist economy are not immune to the reality of poverty, for example, one quarter of the households in the UK are on one form of assistance or another (Colier and Esteban: 32).

Globalization is strengthened by the growing obsession for economic growth in terms of technological and capital investment, often to the detriment of the human and spiritual growth of individuals and societies. However, the more the developing world strives to attain the positive economic and technological growth propounded by globalization, the more its people fall into the trap of dehumanization. This is because values which would normally serve as an antidote to tackle the negative effects of globalization are broken down. Examples of such dehumanization abound: family values are affected as countries assume these new economic structures; the village markets or corner kiosks are replaced by twenty-four shopping malls; the skilled craftsmen/women are replaced by specialised factory workers. When factories or industries decide to close down, people, left now with no particular skills, suffer the humiliation of joblessness with nothing to fall back on and often with no land to return to.

Economically, the global village allows the effect of a local policy to resound strongly in another country. For example, the beginning of the crisis in the late nineties and early 2000s in Argentina can be traced to the growth of the Brazilian market and the devaluation of its currency. This encouraged many companies to close down in Argentina and to open in Brazil where the labour was cheaper and the teeming population provided a larger market. The result was mass unemployment in Argentina. When Argentina then decided to devalue its currency (Peso), investors (rightly so) siphoned off the little money left in the reserve of the country and the nation was left bankrupt. The great and the rich might have suffered some set backs in the level of profit, but the real victims of the crisis were the poor: pensioners who had fixed salaries and whose little old-age pensions were lost, and the day labourers who were left unemployed or unpaid since there was no cash flow in the country. Women and children were left undernourished and overworked, because in order to improve the economy, the country had to export more grain and beef while the people at home were in hunger: Little wonder the Eucharistic Congress of year 2003 in Argentina chanted: ‘Que escandalo morir de hambre en un pais que produce trigo!’ (What a scandal to die of hunger in a country where wheat is exported). The same boomerang effect happened with the publication of the cartoons about Muhammad in Denmark; it sparked off terrible violence all over the world. Our missions in Northern Nigeria suffered; for example, churches were burnt and a young Nigerian priest was tortured to death by Islamic fanatics.

Additionally, the control of the multi-nationals is not only economical and political, but it also affects the lifestyle and community decisions all over the world because, in other to attract their powerful investment and give employment to the teeming populations of the South, governments are ready to compromise anything. Therefore, environmental laws are disregarded, tax payments go unchecked, working conditions are not challenged and unethical profit accumulation without further investment in the environment where the profit was made keep these countries at the lowest ebb of poverty. Nevertheless, the people work harder hoping that this will improve their situation; they are not aware that they are trapped in a vicious circle created by the new empire.

The vicious circle does not only generate victims. It also creates more oppressors. In a subtle way, the media advertisements advocate that the misery will come to an end and that happiness, freedom and self-esteem will be attained when you possess more of the products generated by this system; for example, mobile phones, flat screen televisions, new cars, a more modern computer etc. While these are very useful articles, the globalised economy over-estimates their importance and thus raises them to the level of ‘idols’. Otherwise how have we been convinced that it is more important to have a computer or a mobile phone than to invest in safe drinking water for our people? Or how would we explain the fact that our governments show more eagerness to get mobile phone networks than to get good education and health systems for our people?

One of the greatest issues of societal fractures that the developing countries have to deal with is the craving for the western lifestyle. Our global world of today has generated a perverse generation of insatiable youth, so desperate to attain the western lifestyle that they would do anything: sell their bodies, body organs, carry drugs, and defy all international laws and common sense to get to Europe and North America – the ‘new heaven’. This materialism is bad news in secular society, but it becomes a grave matter when it creeps into religious life and the priesthood. We cannot deny the fact that there are some religious and priests from Africa, Asia, Latin America and now Eastern Europe who would do anything to get into Western Europe and North America and would remain there under any pretext, like unending academic study, sabbatical or even missionary work (in Nigeria we call them ‘mercenaries’ not ‘missionaries’!). The other side of brokenness of religious life is the lack of simplicity of lifestyle even when living in poor contexts, care has to be taken so that the local people do not see us and our institutions as another ‘multi-national business group’.

