Reflecting on putting Justice at the heart of faith from an Asian Perspective – Philip Peacock

Introduction: In our times, if there is one document that calls us to place justice at the heart of faith, it is the Accra Confession. The Accra confession is an initiative which calls all those who are part of the Reformed Communion and churches outside of it as well to reflect on what it means to live faithfully as the disciples of Christ in our times, and more specifically, how do we respond to the nexus of economic, social, political and military power that has come to be defined as Empire. At the outset itself I would like to place on record three factors that distinguish Asia from other regions, with regards to the Accra confession.

Ambiguity: If one were to read the relevant literature there could no denying that Asia is an ambiguous continent. Geographically the boundaries of Asia remain ambiguous and several continue to debate whether or not countries such as Russia and Turkey belong to Asia. Further, unlike Europe that has constructed a history with extremely violent consequences, that have claimed a common cultural (and sometimes racial) root, while at the same time accounting for difference, both linguistic and cultural, Asia has not imagined such a past. Although, and perhaps also because, Asia has played a pivotal role in the European construction of itself, ‘Asia’, in the modern discourse has been constructed as the ambiguous ‘other’, as perhaps Edward Said would suggest. While I would not deny that this has also been the experience of both Latin America and Africa, it has not happened to the extent that it has in Asia. Moreover, while there have been efforts to create a pan-Asian identity politically, economically and perhaps even within the context of theology, it is my assessment that these have not succeeded in creating an ‘Asian consciousness’ as perhaps have similar attempts within the context of Africa or South America.

Diversity: Related to the issue of Asian ambiguity is the experience of cultural, ethnic and religious diversity. Asia is a continent that occupies around 30% of the land mass of the world and hosts around 60% of the world’s population that is extremely diverse culturally, ethnically, politically and religiously.

There are a number of different ethnic groups that live within Asia, like in other continents. Asia has its own multiplicity of ethnic groups that are further divided along lines of language and dialect. However what is important to note is that because of the size and the population of the continent, this diversity is probably more than elsewhere. Likewise there is also a diversity of political systems and processes that range from multi-party democracies on the one end to monarchies and dictatorships on the other.

Culturally it is difficult to speak of an overarching Asian culture. This is particularly true while speaking of traditional cultural practice, food, myths, rituals etc. Within the context of Asia there lies an extreme diversity of culture. Of course one must not exaggerate this cultural diversity. Living in a globalized world, it would be naïve to suggest that there is little similarity between the culture of West Asia and East Asia, for example. After all, cultural globalization has meant the proliferation of homogenized cultural artefacts across the globe, Dubai does not look or act, or tries not to look or act any different from Seoul or Tokyo or even New York or Frankfurt for that matter. However what is important for us to note is that the elements of this homogenous culture are not essentially Asian but are reflective of a global market system which has become the driving force of culture today. Interestingly many of the cultural artefacts of modernity are literally produced in sweatshops around Asia.

Most importantly for our purposes, however, is the multiplicity of religious expressions that are to be found in Asia. Asia is after all home to several major world religions. The list would include Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Sikhism. This would perhaps take us to our last important factor, namely minority.

Minority: While Christianity was founded in Asia, and the name Christian was first used in Asia, one would have to admit that the church in Asia is a minority. In most countries in Asia, Christianity is the minority religion – one important factor for us to consider when we speak of the significance of the Accra confession for Asia.

While one would acknowledge a wide diversity in Asia, I believe that there is a certain commonality of experience among the people of Asia. We shall make some attempt to speak of the commonality of this experience by mapping the Asian context.

Mapping the Asian Context

The struggle against colonialism:

If there is a common experience in Asia it would probably lie in its experience of colonialism. Colonialism has had a deep and devastating impact on Asia, the effects of which continue to be seen even today. While Asia and Europe probably began the transition into modernity at the same time, the two of them did this in entirely different ways, one as the colonizer and the other as the colonized. Colonialism impacted Asia economically, politically, socially and psychologically. On the economic front colonialism meant nothing but the raw extraction from Asia for the wealth creation of the west. This extraction was devastating to local economies who, as a result of colonialism, were overturned to become producers of raw materials for consumers in Europe.

On the political front, for the colonized, colonialism meant the loss of the right to self-rule and self-determination. In the latter part of the nineteenth century and in the twentieth century the opposition to colonial imperialism took the form of the rise of nationalism which attempted to confront empire using the western entity of the nation state. The process was not without its own issues and new studies on nationalism are discovering that it often served to crystallize the dominance of the local elite that colluded with colonial interests and colonial ideology for their own purposes, even if they opposed colonial imperialism. Therefore, the end of imperialism for several powerless groups across Asia merely meant the handing over of reins to new masters.

