Repenting Neoliberalism from the
Call of the Accra Confession: A Ministry for Replacing Accumulation with
Equality as God’s Will for Human Economies
Rev. Douglas Olds
October 16, 2014
The
World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) convened in the late 1990s to
evaluate the economic situation in Africa and the developing world from a faith
and justice perspective. The result of this convention was 2004’s “Accra
Confession” (AC). As a member of WARC,
the Presbyterian Church (USA) (PCUSA) has publicized the text of AC as a
document for congregational study and reflection rather than accepting it as an
addition to its formal Confessional, doctrinal heritage. As such, AC is a work of contextual theology
rather than an instrument that is intended as a universalistic presentation of
the doctrine of Gospel.
[AC
involves] the theological conviction that the economic and environmental
injustices of today’s global economy require the Reformed family to respond as
a matter of faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Accra Confession calls
upon Reformed Christians around the world to engage injustices in the world as
an integral part of their churches’ witness and mission.[1]
AC is
both a claim to Confessional Status (status
confessionis) and a cry of suffering and a call for assistance from
Christians in the global south. As a
claim to confessional status, AC links the Gospel to fighting for economic
justice. The PCUSA has mostly rejected
that linkage, preferring instead Confessional establishment for traditional
Reformed, doctrinal concerns. That
rejection essentializes (dogmatizes) the Gospel as the salvation of souls and
is part of an historical and conceptual tension between dogmatism and
contextualization in Presbyterianism.
The consensus of the contemporary PCUSA seems to be that since the
Gospel essentials are not put at risk by the injustices decried by AC, AC is
better read as a cry of pain that should be studied empathetically rather than
adopted as a Confession with the duties to mission implied thereto. The question may be asked, does the AC
preserve Reformed and Presbyterian concerns, helping it to articulate Christ
relevantly (contextualization)?
Alternatively, as Karl Barth asked in the 1920s, does rather the AC serve
the entire church as “watchman” over doctrinal integrity (universalism)?[2] I suspect, with amendment, AC leads us toward both implications, which would spur mission to incorporate the economic suppositions of the Gospel which reveals the justice of God. Unless and until AC is adopted as a Confession by PCUSA, I
read and present it as a cry of pain worthy of Christian compassion, charity,
and voluntaristic mission. Were it formally
adopted as a Confession, it would imply Christian duty and repentance.
AC
describes Global Southern pain as a crisis, beginning paragraph 8, “The policy
of unlimited growth among industrialized countries and the drive for profit of
transnational corporations…[continuing para. 9] is directly related to the
development of neoliberal economic globalization, which is based on the
following beliefs:
•
unrestrained competition, consumerism and the unlimited economic growth and
accumulation of
wealth
are the best for the whole world;
• the
ownership of private property has no social obligation;
•
capital speculation, liberalization and deregulation of the market,
privatization of public utilities and national resources, unrestricted access
for foreign investments and imports, lower taxes and the unrestricted movement
of capital will achieve wealth for all;
• social
obligations, protection of the poor and the weak, trade unions, and
relationships between people are subordinate to the processes of economic
growth and capital accumulation.”
