A New Course of Ecumenical Movement and Theological Education in Asia

A New Course of Ecumenical Movement and Theological Education in Asia

Dear friends,

It is a great honor and privilege for me to invited to address you at this convocation. I know that by honoring me you are honoring Asian ecumenical movement. To this movement our Indian leaders have made the most important contributions in the Asian ecumenical history.

I want to express my thanks to host friends……….

Let me give you a short reflection on a theme of “A New Course of Ecumenical Movement and Theological Education in Asia.”

New Challenges in the 21^st Century

As we face at new challenges of the 21^st century, we need a fresh look into our ecumenical movement in Asia and into the task of theological education.

We have celebrated the Jubilee of East Asian Christian Conference (CCA) last year. In a few years we are to celebrate Edinburgh 1910 International Missionary Conference. Yet we come to realize that the world is facing a quite different age in this century. There has been a radical change, which demands our discernment.

Let me concentrate on Asian realities at this point. In the past century we have experienced the colonialization, national independence movements to build nation states, and the modernization drive to build the national economy. The most important historical moments in the past century may have been the national independence movements and social reconstruction by our peoples.

At the same time we experienced the most violent geo-political history. The world had to experience the First and Second World Wars, and subsequent Cold War; and these wars have been originated by the Western powers. At the end the last century we experienced the dismantling of the Cold War

Now the time has come, different from then previous century. (1) The world is under the hegemonic domination of the global empire, that is, then United States of America, with unlimited military expansion and dominance. (2) The globe is completely under the regime (IMF, World Bank and G-7) of the global market, dominated by the global capital. (3) Now the world is deeply penetrated by the global technocracy based upon modern science and advanced technology. These three powers and principalities have begun to dominate Asian nations and peoples. The symbiosis of these three powers is making a colossal impact upon the nations and peoples in Asia and in the world. This provides new challenges to the ecumenical movement in Asia and elsewhere in the world.

In the past Asian ecumenism our leaders provided ecumenical visions of the world where Asian peoples are free from colonial domination and build their own nations with democracy, justice and peace. The legacy of such an ecumenical vision is with us today. Yet the world demands a new ecumenical vision in the present global context.

Early Asian Christian community experienced a new vision under the Roman Empire.

¹Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. ²I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. (Revelations 21: 1-2)

The renowned British historian, Arnold Toynbee, observed that the West has penetrated the so-called non-Western world; and this has continued to the present time. Now the nature of this Western domination has been transformed to create its internal dynamics in Asia and Asian societies. It has a Janus-like corrosive and symbiotic impact on the order of life in Asia. It has been corrosive of religious and cultural life; and it has created a reactive as well as reformative dynamics in Asian religions in the early period. This was accompanied with the commercial and political penetration and domination into Asia.

Now the communication media of the global market and the global empire deeply penetrates the world of traditional religious and cultural discourses and values with its arbitrary economic, political, and technocratic world view. The inner core of religious beliefs, the inner chamber of ethical and moral conscience, and the sensory and spiritual perceptions of our peoples are invaded, occupied, and colonized the culture of the arbitrary regime of the global power regime. In this century this process is becoming intensive and self-generative in Asian societies.

However, we are reminded that the Asian people with all living beings in Asia have resisted persistently throughout history, drawing wisdoms of their cultures and religions. This resistance has become the foundation of creative transformations for new future and new world where all the people and all the living beings live together in justice, peace and conviviality. Asian traditions of religious revitalization and reform as well as cultural renewal has been alternative sources of creative inspirations in the independence movements and people’s movements for liberation in Asian nations. These Asian heritages are still the well spring of wisdom for vision of world and new future as we struggle in this 21^st century. I believe that we need to look into this process of the world in search for a new ecumenical movement in Asia.

The most important themes of Asian ecumenical movements have been the justice for the people, the peace among the peoples and the fullness of life among all living beings, as we have deliberated in the life and work of Christian Conference of Asia. We can draw some visionary threads from this ecumenical movement to swim against the stream of the 21^st century.

From confrontation, via dialogue, and towards convergence among Asian religions we are experiencing a new movement in the world. Asian people as well as the peoples of the world need a new convergent vision of the fullness of life of all living beings. This vision may be an alternative to the global world, homogenized by the power of the global market, by the global empire, and by global technocracy (such as global communication). There are many creative birth pangs in the midst of Asian womb in the conte4xt of critical situations.

One of most serious crises in the global life is the fact that the ecological order of life is in jeopardy due to the impact of globalized industrial economy. Yet ecology is understood in modern Western discourses of reductionism and Darwinism. The source of ecological crisis is the artificial combination of the socio-economic (biological) Darwinism with the regime of modern science and technology. Here we find a fundamental fragmentation of life reality into absolute and reductive individual elements which would live by the logic of the survival of the fittest. We find there a fundamental split between science and ethics in the understanding of ecology. There is unbridgeable split between human world and natural cosmos. There is a technocratic domination of the order of life in the Western understanding of ecology.

We need a new cosmic vision of the order of convivial life of all living beings. We believe that we can reach this process of discovery through the history of convergent relations among Asian religious and cultural traditions, including the Western visions. We have rich wisdom on the cosmic order of life, enshrined in Asian people’s life-history of religions and cultures. Asian cosmology is composed of holistic, integral and organic mode of discourses. There is a need of convergent thinking in Asian cosmological vision to forge a new order of convivial life for all living beings.