On the social front what often happened was that the colonial powers colluded with local dominant communities that either served to ratify ancient hierarchies, re-create them in new ways, or to create altogether new ones. Essentially, colonialism meant that more vulnerable groups, particularly women, peasants, small artisans, indigenous people and those who lay on at the bottom of social hierarchies became even more vulnerable.

On the psychological front colonialism was constructed and imagined as a sense of loss, defeat and even emasculation of the colonized. Colonialism was after all not just the extraction of wealth but was also the contestation of ideas within which certain ideologies, scientific rationalism, for example were privileged over all others. This sense of loss and emasculation continues to exhibit itself in various ways including the glorification of violence, colonial constructions of knowledge and imagination of a glorious past that has its own problematic today. There is of course significant work being done by Asians today in the field of post-colonialism that is seeking to deconstruct some of this.

The struggle against poverty: Another common experience across Asia would be the experience of poverty. In India, the country I come from, official statistics tell us that 29% of the population lie below the poverty line. The question however is how is that line drawn? What defines the poverty line? In India the poverty line is defined as the amount of money required to purchase 1200 calories of food – the minimum daily requirement of an adult. To put it in another way, in my country 29% of the population are starving. The numbers of those who are malnourished are far worse. Dietrich and Wielenga remind us that “Poverty is not just the lack of cash to buy minimum food but it manifests itself in malnutrition, poor environment (polluted air and water) poor clothing, poor housing or no housing at all, lack of space, poor health, poor education and so on. Poverty means hunger, disease and despair. It means children dying of malnutrition. It means child labour, bonded labour and unhealthy work at low wages. It means dependency and abuse. It means the break up of families in search of work.”

It would be naïve for us to suggest that poverty in Asia is the result of colonialism; such a view is too simplistic and mono-causal. However, we must also realize that the logic of the present economic order that places value on profit over people has only served to worsen poverty. The situation is made worse by state and non-state actors such as international financial bodies and Transnational Corporations pressing for a particular economic model that would benefit the powerful but would wreak havoc on the lives of the powerless. This neo-liberal agenda is being pushed through structural adjustment programmes that seek to privatize, liberalize and globalize the economy subsuming all things to the logic of profit making. Unemployment, reduction of workers’ rights and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor is the result of this.

Curiously, capitalism has taken on two specific forms in Asia, the first is what can be referred to as authoritarian capitalism, where through state interference a capitalistic agenda is being pushed. This either takes the extreme form of China ,who pushes the agenda of capitalism with military power, or the example of India, where the state openly acts in favour of the corporations and against the rights of the people as has been amply been witnessed to in the recent ruling in the Bhopal Gas Tragedy case as well as in the Vedanta and POSCO corporations case in Orissa in India. Interestingly capitalism envisages the reduction of the role of the state leaving the economic system to the invisible hand.

The second form of Capitalism found in Asia is what Naomi Klein would refer to as disaster capitalism where corporations and governments move into areas devastated by natural or human made calamities to introduce a neo-liberal agenda. Examples of this can be witnessed to in the war torn areas of Iraq and Afghanistan or in the Tsunami struck areas of Indonesia or Sri Lanka.

The struggle against environmental degradation: Linked to the struggle against poverty is also the struggle against environmental degradation. Reliance on a growth based economic system has meant an increasing pressure on the environment. Climate change has affected several parts of Asia in different ways including increasingly extreme weather, floods and drought, loss of species and rising sea levels. While the debate between the developed and developing countries of the world continue over carbon emissions, fact is that Asia has not only suffered because of climate change but in as much as it also continues with its economies of phenomenal growth it also continues to contribute to the problem!

The struggle against violence: Another common feature that can be found around Asia is the levels of violence. Whether it is war, armed conflict, state violence, terrorism, insurgency movements, human right violations, structural violence or gender based violence, violence is endemic in Asia. Of particular significance for Asia is religious violence, whether it is between sects of the same religion or between two religious groups.

The struggle against internal hierarchies: While we speak of the context of Asia we must also not forget the presence of internal hierarchies that exist among Asian communities. Structures like caste and patriarchy continue to discriminate against and cause violence towards millions of Asians.

While we have looked at the Asian context by raising several specific issues it is important for us to note the connections that exist between these various elements, all of them working together in certain places to further the systems of injustice that exist. In the next section we shall be looking at the relevance of the Accra confession for Asia

Relevance of the Accra Confession for Asia

It is important for us to note that there were several Asians who were involved with the process of covenanting for justice in the economy and in the earth and they have obviously brought their contextual experience into the production of this document. There are some specific ways however, in which the Accra Confession relates to Asia.

Calling the faithful to engage with the world: Firstly the Accra Confession is a call to the faithful to engage with the world, which has been the legacy of both Calvin and the reformed tradition! Calvin himself wrote much about the economic system of his time indicating to us that the economy serve human interests and particularly the interests of the poor. The legacy of Calvin in the present time should encourage us to engage with economic systems contextually and pastorally from the perspective of justice ensuring that our economies serve the interests of people and not the large multinational companies.