The
first substantive section of the AC is “Reading the Signs of the Times.” As such, AC contextualizes itself in a
doctrine of Creation, starting off (para. 5) with “We have heard that creation
continues to groan, in bondage, waiting for its liberation (Rom 8.22).” Two important theological moves are made by
this particular quotation of Scripture. First, it grounds its cry of pain in a
doctrine of Creation and liberation, theologically linking liberationist
impulses in God’s hearing God’s people’s cry in Egyptian bondage (Exodus)[3]
with God the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the universalistic assertion of Apostle’s
and Nicene Creeds. From suffering, God
calls out a people, creating anew a nation for mission. The mission of the people of the Exodus was
to be a light to the world from whence the Gospel for all people was delivered. Doctrinally in the Reformed Church, this
linkage of liberation with Creation is traditionally more controversial. Traditional Reformed concerns proposed that reconciliation
effected by the Gospel was particularist (limited Anselmian atonement)[4] so
that relationships of natural justice derived from liberationist considerations
were deemed especially by doctrinaire traditionalists as the realm and exercise
of charity rather than duty. More
recently, the PCUSA Confession of 1967 (C67) has attributed a universalist
focus to its doctrine of reconciliation:
“9.07 In Jesus Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself…Therefore, the church calls all people to be reconciled to God and
to one another.”[5] A universalist reading of the Gospel, such as
contextualized in C67 9.07, makes reconciliation an obligation. Obedience becomes duty in 9.03: “Obedience to
Jesus Christ alone identifies the one universal church and supplies the
continuity of its tradition. This obedience is the ground of the church’s duty
and freedom to reform itself in life and doctrine as new occasions, in God's
providence, may demand.” We discern here
a tension between obedience and freedom, universalism and context. Where freedom is discerned, contextualization
of suffering engenders a mission to charity.
Where obedience is demanded, duty to universally work for justice
follows.
Hence AC’s opening “Reading the
Signs of the Times” concludes with the missionary application of Luke 16.13:
“14. We see the dramatic convergence of the economic crisis with the
integration of economic globalization and geopolitics backed by neoliberal
ideology. This is a global system that defends and protects the interests of
the powerful. It affects and captivates us all. Further, in biblical terms such
a system of wealth accumulation at the expense of the poor is seen as
unfaithful to God and responsible for preventable human suffering and is called
Mammon. Jesus has told us that we cannot serve both God and Mammon (Lk 16.13).”[6]
We must exegete this Lukan passage
to unpack the tension between duty and charity of missionary response,
obedience and freedom, and universalism and contextualization of the Gospel message
at question:
Luke 16.13
Οὐδεὶς οἰκέτης δύναται δυσὶ κυρίοις δουλεύειν· ἢ γὰρ τὸν ἕνα μισήσει καὶ τὸν ἕτερον
ἀγαπήσει, ἢ ἑνὸς ἀνθέξεται καὶ τοῦ ἑτέρου καταφρονήσει. οὐ δύνασθε θεῷ
δουλεύειν καὶ μαμωνᾷ.[7]
We note
the figurative and emphatic language. Jesus is addressing the οἰκέτης rather
than some specific class, such as his disciples, and emphasizes Οὐδεὶς by placing it primary in his speech act, so
we should expect that he is speaking parabolically (exaggeratedly and
symbolically). The verb δουλεύειν ends the first phrase, thus is emphatic in
its syntax. Δουλεύειν is the verb for a
servant’s task. It implies an
association with a servant’s virtue, which is obedience. There is a verb in Greek for discipling,
μαθητεύειν, that might have been used by Jesus if freedom and initiative were
intended. This text implies obedience
and thus duty. This parable begs the
question whether Jesus is speaking contextually or universally. Emphasizing Οὐδεὶς by placing it primary in
his speech act, Jesus clearly is universalizing, though parabolically,
obedience for all who are symbolically characterized as οἰκέτης. The meaning of this word conveys the concept
of servant householder, the activities of which were the primary task of
traditional economic systems--production for use rather than production for
accumulation.[8] All economic agents in traditional times save
the “lords” (κυρίοις) were householders—producers for use of others (and for
their own subsistence) rather than producers for accumulation.
