In the introduction to Global Transformations, a book that James N. Rosenau hails to be “the definitive work on globalization”, the authors begin with the questions: “What is globalization? How should it be conceptualized?”1 The rest of the 515 pages contain an impressive and thorough analytical framework that builds upon a threefold conception of power – political, economic, and cultural; however, there is a glaring lacuna in their analysis. As ethicist Max Stackhouse correctly points out, “they see religion and ethics as, essentially, a mostly benign expression of cultural development that arises at significant points in history but that has no formative, regulative, interpretive, or guiding role in globalization or in understanding the forces producing it.”2 This neglect of religion should not be surprising, as Western intellectuals – those whom sociologist Peter Berger dubs the “faculty-club culture” – are among a minority that has yet to realize that the outdated “secularization theory” is dead, and that refuses to acknowledge that the world we live in today is deeply affected and imbibed with religious commitments and convictions. As David Brooks writes in his article entitled “Kicking the Secularist Habit”:
The human race does not necessarily get less religious as it grows richer and better educated. We are living through one of the great periods of scientific progress and the creation of wealth. At the same time, we are in the midst of a religious boom. Islam is surging. Orthodox Judaism is growing among young people, and Israel has gotten more religious as it has become more affluent. The growth of Christianity surpasses that of all other faiths. In 1942 this magazine published an essay called “Will the Christian Church Survive?” Sixty years later there are two billion Christians in the world; by 2050, according to some estimates, there will be three billion.3
To continue to regard religion as merely the aberration of fundamentalists, with only a secondary role to play in society and culture, is to be willfully blind to the plain reality of this world. Held’s framework is inadequate given the global resurgence of religion and the role that faith has in shaping one’s motivations and response to the world. For the majority of the world, economic, political, and cultural interests are inexorably driven and shaped largely by individual and communal religious commitments. Because Held’s model fails to sufficiently address religion, theology, or ethics, it lacks the ability to provide a robust accounting of globalization and its effects upon societies. It is simply naive to think that a model built upon this three level framework can adequately account for the impact of globalization upon the primal religions of Africa, Confucian Asia, the Islamic Middle East, Catholic Latin America, and Protestant forms of Christianity in Northern Europe and North America.
For the Christian, a major concern is whether or not present models reflect the dignity of what it means to be created in the imago Dei. Current trends of globalization focus too heavily upon economic and political concerns, too often to the detriment of a holistic approach to human persons and community. In the words of World Vision’s Senior Vice President for International Programs, “If you took the profit motive away from Coca-Cola, would they exist? If you took the profit motive away from McDonald’s would they exist? They’re not out there for value transformation, or for building a better society…The bottom line is to make profit.”4 We need to hear such prophetic Christian voices that reinforce that all people are endowed with inviolable rights and dignity, countering those whose chief interests are ultimately economically driven. Christians should adamantly argue that human rights and justice should shape and direct our understanding of globalization over and against models that view people as means to economic and political ends. Today such voices are emerging, warning against the impersonal and imperialistic tendencies of globalization, emphasizing the importance of right relationship over right prices. As theologian Timothy Gorringe aptly argues, “ethics always has to take priority over economics.”5
It is important to realize that religion by no means has the monopoly on ethics and morality, and we who hold religious convictions must be mindful of playing the moral high card. However, our voices must critically evaluate our globalizing society, speaking boldly yet responsibly against the injustices and imprudence of our day. In the words of one such voice, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Through our scientific genius we have made this world a neighborhood; now through moral and spiritual development we must make of it a brotherhood”.
This article was originally published in the Summer ’05 issue of Revisions, The Inaugural Issue.
- Held, David and David Goldblatt and Jonathan Perraton. Global Transformation: Politics, Economics, and Culture. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1999, 1. [↩]
- Stackhouse, Max and Diane B. Obenchain. God and Globalization Vol 3: Christ and the Dominions of Civilization, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 2002, 9. [↩]
- Brooks, David. “Kicking the Securlarist Habit: A Six Step Program”. The Atlantic Monthly. March 2003 <http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200303/brooks>. [↩]
- Yates, Joshua J., “American Evangelicals: The Overlooked Globalizers and Their Unintended Gospel of Modernity”. The Hedgehog Review. Summer 2002, vol 4, no 2: 77. [↩]
- Heslam, Peter. Globalization and the Good. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004, xx. [↩]
