Mission in a Networked World

Address to Omnes Gentes Colloquium

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

October 2003

 

Stuart C Bate[1] OMI

 

Part 1

Introducing the Networked World 

 

1)     From the industrial age to the information age and the emergence of globalisation

a)     Modern Western society, the creation of the industrial revolution, is now moving into a new global configuration that is rapidly transforming the structure, behaviour and beliefs of human life. Modernity changed the focus of society from God as centre and maintainer, to humanity, empowered to transform creation through our own abilities.  New belief and ethical systems emerged. Some predicated human beings as persons[2] with individual human rights whereas others articulated humanity in terms of classes and communities.[3]  Yet others supported the rights of elites and ‘supermen’[4] to arrogate power to themselves.[5] Principles such as ‘civilisation’, ‘evolution’ and ‘development’ optimistically drove some people of this culture to work for a better world for all people. This effort was expressed in organisations such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Court of Justice. However, the modern age was also a period of great wars, outrageous greed, and exploitation as the principles of power allowed the division of the world into three blocks: a first world of wealth, a second world of collectivism and state power and an unimportant third world of poverty and neglect. 

b)     The post-modern society continues many of the features of modernity. Access to the means of production still continues to divide the world into haves and have-nots, but at a much greater rate than ever before. The new, emerging society is profoundly capitalist but now it is global.  Nations are more limited in their powers and organised crime is growing. There is a profound lack of a global political order which has sufficient power to ensure human well-being. The network is creating a profoundly different kind of human society. It is based on a new revolution, the information revolution, whose import will be at least as great as the industrial revolution.

 

2)     Information technology and interconnectivity

a)     Manuel Castells’[6] seminal work identifies a  ‘technological revolution, centred around information technologies’ (2000:1) that is radically transforming the shape of human society leading to the emergence of new social structures.  Such radical transformations of human society have happened before; for example, when human beings first began to dwell in cities around 5000 years ago. The social history of the world is not one of gradual change but rather ‘a series of stable states punctuated at rare intervals by major events that occur with great rapidity and help to establish the next stable state’ (Gould 1980: 226). The industrial revolution was such an event and the information revolution is another.

b)     The principal factor driving this new transformation is ‘the increasingly interconnected character of the political, economic, and social life of the peoples on this planet’  (Schreiter 1997:5). Satellites have brought the media into the lives of people everywhere. The cellular telephone system is transforming even the African continent as it jumps rapidly into the global communications culture.[7]  The Internet has empowered individuals and groups both to inform and be informed on a scale that would have been unthinkable even ten years ago.  New types of social space are emerging, allowing people to create new kinds of societies, both geographical and virtual. The way human beings interact is being radically transformed.[8]

Part 2

Cultural and Philosophical effects of the networked world and their consequences for mission

 

1)     The reconstruction of identity in the global networked culture

a)     In the past human identity[9] was forged around symbols like clan, village, ethnic group, religion, nation and profession. Usually it was tied to geographical space, the land. Even the guilds and trades of mediaeval Europe had their own streets and neighbourhoods.  Today, the network provides new kinds of social space and new opportunities for social identity. Global travel has compressed geography and cultural identities like the jet set, the business traveller and the commuter have emerged.[10] But the information revolution has also developed an entirely new form of social space. Cyberspace is a virtual reality accessible to all who possess an electronic interface like a computer, cell phone or television.[11] Within cyberspace domains of human interaction are created with the inevitable result that social identity and culture will follow.[12]  Chat rooms and e-groups connect people with similar interests and lifestyles. One consequence is the creation of social spaces where identities predicated upon controversial areas of human identity, such as sexual orientation or racial prejudice, are acceptable.[13]

b)     Human identity is linked to beliefs and values that allow people to gradually understand and then transform the social space within which they live.[14] In the Nation-state, for example, organs of civil society such as labour movements, non-governmental organisations and churches were often vehicles of social transformation for a better society. The information revolution has created a new entity, the network, which is extremely powerful and often overwhelming. One result is that there do not appear to be social institutions powerful enough to transform its unacceptable face. Consequently, the network is threatening because it cannot be humanised. This leads to concerns about the nature of human identity in such a networked world.[15] The interconnected reality has its own goals, strategies, and systems but people have to participate in the network because of the demands of their lives at work, in the economy and in State bureaucracy.[16] The network treats connected people not as a human beings but as digital entities.[17]  People respond by attempting to create local centres of human identity. But these only comprise aspects of defence, refuge and resistance because of the perception of the network’s power.[18] Castells (1997: 12) identifies four principal ways in which such identity reconstruction is currently going on. These are religious fundamentalism, nationalism, ethnic identity and territorial identity. 

c)     Some resistance responses to globalisation contain a component of rejection together with a grudging use of the system when it can further local goals. Examples of this kind of response include the rise of religious fundamentalism, the worldwide growth of cults and the growth of ideologically based movements employing military violence to achieve their goals such as the American Militia,[19] Al Qaeda,[20] and Aum Shinrikyo.[21]

d)     Religion is clearly an important site of identity construction and is being use to create resistance identities against globalisation.

i)      Basam Tibi, the Islamic scholar, suggests that the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East is linked with ‘the exposure of this part of the world of Islam, which sees itself as a collective entity, to the processes of globalization, to nationalism and the nations state as globalized principles of organization’  (in Castells 1997: 17).