The ‘use and discard’ culture brought by the mass production market economy has made the present generation lose its capacity to judge and discern priorities. For example, a marriage is as disposable as a car - everything seems disposable and the human person has gradually crept into the category of ‘disposables’. Thus, marriage and family which are some of the most enduring institutions of humanity are in danger of extinction!

Culture is, according to Paul Gallagher in Clashing Symbols,

‘a transmitter sending subliminal messages, that affect our priorities without us knowing […]; a complex light that signals what one should pay attention to […]; a womb within which one feels perfectly at home [...]; an ever present horizon beyond which we cannot see [...]; an ocean surrounding us as water a fish […]; a flight recorder preserving the memory of humanity’s journey’ (Gallagher: 10 -11).

Culture touches on every level of existence. So too, therefore, does cultural impoverishment. Gallagher believes that since globalization has generated a new culture, it challenges contemporary mission not to focus only on the conversion of individuals, but also on the conversion of cultures. The challenge presented to us as missionaries is to give faith a voice in the public world of culture and at the same time to encourage an intelligent analysis of cultural blockages to the Christian faith (93). In other words, if Christian faith does not become culturally vocal and creative, it may become simply a zone of spiritual comfort and even a narcissistic Christianity.

The narcissistic tendency which is perceptible in contemporary Christianity is manifested in various ways and can be said to be a weak but well contextualized point in different parts of the Christian world. For example in Europe, it can be observed in the fragmented life of ‘political correctness’ where religion or the spiritual dimension of the human person is not given room for expression in public life. This has created a vacuum which in the long run is responsible for a fundamentalist attitude to religion or apathy towards any doctrine. It is a denial of the Christian roots of the European people in the bid to accommodate a new pluralism and a secularized European Union which remains an unresolved puzzle for the European government and her people. The Catholic Church in Europe is challenged to create a mode of giving faith a voice in a culture where faith would rather be silenced or denied outright; this is essential, since excluding faith because we are too busy to discern how to give it new expression would result in the exclusion a considerable number of the European people who also long to manifest their faith and create a space for authentic dialogue with other faiths and cultures. North America expresses the same ‘self-absorbing Christianity’ if the Church allows herself go into self-paralyzing depression due to the recent scandals, attacks and contra-attacks on the Church and sometimes rightly so. Is our faith in the Pascal Mystery strong enough to become witnesses of human vulnerability and God’s unconditional love, powerlessness as a way of sharing in the cross of Christ in a society which glorifies image, earthly power and success? The same reflection is proposed to the Church to Oceania.

In Africa, the same narcissistic approach to Christianity is obvious in the insufficient openness in dealing with the political and socio-economic challenges of the continent, coupled with the suspicion from some of the Church hierarchies towards inculturation. It is seemingly more conformable and safe to follow the same old church structures and never dabble in the uncertainty of something new which might challenge us into a deeper cultural conversion.

Latin America, on the other hand, suffers from the same narcissistic syndrome seen in the tendency to polarize positions and demonize the opposition. This creates a lot of ‘in-fighting’ which reduce the missionary outreach and creativity of the Latin American Church. It is time for Latin America to recognize that she is not the only poor, she is not the only victim and we are all in the same web – North and South; we have to work together in response to our faith in Jesus who calls us into one human family. As rightly challenged by Puebla in 1968, let the Latin-American Church ‘give of her poverty’. Lastly religious life and our mission can also become self-absorbing if we continue to focus mainly on our own problems, structures and conveniences. Can we really live ‘life in common’ with the context of our missions sharing in the joys and pains of the people we have been sent to? To heal the cultural fixture in contemporary societies, Christian mission must not aim to create a cultural homogenization, as mission in past practice is sometimes accused of having done. Rather our mission is to create spaces for creative dialogue leading to discernment and mutual respect.