Global market is a most relentless vortex of the Darwinist philosophy of the survival of the fittest and the strongest. The actual “oikonomia” (management of household of life) is dictated by the speculative casino logic of the financial capital, which enveloped the actual people’s economy, making it into the giant global consumerist machine. It turned all life-nurturing process into the profit making mechanism, including food, water, houses and lands.

The fundamental Asian wisdom for the economy of all living beings and all people is the conviviality, which is free of the greed, compassionate of all living beings, and convivial of all life. This may be a foundational base for new “oikonomia” for all living beings. This is consonant with the teaching of Jesus on the creation of life on earth. In reality we need to establish a new ecumenical pivot in Jesus as the Alpha and Omega of life of all living beings in the cosmos. All wisdom of life may converge to give new vision for “oikonomia” of all living beings.

In modern centuries, the Western liberal philosophy provided the basis of liberal democracy. It undergirded the human rights of individual in the liberal order of political life. In so far as human rights are concerned, it has a great value. However, the liberal political order could not cope with the tyranny of the global market, and the power of nation states (Leviathan) could not be tamed to serve the people. In Asia our ecumenical movement has advocated the universal participation of the people from the below. It has tried to come with the traditional despotism, military dictatorships, and the market hegemony. We need a new vision for the participatory polity for all living beings which will insure the “subjecthood” of all living beings to life their full life, be it self-determination of all national and ethic peoples, be it the people’s self-reliance and determination in the socio-economic life in the global community as well as in their nations. Dalits, ethnic and social, racial minority peoples as well as the people together of all living beings should enjoy their rights in the convivial order of politics. This vision is very much congruent with the Messianic polity of Jesus (Rev. 21:1-5).

Global regime of market, empire and technocracy entangles complex contradictions and conflicts into the vicious cycles of violence in body and spirit. Traditional structures of injustice of class, gender, caste and ethnicity and race are being hardened in this matrix of the global power dynamics. The powerful is calling for so-called “real peace” which is a forced peace from the top of the power.  The true peace is different. Asian wisdom is deeply rooted in the multifarious dimensions of harmony in midst of person, family, community, nation, earth and cosmos. We need a new vision of peace and harmony, based upon justice. It cannot come from the powerful. It can only come from the victims of the violence.

Asian cultures and religions form the womb of civilizations, giving birth to identities, high values and strong faiths as well as vision of justice, peace and convivial wisdom of life for all living beings. They provide the foundations and well springs of spirituality for their abundant life. These are not only Asian heritages from the past, but also the present wisdom to create new future, meeting challenges of the 21^st century.

In the beginning of the new century the world is experiencing the most brutal war, the ‘war on terror,” with most advanced military machine of mass destruction. The war is being waged by the global empire in the Middle East and everywhere in the world. It is a permanent and ubiquitous war without time and space limits. Inherent in this war is an integration process by the technocracy, which combines the global economy, the global nexus of political control and global geo-political military hegemony. Some describe this reality in apocalyptic terms. We experience this reality in West Asian front of Iraq and Afghanistan, in the South Asian front of Philippines, and North East Asian front of Korea. We need a new discourse for global peace, hearing the cries of the people who are victimized by the cruel wars, drawing wisdoms for peace from Asian traditions, and creating new visions in our ecumenical movement.

Theological Education at the Cross Road of New Ecumenical Movement

Asian history began to experience a cosmic Kairos in this century. As we train our ecumenical leaders through education and training in our seminaries and colleges as well as in the field of movements and struggle of the people, we need spiritual ability to perceive and discern the crucial signs of our times in Asia. This would come from Asia, reaching to the world, to Africa, Latin America, Pacific Island nations and to the West. This Kairotic perception may be coming from the other regions as well and converge with our discernment. However, from Our Asian point of reference may be most significant, as we have the historic reservoir as well as the present field of struggle. From our place in Asia we will need to discern a new convergence of global market, global empire and global technocracy. From our place in Asia we need to create new discourse for new ecumenical vision.

For Asia theological education and training we need to build Asian foundation of faith in a fresh way to meet the challenges of time. Our ultimate point of reference is Jesus the Galilean, the Asian, who confronted the power of the Roman Empire. Our biblical hermeneutics would be a basic theological work to recover this Jesus, who have been enthroned by the empire and re-masked by the Western modernity. We need to find an Asian way to meet, dialog and converge with rich Asian wisdoms of Asian religions and cultures as well as the some of theological wisdoms of other parts of the world, including the West.

Furthermore, we need to find Asian expressions of our faith, digging and cultivating Asian history of Christian and religious faiths. We need to go beyond understanding, dialoging, acculturating, indigenizing and contextualizing our faith in Asian soil; and we need to create a new and fresh action as well as to form creative discourses for justice, peace and conviviality.

Strengthening of our faith and our witness to the good news of Jesus demands faithful communities with theological scholars and pastoral leaders. New discourses of our faith would be Asian contemporary discourse, not merely Western and traditional. They must deal with scientific and secular philosophical discourses on the reality of the world. They must converge with African and Latin American discourses. They must be religious and at the same time worldly to communicate with all peoples in Asia. We would suggest this may a direction for new ecumenical movement for Asian future.