ii)    Castells (1997:25) characterises American Christian fundamentalism as ‘a reactive movement, aiming at constructing social and personal identity on the basis of images of the past and projecting them to a utopian future, to overcome unbearable present times’.  These ‘unbearable’ times include the threat of globalization and a loss of control linked to the undermining of the so called  ‘traditional American family life’ by groups like the civil rights movement, feminism and gay rights.[22]

 

2)     Postmodernism and the loss of truth

a)     What is truth?

i)      Culture and identity are predicated on having access to the truth about the world. The predominant epistemological problem in the networked world concerns the Western crisis of knowledge regarding truth. Lyotard (1983) is the one who has most clearly articulated this crisis. He suggests that all societies are maintained in truth and order by the existence of ‘Grand Narratives’ which outline and express the principal values and beliefs.  The ‘American dream’, ‘European civilisation’ and ‘scientific objective truth’ are examples of Western grand narratives.  Postmodernism questions the ability of such grand narratives to access objective and real truth about things because they are always conditioned by identifiable historical and cultural factors.[23] Post modernists favour the construction of smaller narratives which respond to the diversity of local conditions and which make no claim to universal truth or knowledge.[24]  This approach refutes the claim of religions to posit universal truths undermining issues like the truth of scriptures or Church teaching.[25]   It raises all kinds of ethical problems about the universal validity of notions such as ‘human rights’, good and evil. Realism has been the major response to this in philosophy (Bhaskar 1998 and Lonergan), in the social sciences (Sayer 2000) and in theology (Kirk 1999).[26]

b)     The search for the simple and attractive

i)      In a complex and overwhelming world where it is difficult to locate social significance, power and meaning, many people are attracted to simple, comprehensive worldviews out of which identity, purpose and meaningful praxis may be constructed.  The development of such cultural paradigms remains a major challenge of our time and has led to a growth of interest in cultural studies.[27]  Syncretism[28] appears to be the major mechanism of current cultural construction. This is because the network allows hyper cultural interconnectivity bringing together elements from many different cultural sources (Schreiter 27, 66ff.). This process is well known in music where fusion mixes and remixes are increasingly popular. Such fusion is occurring in the resurgence of traditional cultures worldwide be it the Maoris and Polynesians of the Pacific or the Celts of Ireland and America.[29]  Syncretism was clearly visible in the African version of Big Brother[30] which brought people from 12 different countries together. They were seen to share much in common as members of a contemporary African culture of the urban elite. 

c)     The rising power of popular culture

i)      Popular culture has been a major beneficiary of the information revolution. This is because its proponents have access to many more people allowing them to become a powerful elite. Movie stars and pop idols are icons of today’s world involved in billion dollar industries[31]. The profile of sports heroes was relatively limited even thirty years ago. But today the Ronaldos, Michael Jordans and Schumachers are megastars and role models for the masses. Popular culture also represents a move away from the priority of the written and the clear in the modern age to the audiovisual, symbolic and experiential of popular culture (Johansson 1997:174).  As a result, image, impression and emotion have moved to the centre of cultural truth.

d)     The emergence of spirituality

i)      According to Beaudoin (1998) popular culture contains within it religious texts which guide people around issues of identity and the meaning of life.  These include music videos, movies, books and cult figures like Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, and Benny Hinn. These are symptoms of the rise of spirituality as a powerful cultural form expressing social identity.  ‘Spirituality has been a huge growth industry over the past decade’  (Lynch 2002: 105). It is usually presented as a set of techniques and guides for living a purposeful, meaningful, healthy lifestyle with self and others. ‘It is a religion where the self is at the centre’ (Starkey 1997:119). The massive growth of the New Age movement is part of this trend.

 

3)     Consequences for mission from cultural and philosophical issues

a)     The construction of Christian identity 

i)      If Castells is right, and the quest for human identity is to be one of the prevailing issues of the information revolution, then the Church has a major mission here. The challenge will be to offer a coherent, comprehensive identity for humanity in the information age.  Such an identity should not just be a resistance identity but must provide a vision for transforming the network. The Christian vision of salvation through suffering and death of the weak is eminently appropriate to this task. 

ii)    There are problems. In Europe, many see the Church as old fashioned and no longer worthy of commitment.[32] So new Christian identities are needed as a legitimate response to human identity needs in a networked society. But there are also some positive signs:

(1)  Christians are using television, websites and e-groups.

(2)  Pope John Paul has used global transportation to be a pastor with his people worldwide. His youth rallies employ symbols of popular youth culture and often resemble pop concerts. He has played a role in the economic and political life of the world.

(3)  Authors such as Neuhaus (1987) and Schreiter (1997) see the symbol ‘catholic’ as a unifying and integrating symbol for Christianity in a networked world. For Neuhaus (1985:285) the ‘Catholic moment requires a renewed demonstration of unity in diversity’.  Schreiter (1997: 127) suggests that ‘a renewed and expanded concept of catholicity may well serve as a theological response to the challenge of globalization’.

iii)  There are a number of challenges.