The homogenization of culture which has resulted from today’s globalized frameworks has caused a significant part of humanity to lose its traditional wisdom, technology and knowledge without replacing these with access to the technology and information network promised by the global system. Capitalist culture regards anything not economically productive as unworthy of investment. Thus traditional crafts, the languages of small ethnic groups, the source of sustenance of village populations, and traditional family structures, all of little profit in today’s new global systems, have been obliterated. Lands and water which have sustained generations of indigenous peoples have been destroyed by mining, oil drilling and forest explorations. For example, the Niger Delta of Nigeria is a classic example of this kind of atrocity and so are many aboriginal tribes in America and Australia. Just as poverty is not limited to the developing world, neither is cultural impoverishment; the division of labour created by industrialization has turned people into specialists skilled at doing only one job. As knowledge-intensive systems come to dominate the society, vernacular-knowledge disappears. It is not life-giving to foster a single world-view which will be monopolistically controlled by a few powerful agencies.

Since globalization has brought this fast and global communication system so that we all get the news of whatever is happening in other parts of the world in a matter of seconds, the sense of insecurity has greatly increased. The bad news is always on… murder, abuse, institutional violence, terrorism, destruction of the environment, not to mention earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes. These feelings of insecurity and hopelessness have led many to despair and a relentless search for distraction from these sad realities. Moreover, from the perspective of the developing world, the security which the close knitted communities traditionally gave is being gradually broken down to give way to faceless urbanization. The traditional societies may have had no formal structures to attend to emergencies, but widows and orphans were adequately catered for by such communities, everyone knew they depended on one another and this knowledge kept them together. Today’s weakened family and community ties divide people; institutionalised charity in the form of Non- Governmental-Organizations (NGOs) is gaining ground in the developing world but this is prone to being abused due to lack of efficient quality control. It is clear that no government, not even the most sophisticated and the richest can ever replace the traditional society. Although far from perfect in dealing with human fragility and needs, reality is demonstrating that the traditional society was far more effective in enabling people to relate to one another, to God, to land and to other natural resources. The sustainability of traditional economy and socio-political structures makes a good argument in its favour as against globalization which will strip the earth bare within the next few generations of humankind if it continues unchecked. Therefore, the challenge of mission today is to focus on community based projects, let us follow the adage: ‘think globally… act locally’.

Ursula King, a North American feminist, scholar and writer, affirms that the widespread contemporary interest in spirituality is connected with the growing awareness that our society is in a deep spiritual crisis, a situation which calls for creative thinking and transformative ways of living in order to overcome the vacuum of meaning and commitment (3). Spiritual hunger is experienced in a variety of ways: some experience it as the need for something that will give them inner strength to cope with life, or peace of mind and freedom from feelings of fear and anxiety. Others experience it as seeing themselves falling apart and in need of something bigger than themselves to hold them together. There is a sense of being wounded, hurt, and broken and in need of healing. Many experience it as being cut off and isolated from other people and from nature; they long for connection and harmony. Some experience hunger for spirituality simply as a longing for God (Nolan: 8). This hopelessness experienced in economic and social life has brought about a new longing to ‘feel-good’ and an unending search for instant miracles.

There is a noted hunger for spirituality, but perhaps without the package of institutionalised religion. Nolan maintains that an increasing number of young people feel the need to be in contact with the mystery beyond what we see, smell, hear, taste, touch or think, beyond the constrains of mechanistic materialism (8). The ‘pick and mix’ culture can come disguised as ‘ecumenism’ or ‘openness’, but when honestly analysed the bottom line may be lack of commitment and fear of structures. The success of Taize in the south of France throws some light on the new spiritual inclination of our era: a return to community, a personal experience of union with God and openness to break social, racial and denominational barriers.

The search for spirituality and a new humanity has presented two major challenges to religious life today: the re-awakening of a deeper spirituality which supersedes the ritualistic, legalistic, moralistic and judgmental approach of the past; as well as the recognition of an essential ingredient of any authentic spirituality – the human dimension. The emphasis of these two aspects of our institutionalized and formalized spiritualities has opened the door to incorporate the enthusiasm of young people and people of good will into Faith Based Charity Organizations through volunteering. This is gradually becoming an important expression of spirituality. The relevance of charity and service to human brokenness is highlighted in the popularity and wide acceptance of figures like Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, especially among the young people.

