[Oe List ...] Earth Community

[R Williams]

Good morning, John.
 
In light of yesterday's conversation about Earth Community I want to recommend a couple of manuscripts that are available at www.rauschenbusch.org which Michael Shaw was kind enough to call to my attention.  At the Rauschenbusch Annual Dinner in 2004 the keynote was delivered jointly by David Korten in a speech entitled "Imperial Politics, Christianity and the True Jesus" in dialogue with another speech by Cynthia Moe-Lobeda entitled " Globalization, Greed, and God."  I hope you will access and read both.  Here are some cuts from each.
 
Korten: www.rauschenbusch.org/documents/Korten.doc
 
"A 5,000 year Era of Empire is dying.  The Earth and civilization can no longer (bear) the burden of a global system of imperial domination.  A new era--an Era of Earth Community--is birthing."
 
"...the anthropomorphic God that we visualize in human form is the monarchal God of Empire.  The God of Jesus and the Christian mystics is the Spirit of Creation manifest through all being.  It brings forward a dynamic image of Creation and its continual unfolding that is universal, egalitarian, and calls us to create the world of peace and justice for all beings at the core of Jesus' teaching.  It is the sacred story of Earth Community."
 
Moe-Lobeda:  www.rauschenbusch.org/documents/Moe-Lobeda-Final.doc
 
Look at what she has to say against the backdrop of Niebuhr's three evils.  She quotes Thomas Berry's "Great Work" and says "the great work of our day is three-fold..."--(1) "to forge sustainable Earth-human relations," (which overcomes a form of Niebuhr's "racialism" expanded to "species-ism" that discriminates against the non-human); (2) "to abolish the institution of warfare" (warfare, the primary tool of empire-building and Niebuhr's "nationalism"); and (3) "to transform the prevailing paradigm of economic globalization" (i.e. to overcome Niebuhr's "economic imperialism," which she suggests has become wed to military imperialism, i.e. the economic and political ganging up on the cultural.)
 
She then suggests three "movements," or what we might call strategies, to accomplish the "great work."  (1) to "reclaim our (Christian) heritage of resistance to systemic domination," (2) to "uncover and critique Christian beliefs and practices that have theologically justified domination and exploitation," and (3) to "reconstruct theologies and practices that serve the God of life and liberation" within which she includes a theology of morality, a theology of Christ, a theology of salvation, a theology of sin and of evil, a theology of the resurrection, a theology of God, a theology of cosmology "that re-orients human creatures toward our place within nature, not over it" (her emphasis), and a theology of the cross.
 
These speeches were made before a Christian gathering, but the implications and applications are transparent enough to go way beyond any sectarian persuasion.  If you have trouble accessing them let me know.
 
Randy

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