A
different economic system is implied by this parable than what is familiar to
us now, but from the exegesis suggested, we see that Jesus is universalizing a
message for obedience. The form of the
verb δύναται in the opening phrase as a
3rd person singular heightens the sense that Jesus is delivering a parable
about an economic agent, while the verb is repeated in the last phrase as a 2nd
person plural δύνασθε. By this switch of
verbal person and number, again we see how Jesus is both speaking parabolically
and universally (paraenetically). He extends an illustration in the third
person singular to a second person plural application of “ability.” “You are not able to serve both God and
mammon.” Δύναται can suggest capability
and/or possibility.[9] With the negative
particle οὐ as in οὐ δύνασθε there is the message of constrained
capability. As we have seen that this is
a parable of servanthood and householding, the constrained capability can be
read either as a household’s servant’s lack of free will in matters of
householding, or rather a compunction or binding of that will. I submit that as we read this passage as a
parable, there is no suggestion that servants lacks free will in this matter of
loving God or mammon, or of serving two masters. Rather, the constrained
capability of serving the master and God
economically is one of choice or possibility. The linkage of the main verbs in this passage --Δουλεύειν
and Δύναται-- signals the virtue or
capacity of servanthood which is the servant’s capability. The two verbs
complement the conceptualization (internal grammatical structure) of virtue of
taking the servant’s role. There is an expectation that the virtuous servant
fulfills the expected task. Jesus parabolically is demonstrating that there is
no capability or meaningful possibility to serve two masters, yet there is an
expectation of obedience in economic service.
It is clear that Jesus’s parable, without using command or imperative
language, has the expectation of obedience to God’s economic justice that
accepts our free potentiality to disobey and attempt the alternative: the
fruitless service of mammon. This is a parable of duty rather than charity.
Moreover, the linkage in the phrase of the AC has framed its call to repentance
of the witnessing church in Creation/liberation theology (Rom 8) and in
economic duty (Lk 16). Jesus’ parable of
a farmer receiving a windfall harvest and foolishly building bigger barns to
retire (Lk 12.13-21) harmonizes with Luke 16 that the householding function is
not an accumulative economic system.[9] By its framing of worldwide economic context by
means of Luke 16, AC is requiring the witnessing church to repent of
accumulation economics going by the post-colonial name of “neoliberalism.”[10]
We
still need to confront the objection that the Gospel is something distinct from
the Creation/liberationist impulse and economic duties in Jesus’s
parables. There may be the claim that
Gospel is succinctly Paul’s message that he normalizes in 1 Cor 15 1-3. Paul anathematizes (Gal 1.8-9) alternative or
supplemental presentations of the Gospel.
If Reformed Confessions are only legitimated by watchguarding and
correcting presentations of the “authentic “gospel of salvation from hell, then
AC might fail to update and contextualize that gospel for present day
challenges. AC thus further
contextualizes the Gospel and its applicability in God’s covenant with Noah
(Gen 9). While AC does not ask, I
believe that adequate study of AC involves considering whether God’s purposes
of sharing the Gospel requires adequate resources and education for individuals
to receive the message of reconciliation and salvation. Does a neoliberal globalized economy of
differential accumulation that results in 14 million yearly deaths of children
from malnutrition and inadequate health care serve this gospel program?
PCUSA
has missionary values that share the Gospel through poverty alleviation via its
Presbyterian Mission Agency and fairness in food distribution and access as
part of its Global Compassion, Peace, and Justice Initiative. In addition to
the Scriptural presentation, there is an empirical refutation of
accumulationist economics in the limits to growth or steady state perspective
of critical economics.[11] My academic background in critical economics with
Herman Daly at the University of Maryland in the 1990s prepared me for
empirical and theoretical criticism of the dominant globalizing paradigm of
what was then termed the “Washington Consensus.” My research problem was to convince my peers
and advisors that the public good included a very specific program to make sure
that financial centralization does no harm to the poor or the environmentally
marginalized and instead devotes resources to these populations. I engaged in research into the mechanisms,
actors, and policies of Trade Theory and I began to conclude that Economic
Globalization was not an inevitable product of western capitalism, but a
concerted technical effort of a coordinated body of institutions and
multilateral agreements to promote accumulation by politically powerful and favored
parties. I also concluded that these
mechanisms were designed to, and would in effect, serve established concentrated
financial power, disestablishing labor unions, off shore jobs, and play
national social and environmental regulations off of each other in a “race to
the bottom” harmonization of standards as nations competed to attract capital
and gain membership into the multilateral economic policy making councils. Regardless of the effects on my personal economic
future, I concluded this move of globalization and capital concentration
violated my understanding of political and ethical justification. Specifically, it failed a Rawlsian test of
justice by not only failing to improve
the lot of the socially and environmentally worst off, but in reality very
likely would bring about their further marginalization and misery. [12]
I believe in the 17 years that have followed,
observers of good will have seen that reality of what I concluded in 1997
coming true in the form of increased environmental degradation, the increased
vulnerability of the poor to environmental degradation, rising economic
inequality, decreased labor power as jobs have been shifted off shore according
the absolute lowest costs of production, and a general weakening of sovereign
states to pursue independent and targeted social, environmental, and economic
policy and regulation in the face of concentrating and mobile financial power.