‘New Presences’ for Mission

The first missionary assignment before us in the contemporary world is not what we do but who we are. In a context where productivity, superficiality and image selling is the order of the day, mission has to offer something more authentic as a sign of the Kingdom. Today’s Christianity has to replace isolation, alienation, superficiality and pollution with community, participation, love, joy and inner values. The over-bearing and lethargic structures of globalization based on over-work, over-production, result and success-centred activity has to be replaced by human centred structures which give room for the holistic expression of the human person made in the image of God. It can be said that religious life has been contaminated with the evil of accelerated and success-driven lifestyles which in the long run dwindle the enthusiasm for the mission of evangelization, because ‘success’ is not measureable in Gospel terms. Whereas mission has to be done with enthusiasm – a word whose Greek roots are ‘en theos’ and the literal meaning of which means ‘to be taken over by a god’. According to Dorr’s analysis of the link between enthusiasm and spirituality, the god of celebration was Dionysus in the ancient Greek world; his work was to move the world from a rational point of view to something quite chaotic. It is a state where human beings come alive in quite a different mode, namely taken out of themselves in an exuberant enthusiastic celebration (186). This was the state of the Apostles after the Pentecost; people took them to be drunk and mad (Acts: 2 12).This challenges the over-emphasis of rationality of the world of technology, setting free the transcendent dimension of the human person. Today’s men and women seem to long for a new enthusiasm, a new passion for something beyond themselves. We all need a new Pentecost.

Secondly, the missionary presence today has to reach out to the characterless nature of our urban centres without ‘spatial pauses’, gaps for reflection or holy places, while the human soul yearns for these spaces. This is affirmed by the popularity of yoga, tai chi and eastern spirituality in the urban centres. Rowan Williams challenges religious men and women to make space in themselves and even though we live in a pressurized and crowded world, we must not lose the sense of providing space for others to breathe (Williams:20). Can our communities be recognized as oasis in the desert of an anonymous bland world? People today still yearn for spiritual experience; there is a thirst to move from ideas to experience, from intellectual knowledge to felt knowledge. The successes of such programmes as Sacred Space of the Irish Jesuits and the Pray As You Go of the British Jesuits are pointers to the desired spirituality of the contemporary society. Through the internet, these programmes ask personalise spiritual journeys and ask questions ingrained in the day to day living, community can then serve as a space to articulate these experiences and discern how they are lived out. Personalised religious experience hold great attraction to people today (Nolan: 11). The most popular aspects of the Catholic spiritual tradition today are not doctrine related, but spiritualities rooted in personal experiences of mysticism and service for example, Ignatian, Franciscan, Julian of Norwich, etc. Therefore, for missionary spirituality to be relevant today, it has to dig deeper into its own mystical traditions and offer it as the foundation for self-giving for mission.

At another level, the mystical and spiritual experiences are missionary only when they have a boomerang effect in the larger society. We cannot enjoy the cosy retreat houses, wonderful personal and community prayers and not be fired into a zeal which will ignite the world with the fire of God’s love. Thomas Merton, a contemporary American contemplative, links ascetism and silence with working for justice and evangelization in concrete situations instead of turning them to another ‘feel good’ comfort zone of the consumer society. The Gospel demand is practical; it is useless to worship the God who is present everywhere and ignore God’s presence somewhere. For example, can the modern shopping malls which are open for so many hours hide some ‘unknown god’ being worshipped by contemporary men and women like the Greeks in the Areopagus?

Succinctly, we need to get our spirituality incarnated in these realities, Can we imagine getting a stall in the shopping malls or some of our popular markets to serve as a ‘sacred space’ where people can learn to discern the ‘unknown god’ they are worshipping in the market economy and get into touch with their inner reality?. Is it possible to have market chaplains or priests/religious attached to the shopping malls where so many people congregate and are like sheep without a pastor? In Nigeria, it is becoming common to have the Angelus in some markets, to have a prayer meeting in market places. I think it is a cry for help for spirituality to be taken out of the boundaries of our Churches and institutions to where people are real, operating in real life situations. People spend more time in the markets than anywhere else and there is a need to really interpret the spirituality of the cenacle and the city- square of Pentecost in clearer terms as it concerns today’s realities. This same idea can be applied to pubs and recreational centre where a ‘spirituality of leisure’ will not be out of place. A lot of people work in these places on Sundays and those who are able to get off the pressure of work go to these places to ‘relax’ not necessarily because they do not want God, but because they are too tired to search for God, so can we create a conscious ‘presence’ to bring God nearer to them.