(1)  We need a greater affirmation of local Christian expression in local churches. This includes popular religious spiritualities, inculturated liturgies and the development of catechetical forms that incorporate cultural elements.[33] 

(2)  We need a greater sense of intercultural communication and dialogue within the Church to promote respect for diversity and a sense that unity does not mean uniformity.[34] 

(3)   The richness of Catholicism is that it has not been tied to one culture benefiting from Greek, Patristic, mediaeval and modern interpretations of faith and the gospel. African, Asian, Latin American and global re-interpretations of the faith will be similarly enriching not only within their own culture but also to the whole body.

(4)  We must continue to develop theological responses that address issues and problems that result from global systems.[35] Theologies of liberation, feminism, ecology and human rights are examples of theological responses which have been helpful in establishing Christian identity amongst networked groups.[36]  

(5)  Lay people are taking on greater power in the Church and there has been a massive growth in lay movements.[37] Cardinal Stafford, the President of the Pontifical council for the Laity said in a recent interview [38] that they respond to specific needs such as ‘the need for a deeper spirituality which, in many ways, they do not feel the parish has been able to meet’ and the need to participate more fully in evangelisation.[39]

b)     Responding to epistemological challenges from Post modernism

i)      Challenges to belief

(1)  From certainty to negotiation

(a)   Postmodernism does not tell us to do away with reason but rather to be suspicious of its motivations. This can be good news in a networked world since it militates against the arrogance of the modern period which presumed to have all the answers for human civilisation. Today solutions have to be negotiated from a coming together of different viewpoints and perspectives. Postmodernism challenges us to develop a notion of mission born out of openness, discussion and reflection from all perspectives. This is a move from the certainty of Acts 2 to the uncertainty of Acts 10.[40]

(2)  Christian realism

(a)   Realism provides an important philosophical response to epistemological relativism. Sweetman (2001) argues that post-modern positions  ‘are based on the abstract rather than the concrete’ (: 31).[41] This is because their proponents theoretically proclaim the underlying relativism whilst actually living life in terms of a set of beliefs and values which they seek to dogmatically impose on others; for example that all should be relativists. The Catholic position, especially as outlined by John Paul II in Fides et Ratio offers a serious and reasoned position that knowledge is not only accessible through reason but is also accessible through faith (FR 8 cfr. Dei Filius, III: DS 3008).[42]

(3)  Grounding a new missiology

(a)   Kirk and Vanhoozer’s (1997) book presents the fruits of eight years work of the study project ‘Towards a missiology of Western culture’ which ‘focussed specifically on the “epistemological predicament” of Christianity in “post-modern” Western culture’ (: ix).  This rich book offers much hope. In his conclusion Bert Hoedemaker’s synthesis of the project’s work tries to develop a coherent, epistemological grounding for mission. Firstly, he situates missiology within intercultural dialogue rather than in philosophy.  This implies a concern with pluralism. Its theological ground is, in a certain sense, placed in eschatology, operating ‘on the assumption that…the final completion of all things in the biblical sense would be linked to the successful crossing of all frontiers between cultures and religions’ (:219).  This implies an answer to pluralism in terms of the emergence of unity and ultimate truth. He posits Pneumatology as the meeting point between the pluralism of cultures and religions, the process of communication, and the theological ground of the eschaton since ‘the Holy Spirit serves as the link between divine life and human life’ (: 222).

 

ii)    Challenges to ecclesial praxis

(1)  Issues of truth affect issues of ecclesial praxis which respond to matters concerning people in their daily lives. If we just focus on creating clear but culturally unacceptable, or unimportant, answers to intellectual and ethical matters, then we will become irrelevant. But, on the other hand, if the Church’s praxis just reflects the views of culture then we will have no message. This means that ecclesial praxis needs to be rooted in the social and cultural life of people whilst respecting the criteria of inculturation, ‘compatibility with the Christian message and union with the universal church’ (EA 62).

(2)  Salvation in Christ is good news for all and Christians are required to proclaim the Kerygma wherever they can (RM 4-11 and Dominus Jesus). This important missionary dimension of the Church is not negated by post-modern critique. Solutions like that of Paul Knitter[43] (1985) are untenable because by positing the equality of all ways to God he chooses none. The human condition is limited by nature and we have to choose a way.

(3)  Mission implies spreading the gospel in ways that are culturally intelligible and become good news to people within their own context.[44] Indeed, ‘good news’ should be the principal litmus test for any missionary work we do. Is it good? Is it new in this social context?  Good, of course, does not only mean happy, joyful and attractive. The first part of the gospel is clearly that and so the crowds follow Jesus as he heals and preaches. But the real good news is in the second part of the gospel as Jesus brings salvation through his passion, death and resurrection. The good news of redemptive suffering is hard good news for people to accept but this is the way that the world is made a better place and evil is conquered. Anyone coming from South Africa knows that there was much suffering and death involved in the overthrow of the apartheid demon, but that the new South African society is a better world for all its people. That is real good news!      

