05.08.2004
Shall we covenant for justice in the economy and the earth?
For Argentina, neoliberalism was the continuation of dictatorship by other means, Roberto Jordan told the plenary on covenanting for justice on Wednesday August 4. The generals pushed foreign debt from 8 billion to 45 billion US dollars; neoliberalism sent it soaring to USD 130 billion.
From 1989 to 1999, under President Carlos Menem, neoliberal policies were implemented fanatically – privatization of everything not actually nailed down coupled with swingeing cuts in health, education and social welfare.
The World Bank and the IMF saw Argentina as their poster child. But spiralling debt and an artificially high exchange rate (the peso was pegged to the dollar) made the neoliberal strategy unsustainable. In December 2001, it collapsed with a bang.
The country went through five presidents in 10 days, while the people took to the streets in protest, women banging their pots and pans in el cacerolazo. The government imposed martial law: 20 people were killed and hundreds wounded.
The dollar peg was jettisoned and the currency collapsed, bottoming out at 3.5 pesos to the dollar. Salaries dropped by a quarter. In the first seven months of 2002 food prices rose by two-thirds. Throughout the year, 12 people fell into poverty every minute. Children starved: 70% of those under 10 were poor, four million lacked basic food, and illness and malnutrition were rife.
For Argentinean churches, it is not hard to see neoliberalism as a false god demanding human sacrifice.
Who benefits from this?
Foreign investors do. President Néstor Kirchner, elected in May last year, is still popular because he has negotiated hard with foreign creditors and the international financial institutions. So does a corrupt elite: the richest 10% of Argentineans have an income 31 times that of the poorest 10%.
Lacking is any notion of creditor coresponsibility for the nation’s debt, still less a mechanism for sovereign bankruptcy.
Roberto Jordan is a pastor of the Reformed Churches in Argentina – a small church, but deeply engaged in mission and social action with the people. Out of this engagement, his church synod last year made a declaration of faith on economic injustice and ecological destruction. It denounced neoliberalism as a global political project allowing a few to amass enormous wealth while most of the world’s people are condemned to hunger, illness, ignorance and exploitation.
The same economic project also exploits God’s creation, recklessly destroying earth, air and water.
The Reformed Churches of Bern-Jura-Solothurn – the largest cantonal church in Switzerland – has a very different context from its Argentinean sister church. But it lives in the same world, and last year its synod also adopted a policy statement on the globalization of justice.
Irene Meier-de Spindler, a pastor and synod member, told the plenary that the statement was prompted by a controversy within the church over the World Economic Forum, which usually meets in the Swiss holiday resort of Davos.
“Every year in January the WEF brings together the top executives from the world’s 1,000 largest companies, along with government ministers and presidents from all over the globe. Important contacts are established, informal talks are held, economic decisions are prepared – and all this has an influence on the living conditions of millions of people.”
It is a conspicuous symbol and – since it also makes real what it symbolizes – a perverse sacrament of the undemocratic governance under which the world labours.
A Swiss protest against the WEF was launched and in Berne it did not limit itself to demonstrations, Meier said. We also organized a series of events with information, panel discussions and films.”
“At a vigil for another, more just world we lit 24,000 candles. We wanted to remember the 24,000 people who die daily from hunger and malnutrition.”
Cooperation grew between her church and social groups critical of current forms of globalization, but this led to conflict with the church leadership.
Recognizing, however, that it lacked a clear basis for dialogue with the public, the leadership set up a group within the church to reflect on globalization from a Reformed Christian viewpoint. Six months of stimulating and often controversial discussions led to a basic position paper and a summary policy that were adopted by the church synod.
[The summary, Towards the Globalization of Justice, is available at the council in English, French or German.]
“Our church sees itself as part of the worldwide ecumenical movement,” Meier underlined. “For us this means that our analyses include the perspectives of our sister churches in the south.”
Shaping globalization towards more justice means promoting cooperation and not leaving everything to market forces, living in solidarity, and striving for a fair distribution of wealth.
For churches in the north, it means adopting a modest lifestyle to protect nature and conserve natural resources. “Our children and our children’s children also have a right to live in this world.”
Next stop for Meier’s church and its congregations is education on economic literacy. This includes ethical investment, gender analysis of church budgets, environmentally friendly farming, fair trade, and demanding that human rights and environmental protection laws are respected by Swiss and other transnationals in their operations worldwide.
Both Jordan and Meier exhorted delegates to unite in transforming the present economic disorder.
“If we become one with all those who suffer, who are excluded, one with the unemployed wherever they are (even in the richer countries), one with those who suffer from HIV/Aids and so many other health hazards that could be eradicated but are not eradicated because of the neoliberal economic policy of profit-before-people, we have to make a clear statement,” Jordan said.
Meier echoed the point. “As the worldwide Reformed church it lies in our hands, in this council and in the future, to stride out with determination along the road to the globalization of justice.”
Páraic Réamonn, August 5 2004