Another point of missionary presence has to do with the effectiveness of the power of peace, compassion and justice. We have to build a resistance with the victims and launch a campaign of globalization of compassion and solidarity; It is with great joy I see that there are many Christian Charity Organizations engaged in various forms of campaigns and building networks, e.g. anti-war, HIV and AIDS counselling and treatment units, ecology, justice and peace networks etc. Globalization from below will gather the pains and suffering of humanity to create a global network and solidarity and compassion, this is already happening and I believe that the missionary presence has to be actively present in these initiatives, we cannot afford to work in isolation. It seems that contemporary men and women relate at a deeper level of consensus when responding to human suffering and this becomes a platform for ecumenical and inter-faith relations. Apparently mission today has to be done across denominational borders with the focus on the human person rather than doctrinal teaching; otherwise we simply pay lip-service to plurality and dialogue. I think the United Kingdom is a step ahead in this direction as many services, volunteering initiatives and even Christian retreat houses are inter- denominational.

It will be futile to expend energy constructing an opposition to the phenomenon of globalization, and we do not have the human or material resources to wage such a war; however, the Gospel metaphor of the ‘mustard seed’ is a powerful image and tool to direct interventions. Local positive actions, although small and insignificant at the beginning, could become yeast in the dough of global positivity. From the fracture we have earlier analysed, we see that people today strive for cultural identity, so our mission may focus on fostering this and providing spaces of encounter and dialogue with other cultures. An example a ‘mustard seed project’ the ‘Manos Abiertas Foundation’ – a charity foundation which sprang from a small group of lay men and women who gathered to follow Ignatian spirituality in Buenos Aires; today we have over one thousand volunteers working in different parts of Argentina with the terminally ill, the homeless, abandoned children, supporters for people living with HIV and AIDS etc. We started with two Jesuits and a few lay men and women who took the injunction of the Spiritual Exercises seriously – ‘Love is better expressed in action than in words’. Manos Abiertas has become a magnet which attracts many women and men of all works of life who are tired of empty rhetoric and are eager want to combine spirituality and charity.

Finally, in an article in the Irish Missionary Union Report 2007 Newsletter, Mary T. Barron makes a good analysis of the danger of considering missionary work and development as two separate entities and she advocates a closer relationship between development workers and missionaries. This argument is favoured by the evolving reality of mission which recognizes working for justice, peace and inter-religious dialogue as part and parcel of Christian mission in the contemporary world. Moreover, missionary commitment of development provides an answer to the holistic formation of the human person and long- term survival of the human race which is a problem posed by globalization. It is however, essential not to look focus or water down the core of the Christian missionary thrust which is the proclamation of Christ and His self-giving love to all humanity in words and deeds.

Conclusion

This paper has attempted to look at many facets of globalization and how they affect the mission of the Church. Since our attention is on the points of fractures, we have focused on a proper understanding of human suffering and the new brokenness from the Christian point of view. The paper has posed a challenge for missionary activities to become more engaged with men and women of today in the realities in which they live rather than entertain a self-absorbed Christianity without an outward thrust. Ultimately, mission is a call to conversion, our own conversion and that of humanity, to a God of love. Globalization thrives on the accumulation of power (economic and socio-political), while the conversion proposed by the Christian faith is a Metanoia – a change of heart represented by the abandonment of power. It is through the renunciation of her attachment to power that the Church can become credible to a culture wearied by the abuse of power and violence in the exercise of power, just as Moses was sent in powerlessness – ‘take off your shoes’ - in order to liberate the people of God, and the powerlessness of Jesus on the cross continues to be the most powerful symbol of the true Power of God. It is only by replacing power with the service of obedience to God that we can make a meaningful impact in a world where competition and oppression by the powerful is a scandal (Collier and Esteban: 79).

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