(4)  The Church’s activity[45] is always culturally mediated though we are often insufficiently aware of the fact. This means that mission praxis needs to reflect more deeply both on the cultural dimensions of human needs in a particular context in order to develop effective culturally significant pastoral responses (Bate 2001: 72).[46]  The Church in Europe no longer conforms to its own culture but often more to the ancienne regime.[47]  But signs of new Christian life are emerging.[48] Part of mission in European society may well be one of prophecy within the church itself, which is demanding and leads to suffering. Yet it is important. The prophetic witness of Christians within other political and social contexts has been effective elsewhere, like the place where I come from.[49]

 

 

Part 3

Socio-economic effects of the networked world and their consequences for mission

 

1)     Introduction

a)     The information revolution is having major socio-economic consequences for human life. The distribution of social power is undergoing massive change worldwide to the advantage of some and the disadvantage of others. Globalisation is rapidly increasing the total wealth of the world but significantly widening the gap between the wealthy and the poor. In this section we examine how these changes provide new challenges for mission.

 

2)     Change in power relations in human society 

a)     The information revolution has increased the power of those social groups more able to use the network to achieve their goals. They include trans-national corporations, those nations able to exercise global hegemony through economic, military or cultural power and global criminal syndicates. Other social groups are losing power mainly because it is tied to territoriality. They include Nation-states and organisations of civil society.

b)     The decline of the Nation-state as a centre of power

i)      Within its own territory, the Nation-state exerts social power over economic, cultural and other areas of human life. This made Nation-states the principal centres of social power in the modern period. Today their power is in decline because territoriality is fundamentally opposed to globalisation. Multinationals, the global media and global organised crime are at a strong advantage in their relationship with Nation-states and organs of civil society. When national labour laws decrease profit margins, multinational corporations transfer production to places of weaker labour power.  Labour organisations are not able to transfer organised labour power from one state to another since their power is derived from National legislation. Nike, for example, is said to produce its high profile shoes in sweatshops in South East Asia. The only recourse for labour is the use of litigation and media pressure in the home country, which have proven relatively ineffectual.[50]

ii)    Nation-states are looking for ways to exert power beyond their own borders. A few are able to do this through military, economic and cultural pressure. The United States is the paradigm of this kind of country.  Another strategy is to organise much bigger regional entities like the European Union, OPEC and the African Union.[51]

c)     The rise of global crime

i)      Criminal organisations have been significant winners from networking and the information revolution. According to Castells (1997:259), ‘the globalization of crime…is one of the most relevant trends in the world’. This is because of the scale of its growth and its penetration. Drugs and sex remain the principal stock in trade but global crime is increasingly extending its power over weapons, technology, legitimate business and political interests. It already has the ability to destabilize a number of Nation-states like Colombia in Latin America and Liberia in Africa.[52]  The ‘pillage of Russia’, carried out by organised crime after the collapse of communism, is a telling story of how an apparently powerful country can be overwhelmed by global criminal forces (Castells 1998:183-195).

d)     The rise of implicit and persuasive power 

i)      Explicit control of human societies operates through legislative, executive and judicial functions. They are largely tied to territoriality. It is implicit forms of power like culture or the control of systems and persuasive forms like media and advertising that are growing since they are more able to use the network to achieve their goals.[53] 

(1)  One of the consequences of the information revolution has been the complexification of systems. People use products without knowing how they work and without the ability to transform them. Systems and structures like global networks and products like phones, vehicles and household goods may only be used within clearly defined parameters set by the producers who retain control of systemic and functional information. 

(2)  The network appropriates essential information regarding human identity, wealth, qualification, rights and duties. Whilst some functionality of these human attributes may remain with the individual, in most cases the system has the power remove that control. People may then lose finance from Internet banking sites[54] or other resources, including their whole identity, with little or no recourse. Contemporary movies like the Matrix starring Keanu Reeves and The Net starring Sandra Bullock have dealt with this theme. 

(3)  Global media conglomerates are able to reconstruct social opinion, values and behaviour according to their own agenda. Advertising, for example has an immensely persuasive influence on the daily lives of people, influencing opinion, fashion and values. Even in the poorest countries many people have access to Radio and Television.[55] Media is thus increasingly exercising the role that religion did in former societies in changing beliefs and conventional wisdom. Africa, for example, is only featured on global media networks[56] in stories about disaster, human misery and game parks. The constantly reinforced message, which has become global conventional wisdom, is that Africa is a game park and a human disaster area.[57] In fact there are many, unreported, good news stories from Africa; like, for example, the fact that the world’s fastest growing economy for the past 25 years is an African country.[58]  

 

3)     Wealth creation and distribution

a)     The industrial revolution increased the total wealth of the world giving tremendous material benefits to large numbers of people particularly in the West. Similarly, the information revolution has ‘generated great amounts of new wealth which, were they distributed more evenly, would do much to ease the poverty of the majority of the world’s population’ (Schreiter 1997:7). The problem is that Capitalism mainly pursues short-term maximisation of profit margin which may be detrimental to other societal goals. In the past a certain measure of control was imposed by other centres of power within Nation-states including legislation, the media, labour and civil society. This led to the situation of greater distributive justice that pertains in modern Western democracies (Bilton 1980: 185ff.). The network has allowed capital to avoid these constraints. It is now much easier to move resources to environments that allow greater profits without social recompense whilst retaining immediate control over them.[59]

b)     A society of two classes

i)      Society continues to be divided into two fundamental groups: the empowered and the exploited. However, the nature of this divide has changed. The industrial revolution was accompanied by colonialism. The benefits of production created wealth and might in European hands as resources were imported and transformed. Colonised peoples experienced slavery, racism, resource removal and loss of political control over their land. The arena of this activity was geographical.[60]

ii)    The information revolution promotes a new kind of colonialism. Now the centres of power are not only strong nations but also other entities like multinational corporations, crime syndicates and global media organisations. 200 giant corporations now control over one-quarter of the world's economic activity. Of the world's 100 largest economies, 51 are corporations. Toyota is bigger than Norway.  Wal-Mart is bigger than Greece and Poland.[61] In 1994, the Global trade in illegal drugs was estimated at $500 billion; more than the global trade in oil (Castells 1998:172).

iii)  The exploited are the new poor and a major consequence of globalisation has been the emergence of new categories of poor people including poor countries, the victims of unfair trade practices and social underclasses in every nation.

