‘Do not be afraid’
The position of faith based development
organisations in a changing world order.
René Grotenhuis
Table of Contents
Cordaid
4
Introduction
6
Catholic development work has a long tradition
8
The end of the paradigm of development
10
The new challenges ahead
14
Christianity’s transformative values
21
The Catholic Church: between commitment and retrenchment
28
Catholic development agencies in a changing world order
32
Afterword
37
Literature
39
© Tilburg University, René Grotenhuis, The Netherlands, 2011
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‘Do not be afraid’
‘Do not be afraid’
5
Saying that we are living in a changing world order is a platitude. The role of China in
the world is rapidly expanding. The G-8 of traditional ruling nations is no longer suitable
in the new world order. Indonesia, Mexico, India and Brazil are becoming regional and
global power brokers and indispensable to forge new alliances to deal with global issues.
In this lecture I will reflect on these changes in the world order, on the consequences for
the work of development organizations and, specifically, on the role of Christianity and of
Christian development organizations such as Cordaid.
For me, as the executive director of Cordaid, this changing world order is a daily reality and
a constant challenge. This challenge has two different aspects. Cordaid needs to redefine
its role as development organization in a rapidly transforming world. Cordaid also needs
to redefine what the role of its Catholic identity is and its roots in Christian faith and in
the international Catholic community in this process of institutional redefinition.
Introduction
Look at Europe, struggling with itself. Not very confident which role to take in the world,
never being able to find a united position, neither on economics, politics or military
cooperation. In disarray to understand the migration issue.
Look at the United States. Still the most powerful nation in the world, economically and
militarily, but being more and more concerned about its external debts. Politically almost
paralyzed by the big divide between republicans and democrats. Increasingly struggling
with its identity as a nation of immigration.
Look at China, full of confidence and ambition, investing in knowledge and research.
Power player in economic relations. Setting new standards by intervening in Africa in a
way that is totally different from traditional development work. A nation of savers with
the biggest reserves.
Look at Africa, a continent. On the surface, a continent of problems, poverty and civil
wars. But below the surface, a continent rich with natural resources, full of minerals and
energy resources. With a lot of possibilities to feed the world. With a young population full
of hope, looking for new opportunities.
8
‘Do not be afraid’
In this lecture, I will firstly look back to the history of Catholic missionary and solidarity
work.
In the second part, I will show you that the traditional development paradigm is no longer
valid to explain the world and that we have to find a new narrative as a consequence of
global transformations.
Based on this analysis, I will move to the main challenges that we will face in the next two
decades in relation to development.
In the fourth chapter of this lecture, I will reflect on the question to what extent Christianity
can be of help to cope with these challenges and find answers to these challenges.
In the fifth section, the position of the Catholic Church will be central: is the Catholic
Church at this moment able to present the contribution of Christianity in this changing
world.
I will conclude my lecture with a reflection on the role of Cordaid as a Catholic organization.
‘Do not be afraid’
9
Catholic development work
has a long tradition
Cordaid stands in a long tradition of Catholic engagement in international work. The
history of Cordaid goes back to the pre-World War II period. Hundreds of missionaries,
men and women, have been supported by the predecessors of Cordaid in their work for
evangelization and development. Memisa shipped hundred thousands of packages of
medical supplies to missionaries for their own health and for setting up health clinics in
Africa, Asia and Latin America. The Dutch Caritas organization ‘People in Need’ (Mensen
in Nood) was an active partner of missionaries and local Catholic organizations that
were responding to emergencies and were helping the most destitute in these countries.
These Catholic development organizations contributed to the process of building local
churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America during these decades. This wave of missionary
engagement spread all over Europe: Belgian missionaries went to Congo, French religious
orders went to Senegal and Mali, British churches saw their people going to Zambia and
Zimbabwe and the Spanish found their way to Latin America. All of them were driven by
a spirit of the double commandment of the gospel: Love God with all your heart and all
your soul and love your neighbor as yourself. To them, spreading the gospel and human
development were two sides of the same coin, inseparably connected.
