August, 2007

CHRISTIAN ACTIVISM
An Alternative Witness and New Visions to Transform Society

Rose Wu

Looking Back
Two years before Hong Kong's handover in 1997 eight local Protestant and Catholic groups, including the Student Christian Movement of Hong Kong (SCM-HK), the Hong Kong Women Christian Council (HKWCC), the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee (HKCIC), the Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, Christians for Hong Kong Society, the Hong Kong Catholic Youth Council (HKCYC), the Justice and Peace Commission of the Hong Kong Catholic Diocese (HKJP) and the Hong Kong Christian Institute (HKCI), organised the first July 1 prayer service to bring Christians together to pray for Hong Kong's future and to empower local Christians and the Church in Hong Kong to play a more active role in addressing the challenges posed by the transfer of Hong Kong's sovereignty in 1997. Afterwards these groups felt that a more systematic plan must be devised to adequately respond to the future, both locally and with the international community. As a result, the July 1 Link advocacy campaign was initiated.

Alternative Christian Witness
The witness in the past 10 years of the Christian groups above is a local manifestation of the work of the international ecumenical movement, which can best be understood through two theological approaches: a theology of prophetic ministry and a theology of compassion.

Many Christians in Hong Kong think that the Church should remain neutral regarding social and political issues; but in circumstances of injustice and oppression, not to choose to oppose an evil structure is, in fact, to have chosen to side with the powerful and the oppressor. Prophetic ministry is about Christians' witness of God's solidarity with the powerless, not the powerful.

In the past 10 years, there are many channels in Hong Kong through which power has been unjustly exercised to maintain itself and to generate wealth, i.e., through transnational corporations, or TNCs; the privatisation of public services; legislation on national security; undemocratic elections; and so forth.

In order to witness to God's justice and compassion among the people, Christian groups have taken a preferential option for the poor and have sought to build a solidarity network with groups and individuals, both inside and outside of the Church, as well as with those who are overseas who wish to support the people of Hong Kong in this endeavour. The objective has been to increase mutual understanding, eliminate prejudice, seek alternatives and promote solidarity. Since September 2002, HKCI is proud that the Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF), which HKCI co-founded, has now become a strong network of more than 50 local NGOs working together to promote human rights and social justice in Hong Kong. Its efforts were most visible in the large July 1 demonstration that CHRF organised in 2003 against the Hong Kong government's proposed national security legislation based on Article 23 of the Basic Law.

From a Christian perspective, the July 1 demonstration in 2003 was also a moment of transformation in which more than 500,000 people were inspired to come out and walk together in order to defend each other's freedoms and human rights. With faith, hope and love, we were able to experience the power of the Holy Spirit working in people, which not only contributed to the Hong Kong government's decision to withdraw its proposed national security legislation that was seen as excessively and unnecessarily draconian, but it was also a moment of transformation for the city as July 1 marked the birth of a new community in Hong Kong grounded in mutual sharing and solidarity. We are proud that HKCI and other Christian organisations were able to plant the seeds of this transformation. From immersing ourselves in the people's movement, Christians and the people became united and mutually empowered. From now on, the people of Hong Kong will never forget this significant event and will remember that when people are willing to stand in solidarity with each other there is always hope to bring about change.

In surveying the community, it becomes evident that there are people in Hong Kong who are often marginalised by the mainstream society or even by church people. They are the right-of-abode seekers, the new immigrants from mainland China, racial minorities, migrant workers from South Asia, the unemployed, the recipients of Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA), Falun Gong members, asylum-seekers, etc. Since the handover, the Hong Kong government has used a divide-and-rule tactic to label certain sections of society as a burden to the community. Meanwhile, some Christians often view sexual minorities or sex workers through a moral lens and condemn them.

Christian groups in the past 10 years have tried to extend their care and support to our marginalised brothers and sisters and to deal concretely with their struggles for social justice and equality. We believe that all these people are testimonies to the broken family within the Hong Kong community. Their suffering is a result of cultural and religious discrimination, economic exploitation and political oppression. These people are the neighbours whom we are called to love in the same way that we want to love and care for ourselves based on our experience of God's love for us.