(1)  Poor countries are those who have no access to the network or cannot use it. The post world war II development agenda relied on the incremental trickling down of wealth to poor countries. This view informed the notion of aid for developing nations.[62] The networked society is able to cut off, or marginalize, certain countries so that they become irrelevant to the system declining even further into misery.  Many African countries are in this category.  The United Nations Human Development Report for 2003 said that: “For many countries the 1990s were a decade of despair” (UNHDR 2003: 2). Fifty-four countries are poorer now than in 1990.

(2)  Some more developed countries are the victims of unfair trade practices. Notions of human solidarity and the UN charter suggest that richer societies will help poorer ones. This notion of reciprocity is increasingly undermined in the networked society. Developing countries, in particular, are seen as a threat to developed nations because they are able to produce more cheaply and the network opens up the possibility of global markets for them. As a result the network is now being used to serve the interests of hegemonic groups. Reciprocity within the system functions only between those groups who can impose power of some kind on the partner.  Groups without such power are being increasingly impoverished.

(a)   For example, the Uruguay round of the GATT[63] agreement was widely criticised by developing countries for these reasons including the ‘erosion of preferential treatment, expected food price increases and increased competition’ (Epstein 1998).

(b)  The International Food Policy Research Institute noted that ‘the farm policies of rich nations had cost agricultural producers in the developing world about $24 billion in lost income each year with the European Union as the biggest culprit’.[64]

(c)   A further example is the enormous, unjust debt burden that Africa carries. ‘The 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa spend approximately $13.5 billion every year repaying debts to rich foreign creditors for past loans of questionable legitimacy’.[65]  The All-African Conference of Churches has called this debt ‘a new form of slavery, as vicious as the slave trade.’

(3)  The poor in rich societies.

(a)   Wealth and poverty extremes are not only found between countries but also within them. They are consolidating as ‘black holes of human misery in the global economy, be it in Burkina Faso, South Bronx, Kamagasaki, Chiapas, or La Courneuve’ (Castells 2000:2). Poverty here is people’s experience of life as the absence of power to change things for the better.

 

 

4)     Consequences for mission from socio-economic issues

a)     The network should empower the Church

i)      The Church must participate in the information revolution. It provides a powerful opportunity for evangelisation, dialogue and communication. Though expensive, the results are cost effective and those institutions not participating in the information revolution will struggle to survive. Great creativity will be required to develop cost effective uses of electronic networks for evangelisation and mission. This is a major challenge for mission today. There are some positive signs.

(1)  There are a large number of Catholic websites providing valuable information[66] including The Catholic Encyclopaedia.[67]  The Vatican website provides access to all magisterial documents since Vatican II and a large number published before.

(2)  Christian television broadcasting is growing. Most are evangelical and Pentecostal[68] but there are a few Catholic initiatives. EWTN is by far the most important of these.[69]  Catholic Radio is an area of substantial growth in Africa encouraged by the call at the African Synod for greater use of the means of social communication in the continent (EA 124, 125,126).

(3)  Since 2000 the Vatican has organised a monthly teleconference for the theological updating of clergy worldwide. The videoconference links theologians from all five continents who present a different theme of Catholic theology.[70]

(4)  The International Network of Societies of Catholic Theology (INSeCT) is currently establishing an e-journal for African Catholic Theologians who are often unable to access one another’s work. This initiative will allow worldwide access to the work of African Catholic theologians.[71]

(5)  The advent of electronic research databases allows easier research and access to articles. This is particularly helpful for newer third world institutions. St Augustine College, where I work, had only twenty subscribed journals six months ago but with access to full text journals through the databases our journal holding is now over 200 titles.[72] 

(6)  Ecclesiastical structures are beginning to take account of the emergence of new social spaces. Churches are emerging in cyberspace. Jacques Gaillot, former bishop of Evreux and now titular bishop of Partenia has set up his diocese as a site on the Internet and ‘a space of freedom for those with nothing’.[73] The networking of many types of ecclesiastical domains may become the model for the Church of the future. Interestingly the possibility of non-geographical ecclesiastical structures has been catered for with the emergence of the Personal Prelature after Vatican II. The structure has already been used for one movement, the Opus Dei, which thus finds itself a trailblazer in the articulation of post-modern ecclesiology!  

b)     Mission to people in need

i)      The Church’s mission is always a response to human need. The information revolution will result in a number of new needs but many will be similar to those in the past.

ii)    The mission to the poor and abandoned will continue to be a major need. It is clear that God will raise up men and women who will hear the cry of the poor and respond to their voice. This mission to the poor will have to respond on many levels since the causes of poverty have cultural, structural and physical etiologies.