10
‘Do not be afraid’
From the 1960s onwards, a new era started for missionary work in the Catholic Church.
The predecessors of Cordaid were fully engaged in the solidarity movement that energized
the Catholic Church. The Second Vatican Council with its message of Gaudium et Spes
was a clarion call for a new engagement of the Catholic Church with the world. When
Pope Paul VI called for a new integral human development and called development the
new word for peace in his encyclical Populorum Progressio, he translated the message of
his predecessor Pope John XXIII in the encyclical Pacem in Terris into a new challenge for
development for newly decolonized countries.
The missionaries, of whom many had left the priesthood, many had married and some
had joined Catholic development organizations, were no longer the ones on the front line
but rather the social movements of the church in Latin America. The Terra organization in
Brazil, the Vicaria de la Solidaridad organization in Chile and the Jesuits in El Salvador, that
is, all the organizations that resisted the dictatorships in Central and Latin America, found
a reliable supporter and source of funding in the Catholic development organizations
of that time that later merged to become Cordaid. The Catholic hospitals in Africa, the
vocational training centers for the street children in Accra, Nairobi, or the schools of the
brethren of Tilburg in Indonesia, however, also maintained a longstanding relationship
with Cordaid.
As a Catholic Development Agency, we increasingly engaged in new campaigns for
solidarity and justice in the last twenty years. The large Jubilee campaign that ran during
the second half of the 1990s and led to the debt cancellation program for developing
countries, the ‘Make poverty History’ campaign for the Millennium Development Goals
and the Climate Justice Campaign in the run-up to Copenhagen are clear signs of new
forms of international solidarity work.
Our work is not yet finished. With still more than one billion people living in poverty and
900 million people facing the threat of hunger, there is a lot to do and it would be cynical
to say that we have done enough for long enough.
This unfinished development and solidarity business, however, needs to position itself in a
rapidly changed world order. The era of missionary work was the era of colonialism where
there was no question about who is ruling and who should obey. During the post-colonial
times of development, it was clear that the developed Western world was superior in
knowledge, technology and manpower. The distinction between developed and developing
countries was a clear sign that those developing countries had still a long way to go to reach
the level of the developed world. That was the standard to meet. That era of self-evident
Western dominance is coming to an end in our currently changing world order.
‘Do not be afraid’
11
migrants. I will focus on the falling apart of the broad-based support for development
cooperation, which I do not see solely as a political move but as the reflection of a much
broader and deeper change in Dutch society towards development.
The end of the paradigm
of development
Since the last elections in the Netherlands, the public and political support for
development cooperation has fundamentally changed. After decades of broad political
support for development cooperation, by parties ranging from the left to the right, the
political landscape has dramatically changed. The liberal/conservative party of our prime
minister Rutte (VVD) proposed in its election campaign to cut development assistance
by half, and the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders (PVV) was in favor for an almost total
abolishment (with the exception of emergency aid) of development aid.
The government has also announced in its austerity measures that development cooperation
will be facing the most significant budget cuts together with the Dutch contributions to
Europe. European colleagues have asked me to explain what had happened in the Netherlands
during the past few months whenever I visited international conferences and meetings. For
long seen as a champion of development cooperation, Europe and tolerance of diversity, they
now believe that the Netherlands has made a U-turn in the opposite direction where an inward
looking, nationalistic and anti-immigration attitude has taken the upper hand.
It would take far too long to extensively reflect on the broader shift in the political and
social trends in the Netherlands, the anti-Europe mood and the negative attitude towards
12
‘Do not be afraid’
There are three factors which have slowly but consistently undermined the solid basis
of development approach during the last decade. The first undermining factor is the
diminishing belief that development cooperation is the answer to poverty. After forty
years of development cooperation, we still have a billion people living under the poverty
line. Stories about rulers in developing countries benefiting due to corruption related to
development funds, about mismanaged projects and about the lack of clarity whether
results are being realized, have undermined the belief in development cooperation as the
most appropriate answer. The reports about the overheads of development organizations,
salaries of directors and costs of fundraising have contributed to this process. Partly in
response to this scenario, the number of small private foundations in development work
has steeply increased. The do-it-yourself projects are one of the alternatives. Governments
have also tried to sell peace missions to countries like Afghanistan as the best way to solve
the problems of these countries.