By 2014 more policy
actors are cognizant of the excesses of financial globalization. Indeed, since the financial crisis
of 2008/9, financial globalization has been rolled back for want of a
controlling authority. Domestic central banks are trying to cooperate in order
to harmonize a global financial system.
U.S. job offshoring has slowed, though MAI-like provisions are being
negotiated anew in the current Trans-Pacific Partnership [TPP] and Trade in Services
Agreement [TiSA] processes.
I am
mindful that God is radically equalitarian, contrary to the presuppositions and
intentions of accumulationist economics. The parable of the vineyard owner
(Luke 20.9-13) demonstrates that Jesus sees God not only remunerating all
workers equally, but that the workers who worked the longest received their
wages last. Human considerations from
the perspective of accumulationist economics are labeled by the Center of Value
with the vice of “envy:”
Matthew 20.1 (NRSV) “For the
kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire
laborers for his vineyard. 2 After agreeing with the laborers for the
usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. 3 When he went out about
nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; 4 and he
said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is
right.’ So they went. 5 When he went out again about noon and about three
o’clock, he did the same. 6 And about five o’clock he went out and found
others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle
all day?’ 7 They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to
them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ 8 When evening came, the owner of
the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay,
beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ 9 When those hired
about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage.
10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each
of them also received the usual daily wage.c 11 And when they received it,
they grumbled against the landowner, 12 saying, ‘These last worked only
one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the
day and the scorching heat.’ 13 But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I
am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?
14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same
as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs
to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16 So the last will be
first, and the first will be last.”
20.15 finishes, ἢ ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου
πονηρός ἐστιν ὅτι ἐγὼ ἀγαθός εἰμι; which is literally translated, “or is your
eye evil that I am good?” The Vineyard
owner as a proxy for the divine Judge is terming the acquisitive economic agent
“evil.” It is his own equalitarian distributions that are in contrast “good.”
Culturally, I have
considered AC and the Reformed theological distinctives that contextualize an
“economic justice message.” I continue to
ask, Do Presbyterian distinctives or structures have some contribution to make
to the rejection of and repentance from neoliberal greed? F-1.0205
of the PCUSA Book of Order captioned, “Christ Is the Foundation of the Church”
notes the ecumenical foundation of the gospel which harmonizes with the equalitarian
parables noted previously. Specifically,
the PCUSA includes in its great missionary ends the “embrace of men, women, and
children of all times, places, races, nations, ages, conditions, and stations
in life.”
F-1.0304
The Great Ends of [its] Church include: “the proclamation of the gospel for the
salvation of humankind; the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the
children of God; the maintenance of divine worship; the preservation of the
truth; the promotion of social
righteousness; and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.
F-1.0402
Ecumenicity: “[Central to] the faith of the Reformed tradition…is the
affirmation of the majesty, holiness, and providence of God who in Christ and
by the power of the Spirit creates, sustains, rules, and redeems the world in
the freedom of sovereign righteousness and love.” In this Presbyterian focus on
Providence, the worldly fact of inequality and privation needs to be harmonized
with God’s sovereignty over differential
but just provisioning implied by a political reading of Romans 9:
Rom 9.14 What then are we to
say? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! 15 For he says to
Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I
have mercy, and I will have compassion
on whom I have compassion.” 16 So
it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy.
