November, 2006

Reorienting the Mission of Christian Organisations in Asia

Rose Wu

(This article was presented at the 10th General Assembly of the Association of Christian Institutes for Social Concern in Asia [ACISCA] in Chiang Mai, Thailand, on Oct. 11, 2006.)

In this article, I want to offer four directions of theological transformation.

The First Direction: Move the Church from the Sanctuary to the People

Recently, I was invited by the Student Christian Movement of Hong Kong (SCM-HK) to give a series of talks on the future vision of the Christian Church in the community. In the discussion, many students shared their disillusion about institutional church life today, church life which is primarily concerned about personal evangelism and church growth without paying any attention about violations of social justice and human rights in our society. Thus, they no longer find the Church a relevant location for them as well as for those who are struggling outside the Church, and thus, in response, many have chosen to leave the Church.

As we continued the discussion, I tried to enable them to see that the existing boundary between the church and society is built on a fundamentally incorrect concept of church. Many Christians believe that the church is a sacred place where God exists. Therefore, Christians are converted to join the Church in order to seek personal salvation. They also think that the world is a secular and sinful place in which God's salvation is absent.

According to the Bible, the vocation of the Church is to do God's mission in the world. We can also find the root model of the Church in the "Jesus movement" that was formed when Jesus announced the Good News of God's Kingdom as the new creation in the New Testament. Thus, translating the Kingdom of God into social realities is the fundamental mission and challenge of the Church.

The incarnation of Jesus reflects God's solidarity with the world, God's understanding of our condition by experiencing our human life. This offers a model for us today as we struggle to respond to the world, for it indicates that we cannot simply use one universal, ready-made answer from the Bible to reply to the injustices of the world. Rather, we must examine the context and specific situation of those who are being oppressed and grapple with the complexity of their lives. What God has taught us through the Incarnation is that we must participate, participate with the persecuted as they confront the injustice that tortures them.

After being involved for more than 20 years of my life in the local ecumenical movement in Hong Kong, I have come to realise that, in order to live faithfully to the calling of the incarnate Christ, we must allow ourselves more freedom and space to practice our ministry outside of the boundaries of the institutional Church. We should release more resources and energy to support alternative ministries working outside the church boundaries, labouring side by side with workers and farmers in factories and on plantations and with marginalised women, prisoners and refugees. For me, these missionary tasks are true reflections of being church that are outside the institutional Church. Being church is not the creation or recreation of an institution but the actualisation of a dynamic process of transformation and change in the world.

The Second Direction: Reconnect Spirituality with the Action of Love

Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who was assassinated in 1980 in San Salvador while celebrating Mass, once said, "A church which does not unite itself with the poor is not a true church of Christ." As many of us know, the reason for Archbishop Romero's assassination was his determination to raise a prophetic voice, not only to denounce the injustices in his country, but also to point the way to conversion for both the institutional Church and the military-dominated power of the State of his country.

One of the current trends that I have observed in affluent societies like that of Hong Kong is that many people, including Christians, are willing to pay thousands of dollars to join different forms of New Age spiritual formation classes, such as those teaching spiritual yoga, Tai Chi meditation or Eastern spiritual practices, etc. This phenomenon indicates that, although affluent societies are materially rich, people feel the need for spiritual nourishment. People's interest in spirituality, however, is co-opted by the powerful forces of consumerism and the market economy in which their spiritual nourishment is limited to being individualistic and self-comforting.

On the other hand, a study indicated that there are 1.12 million people in Hong Kong who live in poverty. The study also found an increasing number of children under 14 and adults over 65 are living in poverty over the past decade. More alarmingly, the average income of the wealthiest 10 percent of the population is now 26 times higher than the poorest 10 percent. Despite evidence that the lack of a minimum wage has allowed falling wage levels among workers and growing inequality, the eyes, ears and hearts of the government and pro-business legislators remain closed to this reality as they reject a minimum wage proposal on the grounds that there should be no interference in the free market-a seemingly sacred principle for those who are affluent and benefit from this economic system.

Where is the link between these two contrasting pictures? On one hand, people have money but are searching for spirituality and meaning in life, but meanwhile, society lacks compassion for the poor and marginalised.

How then do we reconnect spirituality with the action of love? We must understand that a true commitment to a spiritual life requires us to do more than go on a restful retreat or silent meditation. It requires conscious practice, a willingness to unite the way we think with the way we act. Parker Palmer in his book The Active Life: Wisdom for Work, Creativity and Caring points out that "action, like a sacrament, is the visible form of an invisible spirit, an outward manifestation of an inward power."

To turn the invisible spirit into the visible action of love is what Jesus' creed is all about: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength." The second is this: "Love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these." Today the great stumbling block for many moderate, middle-class Christians is their preference for a passive spirituality, which is the absence of tension, rather than an active spirituality, which is the action of love.