(1)  On the physical level we will continue to need those who will offer food, shelter, and hope to the destitute and the down and out. The need for organisations such as Mother Theresa’s Missionaries of Charity is not likely to end soon.

(2)  On the structural level, it will be important to help people improve their social infrastructure in order to work for a better life.  Mission development organisations must continue to cooperate with local churches in infrastructure development to improve the quality of life of the marginalized.[74]

(3)  Globalisation means that Church organisations will increasingly have to cooperate with other like-minded organisations for social upliftment of the poor.  A striking example of this was the cooperation between Catholics and communists in Kerala, India in literacy campaigns, health care and housing (Morar 2002: 99-105; 156-159).

(4)  Mission to the poor will continue to have a political dimension as expressed in Liberation theologies and South African Contextual Theology. This means attempting to transform social institutions into more just and more human structures, respecting of the dignity of all.

(5)  The Church will also have to participate in the struggle for an international order that can respond to the deleterious effects of the networked society including unbridled capitalism and the rise of globalised crime. This is clearly an international issue but the power of religion should not be underestimated in this effort. The Catholic Church for instance was a not unimportant player in the decline of Soviet hegemony in the latter part of the 20^th century.

c)     Mission responding to the impact of the media

i)      The Church’s catechetical mission will become increasingly important in a world of rampant media power. For example, it is widely recognised that the use of the radio by political leaders in Rwanda to spread ethnic hatred, was a major contributing factor to genocide. Rwandan Priest Prudence Hategekimana (2002:3) asked why the Catechism in Rwanda ‘did not succeed in liberating people from Ethnic hatred’? He made a study of the Catechism used in South Africa in the apartheid era to see if it helped people to change their racial prejudice. He concludes that catechesis in Rwanda failed to link Christianity with the life situation of people, whereas the South African one focussed on precisely that issue and so contributed to the struggle against racism. Effective life based catechetical programmes will be increasingly important in order to counter the impact of interest based global media propaganda.

 

Part 4

Psycho-social consequences of the networked world and their consequences for mission

 

1)     Introduction

a)     Social circumstances always have an impact on psychological and physical well-being.  When people live in societies where their human needs are met they tend to feel well.[75] Poor social circumstances result in the opposite of wellness, which I will call illness.[76]  Elsewhere (Bate 1999:126) I have suggested three kinds of social etiology of illness: 1) Sickness as social deprivation; 2) Sickness as social deviation and 3) Sickness as the response to social disorganisation.”[77]  The social context created by the networked world creates both wellness and illness in people’s lives. 

 

2)     Globalisation as a source of human wellness

a)     Globalisation has been promoted as a great benefit to human wellness for two main reasons

i)      The first is that globalisation helps to increase the economic wealth of nations thus improving the quality of life of their citizens. ‘The nations most thoroughly plugged into the global market system grow the fastest. The most stubbornly poor nations, it seems, are so poor because they are underglobalized” (Wright 2000:4). Economic wealth is an essential part of social well-being because it allows people to acquire the basics necessary for a reasonable standard of life.[78]

ii)    The second reason is that economic well-being tends to go together with better social structures. William Easterly of the World Bank has shown that compared to poor countries richer nations tend to have  “more democracy, less corruption . . . more rule of law, and higher bureaucratic quality . . . more civil liberties, less abuse of human rights.’ (cited in Wright 2000:3).[79]

 

 

3)     Globalisation as a source of human illness

a)     Not everyone sees Globalisation in such a positive way. For many, the effect is quite negative.

i)      It causes social deprivation, which devastates human well-being.  Roberto Mezzina (2001: 1), a psychiatrist from Trieste, notes that globalisation has led to an increase in the level of poverty in many parts of the world ‘and where it has generated some form of development, it has resulted in an increase in social and economic inequality and a general deterioration in health, education and living conditions as a consequence of the process of economic restructuring.’ He points out that poverty is ‘one of the prime indicators of mental illness’. Situations in many urban shantytowns, barrios and favelas show a propensity to social behaviours like alcoholism, violence especially against women, abuse and abandonment of children, forced prostitution and many others. All of these behaviours can be related to an increase in neuro-psychiatric disorders.[80]

ii)    Social deprivation is often linked to social disorganisation. Many urban ghettos are created when reasonably ordered rural communities are destabilised by globalisation forces, as local farmers are unable to compete with cheaper, dumped imports and lose their farms. Evelynne Hong (2000: 68) describes the situation in Central America where such policies ‘marginalised and impoverished the rural peasantry, who were forced off their agricultural lands onto degraded hillsides and shantytowns on floodplains, which were prone to floods and mudslides’. Structural adjustment policies imposed by the World Bank destroyed the social infrastructure and health systems of Honduras and Nicaragua and when ‘Hurricane Mitch struck in 1998, thousands lost their lives.’  In fact, the disruption of social organisation is probably one of the major effects of globalisation in all parts of the world.[81] 

iii)  Human societies always prescribe correct and incorrect behaviour through laws and cultural beliefs. People who are unable to fulfil their social responsibilities properly, deviate from socially accepted behaviour and may be considered as sick. Examples of socially deviant behaviours seen as sickness include the uncleanness of lepers or pregnant women,[82] the evil of witches and the possessed,[83] homosexuality[84] and people living with AIDS.[85] Deviants are marginal within a society and as such do not receive all the benefits that the society offers. They may be discriminated against like non-Whites[86] were in White South Africa, ostracised, like the Harijans in India or abused in one way or another like street children in urban centres. Such ‘deviant’ or marginal people find it difficult to establish a clear identity within the society they belong to and this is pathogenic.[87]  Globalisation is causing the renegotiation of social deviance because it creates new classes of migrants who have to live at least some of life in social spaces with very different rules and behaviour to what they are accustomed.[88] 