In the Asian context, however, the gospel came to the people as part of the colonial enterprise and was in many ways used as a tool of subjugation. In this sense the gospel that was presented was a depoliticized gospel that called people to disengage with the world and not question the violence of the system. Therefore an otherworldly faith was encouraged and cultivated. This understanding of the gospel still continues in Asia with many believing that being a believer necessitates withdrawal from the world.

The relevance of the Accra Confession however is to call the attention of the faithful to the real crisis of the world and sees engagement with it as the legitimate act of faith. It calls the believer to understand that justice is the very substance of faith. And this takes us to our second point that the Accra confession calls Asian Christians to faith based stands for justice.

The Accra confession calls Asian Christians to faith based stands for justice: For Asian Christians justice is very often reduced to a question of ethics. Acts of justice are seen as what one should do because one is a Christian. Therefore it is not uncommon for Asian Christians to get involved with charity work. Several churches take on many different projects in which they try to find the right thing to do. The Accra confession, however, calls Asian Christians to understand that justice is a matter of faith, it is a matter of confession. It is the very heart of God. To put it in other words, it is not Christians who should be involved with acts of justice, rather it is doing acts of justice that make us Christian, as the Accra confession puts it : “Speaking from our Reformed tradition and having read the signs of the times, the General Council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches affirms that global economic justice is essential to the integrity of our faith in God and our discipleship as Christians. We believe that the integrity of our faith is at stake if we remain silent or refuse to act in the face of the current system of neoliberal economic globalization and therefore we confess before God and one another.”

The relevance of speaking the language of Empire: While there has been considerable debate about the use and the meaning of the word Empire in the Accra Confession, this is probably the part that has endeared Asians, both Christians and those belonging to other faiths to it. Having been brutalized by colonialism and neo-colonialism, Asians have a real experience of what Empire is. Many, many Asians see the word Empire as a legitimate nomenclature for all that has been destroying their lives, livelihood, community and environment. However Asians also realize that in the modern world, Empire cannot be embodied by a single nation, however powerful. The feature of modernity is that power cannot be found in individuals or organizations, but rather in systems. Asians would define Empire as systems that accumulate power to serve the interests of a few at the cost of many, as greatly increased distance between those who make the decisions and those who have to suffer them.

While we have spoken about how Christians in Asia are a minority, what we should also mention here is that in many countries in Asia, they are the powerless minority. Christians in Asia are poor, dispossessed, women, Dalits, Minjung, Indigenous. They are not the ones who discern the signs of the times, they are those who experience them. They are the voices that the Accra confession calls us to hear. It is Asian Christians, whether it is the sweatshop worker in Indonesia, the sweeper in Pakistan, the Dalit in India, the indigenous person in the Philippines… who have experienced the violence of Empire. This document speaks of our experience, it calls us to live our faith in new ways.

Having said that however, perhaps what the Accra confession does not pay adequate attention to is the reality of religious pluralism. While it is necessary for us to speak of justice as being a matter of faith for those of us in Asia that live in a multi-religious context, we cannot reduce justice to being a Christian project. The difficulties of seeing justice as a matter of faith is that  it becomes a barrier to joining hands with secular movements for justice, and if we are to create another world then this joining of hands is a necessity. The need for us in Asia is also to open up spaces by which we can relate to other faiths and work together for the sake of justice, and maybe the Accra confession does not offer such spaces. Or perhaps, that we need to work creatively with the text so that it does.

Asian Churches and Accra Confession

Lastly we should consider how the churches in Asia have responded to the Accra confession. Immediately after the General Council, the Accra confession was circulated to Churches and seminaries in Asia for reflection and discussion. I myself remember being part of such a discussion in my seminary.

I was recently a resource person in a pastor’s conference that was organized by the Council for World Mission, South Asian Region that was based on the Accra Confession and had as its theme, “Justice at the heart of faith”. The conference invited Pastors from all the church traditions in South Asia including the Anglicans, the Baptists and the Reformed Orthodox churches, along with churches that have roots in the reformed tradition. The conference has the expected outcome of getting the participants to commit to the Accra confession and to discover how to proceed with this perspective.

Yet there is work to be done, the Accra confession must filter down to the level of the local congregations that should begin to reflect on it and see how they can delegitimize Empire and work towards a just world which promises fullness of life for all.

Philip Peacock is an ordained deacon in the Church of North India, serving as an Associate Professor at Bishop’s College, Kolkata, India.  He is a doctoral candidate at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.  He serves on the core committee for Programme for Just and Inclusive Communities of the World Council of Churches and on the Gender Network for the World Communion of Reformed Churches.