The Third Direction: Redefine the Value of Family Based on Justice and Compassion

For several decades, Western feminists have been accused of leading anti-family political movements that encourage women to leave their husbands and children and become lesbians. I agree that it is important for women and men to take family values seriously, particularly the caring of our children and the elderly. However, it is equally important for feminists to critically analyse the patriarchal nature of the dominant heterosexual nuclear family that is the result of a modern industrial and consumer-based society. Moreover, we must also observe that family ties and relationships are becoming more vulnerable and weaker as the world blindly champions economic growth.

In recent years, there has been a new Christian movement launched in Hong Kong for protecting traditional family values. Their main agenda includes asking young Christians to protect their virginity before marriage and to urge husbands to keep their promise and fidelity to their marriage and families. As we study this movement, their concern is primarily about Christians' personal morals on sex, marriage and family. They not only advocate a certain model of family, but they also condemn those who do not fit their heterosexual norms.

In order to strengthen the bonds between individuals, families and communities, we must re-establish an alternative interpretation of family and community which does not fall into the trap of making heterosexism the only social norm for all. I suggest that Asian Christians should, first of all, rediscover the true meaning of family based on the concept of the household of God and the teaching of Jesus Christ in which the core message is for the Reign of God to guide our personal and communal lives as people in relation to the whole of Creation. Therefore, Christians are called not to be bound by the narrow sense of the Religious Right's definition of "family values" that are used to uphold and sustain the heterosexual, patriarchal nature of today's family as the only ideal and social norm. Instead, we should expand our concept of the family to include diverse expressions of family, such as cross-generational or extended families, single-parent families, remarriage and stepfamilies, same-sex families, etc., or even other concepts of family that include accepting domestic migrant helpers as a family member or even a group of friends living together.

As the structure of the family is changing rapidly in Asia because of migration, separation and new forms of union, it is time to stop arguing about the relative merits of ideal family types and have a serious discussion about how to build the support systems that contemporary families need. The goal is to transform the social system into a structure that truly reflects society's support for the family, giving adequate assistance for the household that includes a reduction in working hours that allows more time for individual and family enrichment and that ensures education, child care, care for the elderly, health care and so on.

With this understanding, Christians are called to participate in building the household of God that is characterised by justice and compassion. The above eschatological perspective opens up a new vision of family and gives permission to act differently. Our vision of the household of God puts great value in plurality and cultural diversity for mutual enrichment and for the affirmation of life.

The Fourth Direction: Interpret the Gospel as the Word of Life for All Instead of the Power of Domination

Today our world is experiencing a fundamental crisis: a crisis in the global economy, global ecology and global politics. Hundreds of millions of people increasingly suffer from poverty, starvation, unemployment and war. The Earth is continually polluted due to human greed as well as the consequences of consumerism.

Because of the impact of the global economy, the whole world is ruled by a few international corporations which raid the resources of the nations in the South and ship them north to the wealthiest industrial nations. These trade rules leave Third World countries with little ability to resist or to protect themselves or to seek alternative economic strategies. Moreover, the rapid conversion of the Earth's resources into a variety of goods and services has led to global warming, deforestation, expanding deserts, etc. The overexploitation of the Earth's mineral and natural resources has also left developing nations poor and their populations without adequate means to sustain their growing numbers.

In the contemporary world, the powerful are obsessed with the desire to dominate with unlimited power and to accumulate unlimited wealth. The Christian theology which has been used to justify the Western domination of the rest of the world is based on an interpretation of God as the absolute power and conqueror of all lives. Therefore, we must dismantle the authoritarian nature of God from patriarchy and hegemony in order to rediscover the sacred power in our relationships with one another and to bear luminous witness to the incarnate God who is intrinsically relational, compassionate and just.

How can justice be done though? Now at the beginning of the 21st century a new Tower of Babel is again being erected under the flags of economic globalisation and the "war on terror." It is a challenge for all Christians to seek an alternative interpretation of the Gospel that brings us back to the gift of life which belongs to God and is shared by all. In the Gospel of John, Jesus proclaimed: "I came so that all may have life and have it more abundantly." God's salvation in Jesus Christ not only means fullness of life for the human community but the restoration of all creation to its goodness and wholeness.

The hope to find our way beyond domination is to commit ourselves to each other as one human family. We must utilise economic and political power for service to humanity instead of misusing it in ruthless battles for domination. We must develop a spirit of compassion with those who suffer, with special care for the children, women, the aged, the poor, the disabled, the refugees and the outcast people in our communities. The solidarity required by the preferential option for the poor and the marginalised forces us back to a core message of the Christian Gospel that was proclaimed by Jesus Christ in his time: "I came so that all may have life and have it more abundantly." Can we embrace this Gospel as our living witness for the people in Asia?