 

4)     The networked world and human limitation

a)     The network is increasing our level of encounter with limitation. Psychosomatic well-being is compromised when people find themselves in situations where they cannot cope with life and they ‘go beyond the limit’. Clifford Geertz (1973:100-108) has articulated three principal types of limit areas: the unexplainable, the unendurable and the evil or immoral.

b)     The networked world challenges our analytical capacity because we are unable to grasp the whole system. We seem to be mere objects of global forces that push resources of men and money from one place to another with tremendous consequences for human life. The result is anxiety, uncertainty and dread. Already in 1950 Rollo May identified the emergence of overt anxiety as a condition of modern society and ‘an urgent issue which we must at all costs try to define and clarify’ (in Stein et al 1960: 121).

c)     Globalisation affects our human endurance because it is so powerful. Banks, national bureaucracies and other global factors force us into compliance or we lose our ability to function effectively. The global media puts us in daily contact with death and disaster. We respond either with growing numbness or by trying to deal with the daily reality of calamity and human suffering.  A networked world promotes the rapid spread of disease through air travel and the emergence of new strains of disease resulting from environmental degradation.[89] The recent SARS outbreak provided a glimpse of the danger that a new, fast spreading, incurable, fatal disease might pose to human life on Earth.

d)     Networking poses issues of moral limitation and evil on many levels. Global media are able to powerfully motivate us to demonise Muslims or blacks or communists or whites or whatever group is scapegoated as evil, immoral and dangerous.  The Internet allows pornography, sexual abuse and gambling to proliferate. We are made more aware of people who are different and even repugnant to us.[90]  We are much more vulnerable because the mores of our culture and society have less power to protect us as we and our children are regularly placed into temptation and repugnance being forced to make daily moral choices.

 

5)     The power of immediate experience: lusting for the feel good factor

a)     People increasingly attribute value to what makes them feel good now. Immediacy, experience and emotion are much more powerful than truth and reason in influencing lifestyle choices today.  For example, the youth of today, the so-called Generation X, ‘…generally find the religious in personal experience’ (Beaudoin 1998:74). This means that people are far more fluid in their commitments. Attitudes like these have been constructed out of the demands of consumerism and marketing: two powerful forces of the networked world.  

b)     Consumerism is a culture constructed out of the commodification of human value in products. Those who belong to this culture are called consumers. They derive identity and human worth from the consumption of products. For consumers the aim of life is oriented around the ability to access resources (wealth) in order to consume greater quantities and more desirable products. A Mercedes is better than a Toyota.[91]

c)     Consumer demand is created through marketing whose role is to link positive emotion in consumers to the product on offer. Products must offer experience. The network has allowed marketers to access consumers worldwide and effective marketing agencies have become some of the world’s most powerful companies.

d)     Belief systems have also become commodified and consumer religion is a major phenomenon in the networked world. Its role is to provide people with religious experience through its products. If consumers are not happy with the product they move on to something else.  For this reason simple, effective, all encompassing belief systems are valuable consumer products. Fundamentalisms have thus become the intellectual growth products of the global religion industry. Other products include emotional cathartic experiences and those who can offer the best miracles, healings and blessings will grow the most.[92] 

6)     Consequences for mission from psycho-social issues

a)     The Mission to heal

i)      Healing was a central part of Jesus’ mission and the medical missions played a powerful role in evangelisation during the colonial period. This mission has to be rethought today. The networked world is affecting the nature and etiology of illness and this means that new forms of Christian healing therapies are required. Such therapies must respond to issues of social deviation, social deprivation and social disorganisation in order to remedy the corresponding illnesses. These might incorporate existing psychosocial and spiritual therapies. Christianity has often incorporated social and cultural healing therapies into its praxis. The early Church, for example, incorporated the healing centres of the cult of Asklepios into its praxis in places such as the famous Church of Saints Cosmas and Damien in Constantinople and the Church of St Menas in Alexandria. 

b)     The mission to human limitation

i)      The network increased exposure to human limitedness. The response to this will necessarily, according to Geertz’ definition, be religious since it is the cultural role of religion to deal with matters of human limitation.[93] Indeed, much of the religious disquiet of our age is reflected in the inability of current religious approaches to deal with these matters. Here is a major missiological challenge. It involves the construction of missiologies that respond to the concerns of the analytical, endurance and moral, limit conditions of our time by providing effective solutions to them. The issue of AIDS is a good example of this. This pandemic affects large numbers of people in Africa and challenges human limitation on all three levels (Bate 2003:10; 147-150). Our collaborative effort entitled Responsibility in a Time of AIDS was an attempt to write such a missiological discourse. The work of African theologians on democracy is another example (Magesa & Nthamburi 1999).