17 For the scripture says to Pharaoh, “I have raised you up for the very
purpose of showing my power in you, so that my name may be proclaimed in all
the earth.” 18 So then he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens
the heart of whomever he chooses.
More
theological work is necessary to harmonize Biblical economic principles with
the Reformed confessional emphasis on God’s providence.
Amos 2.6:
“6 This is what the Lord says:
“For three sins of Israel,
even for four, I will not relent.
They sell the innocent for silver,
and the needy for a pair of sandals.” –Amos 2:6
(NIV)
“...selling even the sweepings with the wheat.” Amos
8.6
Amos lived in the 8th C BCE northern kingdom of Israel, its fate according to the prophet was contingent on how it structured provisioning for the poor. Likewise the fate of all nations that history
has extinguished or is currently contingently tolerating? While charitable ministry and
patriotism—especially the jingoism that characterizes much of contemporary
American nationalism—have always seemed to me to be in opposition, I am
increasingly led to the necessity of ministry, prayer, and critical
resistance to injustice as patriotic acts.
By remediating injustice and economic privation, we who claim to be Christians in America move to prolong the life-giving forces of
the planet to prolong life. That must serve the Creator of life. If we circumscribe or inhibit tenure and access to the deprived, we
can be sure that God will take away our access to the necessities of life and
tenure in the land in due time. Repenting the
neoliberalism that calls forth the cries of anguish from the global south in
the AC may very well lead God to repent extinguishing the American national
destiny and political experiment. I am not optimistic: history is replete with
tragedy, and the contemporary worldly economy seems in the throes of
environmental and social dislocation and catastrophe. My optimism, though, is more
deeply founded on the confessional extension of the Gospel to considerations of
re-creative and salvific justice for all of God’s children.
[1] https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/hunger/pdf/accra-confession.pdf accessed 15
October 2014.
[2] Karl Barth, The Theology of the Reformed Confessions.
Trans. Darrell L. and Judith J. Guder. Columbia Series in Reformed Theology.
Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2002, pp. ix-x.
[3] See also Mt.
11.28.
[4] Synod of Dort.
Barth (2002, p. 216)
[5] http://www.creeds.net/reformed/confess67.pdf accessed 15
October 2014
[6] Also Mt 6.24.
[7] Nestle, E.,
Nestle, E., Aland, B., Aland, K., Karavidopoulos, J., Martini, C. M., &
Metzger, B. M. (1993). The Greek New Testament (27th ed., Lk 16:13). Stuttgart:
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.
[8] Householding,
reciprocity, and redistribution comprised the scheme of traditional economies
prior to the advent of the monolithic, self-regulating market. Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: the Political and Economic Origins of our
Time. Boston: Beacon, 1944, pp. 52-5.
[9] “Windfall.”
Sermon by Douglas Olds, August 4, 2013. http://www.togetherweserve.org/windfall/ accessed on 15
October 2014.
[10] Also known as “University
of Chicago Boys” monetarism (ca. 1968-71)
International
Monetary Fund/World Bank Structural Adjustment (ca. 1980s)
Globalization
and Free Trade (ca. 1990s)
Washington
Consensus (ca. 2000s)
Neoliberalism
(ca. 2010 ff)
[11]Contemporarily described at http://steadystate.org/ and various linked
sites.
[12] The "difference principle" proposes to allocate resources and rights first to those most lacking, then as resources
and rights remain available, other populations receive distributions, with the
most well off receiving the last distributions. Alternatively, inequality is permitted so long as that inequality helps the least well off. Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA:
Belknap, 1971.
[13] See John
Piper’s scriptural list of God’s repentant moves (and God’s refusals to repent)
at http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-repentance-of-god accessed 15
October 2014.
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