In order to break the wall of fear and prejudice between Christians and sexual minorities, HKCI, the Blessed Minority Christian Fellowship and several Christian organisations decided in 2005 to join each year's parade to celebrate the International Day against Homophobia and to organise an ecumenical blessing ceremony. It is hoped that this action will inspire more Christians to understand that the purpose of God's Creation is not to could everyone into being the same; rather, God's purpose is to teach us to love and care for one another and to appreciate our differences.

New Visions
Ten years have passed. As we anticipate the next 10 years, what new visions can we share with our people and the Christian community in Hong Kong?

The first vision I propose is to move our horizons beyond the "one country, two systems" model. Based on the experiment of the past 10 years, Hong Kong's people have experienced both the positive and negative effects of the two systems. Instead of maintaining the two systems, we should allow ourselves to create a new political and socio-economic model that is rooted in justice and equality and that allows people's equal participation in political and economic decision making. It should also respect people's freedom of expression, in particular their freedom of thought, belief, conscience and speech. This process should allow the mutual transformation of both China and Hong Kong.

The second vision I propose is to restore the integrity of God's Creation and to shift our focus from protest to alternatives. We must better understand the connection between local poverty and the multinational corporate drive for economic globalisation. We should enable our Church and community to understand that achieving a sustainable livelihood necessitates the need to consider the complex relationship between our respect for nature's integrity and our pursuit of human security. We must challenge the champion of the free market economy and the destruction that it has done to the poor, the community and the environment. We must seek a new vision for how poverty may be overcome. We must seek a comprehensive plan for change that eventually benefits the common good of all people and God's Creation. We should challenge ourselves to change our lifestyles; for unless we are willing to limit our energy use and our consumption habits, the natural world is not sustainable. In addition to pointing to these problems, we should also offer viable policy alternatives that can actually solve these issues.

The third vision I propose is to encourage the people of Hong Kong to play an active role to achieve universal suffrage. As well as pushing for a change of the political system, we must foster a democratic culture in which the people are the subjects of democracy. Here "the people" refers to the poorest and largest body of citizens. Because the word democracy means "the people (demos) have the power (kratia)" to advocate universal suffrage, we cannot rely solely on one or two elitist leaders. We should break the politics of elites and mobilise the people to move to the centre of the movement. I believe, when the people move, the government will eventually have to move with them.

The fourth vision I propose is to encourage Hong Kong's people to cultivate a fluid, multiple cultural identity. Hong Kong's colonial history has made us feel like there is something "lacking" in us compared with the Chinese people in mainland China, and yet, this colonial history also provides an alternative space for us to grow into a hybridised identity which is more fluid, integrated, flexible and multiple.

If one looks back at Hong Kong's immigration history, many Hong Kong Chinese people were immigrants or refugees from the mainland at different times. However, in the past several years, there has been a trend of discrimination against immigrants from mainland China. Moreover, many Hong Kong Chinese people also treat other racial minorities as second-class citizens, even those who were born in Hong Kong and have made Hong Kong their home.

To counter the culture of nationalism and the policy of racial purity, we should create new possibilities for speaking about the construction of complex cross-cultural identities. From a Christian perspective, racism is a form of human sin that must be addressed in all communities. However, there is no reconciliation without confrontation. Hong Kong Chinese people must be willing to see and acknowledge where racism clearly affects outcomes and benefits and should develop a culture of tolerance and inclusion.

The fifth vision I propose is to nurture new family and community values. In recent years, there has been a new Christian movement launched in Hong Kong to protect 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. We 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 "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. 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 sixth vision I propose is to develop alternative education programmes and resources for seminaries, communities and local congregations which enable more people to commit themselves to the pursuit of holistic healing and social transformation. We should recommit ourselves in engaged pedagogy so that we revision a different reality and develop a new passion of commitment to education for change. It is this movement which gives education true meaning for all of us.

The last vision is to strengthen the infrastructure of social ministry in local congregations. Over the years, HKCI and other ecumenical organisations have positioned ourselves outside the walls of the institutional Church and have committed our lives to empowering the poor and marginalised people. Because of our faithfulness of being a prophet, of standing firm on principles of justice and compassion, we often have shared the vulnerability of being labelled as radicals. As a result, our relationship with the Christian church establishment is far apart. In the future, we should engage more local congregations as well as individual Christians to develop a holistic approach of ministry which reflects our Christian commitment to build the Reign of God in our place and time in history.