ii)    In a world of analytic confusion there is a greater need than ever for comprehensive, mature statements about what we believe. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is a marvellous example of a text that responds to this need.

iii)  There is a growing need for the provision of spaces where people can come to explore issues of meaning, identity and belief. The traditional retreat centre is giving way to venues which offer a much more comprehensive approach to people. The monastic movement arose in the early middle ages as a response to emerging social chaos as the Roman empire declined and people wanted to ‘go into the wilderness and pray’  (Lynch 2002: 92ff). Creativity is required in the development of centres that can respond to the longing of the networked society for similar places of retreat, recollection and reconstitution in the search for authenticity (Lynch 2002 99ff.  Wessels 2000:  89ff ; Murphy 1997: 71ff).

c)     The mission for authentic religious experience

i)      Religion is increasingly linked to personal experience. This indicates the priority of Evangelisation over Catechesis in our missionary approach to the world today. This is well known in Pastoral Theology but not very well applied in contexts where religious leaders still believe that adherence and acceptance of truths are the essence of religion. In the networked world people will only want to know more about their faith (catechesis) once they have been convinced about God’s presence in their lives which implies some kind of religious experience (evangelisation). In a situation like this Mk 1: 14, the first words of Jesus become a pivotal paradigm.[94]

ii)    Bellagamba (1992:3) calls the revival of religious experience a ‘megatrend’ as people ‘are thirsting for the divine’ throughout the world. However, a lot of what passes for religious experience contains aspects of psychosocial manipulation. Consequently we need a missiology of religious experience that includes insights from psychology and anthropology on the nature of religious experience and conversion.[95]  Greater understanding of the phenomenon will help to develop authentic approaches to evangelisation which help people to experience the presence of God in their lives and reorientate their lives to him without emotional manipulation by practitioners.[96]

iii)  Popular Catholicism remains a vital means of access to religious experiences ‘which satisfy their needs in life and work…They show that religion is for the people and not vice versa’ (Amaladoss in Bamat & Wiest 272). 

iv)   Effective liturgy should allow people the opportunity to be carried through a ritual process accessing the experience of transcendence.  The liturgical renewal of Vatican II moved the Church into the modern age but often removed symbols of transcendence that helped people in their relationship with God. But the role of worship in the life of the community must be to celebrate an authentic experience of the presence of God.[97] Ritual creates experience through processes such as liminality and communitas.[98] This demands a far greater appreciation of the role of music, symbol and gesture in creating ritual. Fortunately liturgical renewal is becoming more aware of the value of symbols of transcendence in popular religion and their incorporation into liturgy through the process of inculturation (Cf. Wessels 2000: 117ff.).

 

Part 5

Conclusion

 

Mission is an essential property of being Church. Every Christian community is called to witness, evangelise and share its faith. All Christians are called to bring good news to the poor and life to the full in places of death and despair.  The Christian mission is essentially what occurs at the boundary where the people of faith meet the world in need of the love of God. God is always found at that boundary and the Holy Spirit, the principal agent of this mission, inspires men and women to participate in the great work of salvation that God has wrought in Jesus Christ.

 

Each social context raises its own issues and new challenges for the Church. Times of revolutionary social change require a new shift of thinking and new prophets and visionaries to point the way forward. They may be Popes, peasants, Pentecostals or even professors. But they will come. Discernment is the spiritual gift we most need right now.

 

I have indicated a number of issues raised by the information revolution. The principal challenge is the overwhelming power of the network. It can be easily manipulated by groups seeking their own interests often to the detriment of others. It is not yet controlled by human leadership seeking the common good of all people. This will make it a demon and a major concern for humanity today. It also raises a fundamentally religious question, that of human identity, and we must be part of the response to this concern. But it also raises issues of poverty, discrimination and human suffering on a scale not yet seen and this must be a challenge to those called to bring good news to the poor. Finally, I have indicated some issues of human illness and wellness predicated in terms of the mission to heal. These matters indicate an appropriation of the oft hidden mission mandate of Matthew Chapter 10, which I have suggested elsewhere is a mission mandate for a global context (Bate 2000: 42-56).

 

Some people are concerned by the decline they see around them. But we have been there before. The great historian of Christian mission, Kenneth Latourette (1939:454ff), described the latter part of the eighteenth century as a time when  ‘the future of Christianity seemed insecure. Again it looked as though Christianity were a waning influence, about to be ushered out of the affairs of men’.  Christianity increasingly manifested  ‘indications of a basic incapacity permanently to grip and hold the hearts of men or of an ability so to mould society that the forces inimical to all that Jesus stood for would be prevented from obtaining the upper hand’ (: 454).[99]  In 1800 there were barely 350 Catholic missionaries worldwide (Lopez Gay 1987: 89).

 

But by 1900 there were 87000 as new prophets appeared and men and women burning with the fire of God were raised up. The 19^th century was to become the greatest century in the history of Christian expansion.  Perhaps the same is going to happen to us. Pope John Paul II seems to think so. In his mission encyclical he twice refers to this time, prophetically, as ‘a new springtime for Christianity’ (RM 2, 86). I will go with him. 

 

 

 

 

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