The second factor influencing the support for development cooperation is the awareness
that new overarching global issues are at stake that are much more relevant than the
‘trivial’ issue of existing poverty that has been around for much too long. When we, in
2008, faced the food crisis, energy crisis and financial crisis simultaneously, the climate
crisis became more and more pressing. It seemed as if the poverty issue was just a small
thing compared to these threats that have almost apocalyptic perspectives. Why should
we talk about poverty in Northern Kenya and in Ethiopia when climate change seemed
to be of far greater importance for the future of these drought stricken areas than just
ordinary poverty? Why try and solve the problems of Central America through development
cooperation projects and programs when the migration to and the regulation of migration
in North America seemed of far greater importance and relevance to the people in that
region? The challenges of managing these global common issues seemed far more
important than traditional poverty reduction.
The third and perhaps the most influential factor is that the traditional divide between
North and South as a divide between rich and poor countries is no longer seen as
the most relevant way of looking at international relations. The increasing number
of people traveling on vacation to southern countries has shown that the shopping
malls of Nairobi, Jakarta and El Salvador are almost the same as the ones they visit in
Rotterdam or Antwerp. They have, of course, seen poverty in these countries and some
of them have adopted their own project such as a clinic, a school or a water well, but
‘Do not be afraid’
13
they have also seen where the rich and poor live in these countries: where an elite and
an upper middle class live in abundance. This confusing reality of developing countries
has shattered the traditional picture of poor dependent developing countries.
At the same time, poverty in Europe including the Netherlands is on the rise. More
and more people in the margins of society are not able to cope with modern life and
are struggling to survive in an ever more demanding society. In this shifting world
order, where traditional divides between rich and poor and developed and developing
are not as clear as in the past, the emergence of new powerful countries such as
China, India and Brazil is the most telling signal. We knew India as a developing
country; we remember the big campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s to collect funds in the
Netherlands to save millions of Indians from starvation. We knew the favellas of Rio de
Janeiro and the sertao of North-East Brazil as places where people were struggling to
survive on a daily basis. Suddenly, however, they present themselves as new players,
proud and confident, in the international arena. We are also well aware that India is
competing with us when it comes to jobs and technology, that China is competing with
us in relation to natural resources such as oil and minerals in Africa, and that Brazil
is winning from us as one of the largest producers and exporters of agricultural and
livestock products. Are these the poor countries that we have to assist? This process
was finally confirmed when the G-20 was established in recognition that governing
the world was no longer the playground of the traditional G-8 Western countries, but
that we needed these new emerging economies and with them Indonesia, Malaysia,
South-Africa and Mexico to solve the huge challenges presented by the international
economic and financial crisis.
whether we are looking at this transformation as an opportunity for a better, a more
just and a more sustainable world or as a threat to positions that have for so long been
taken for granted.
These three factors contributed to the crumbling of the traditional development
paradigm of rich and poor countries with the transfer of money, technology and skills
as the answer to solve the problem. This paradigm has definitively been broken and we
are living in what seems to be a new world order where power is shifting from the West
to the East, where our dependency on natural resources makes us vulnerable instead
of powerful, where our wealth is based on the cheap production of consumer goods in
China, and where Europe is struggling with and crippled by a debt crisis and is looking
at the currency reserve of China for salvation.
These fundamental changes are more than forces that undermine the traditional
development discourse. They are the signs of a changing world order where traditional
relations and positions are no longer valid. We are living in a period of global transition
and nobody knows where we will be in 2050. Perhaps the most basic question is
14
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‘Do not be afraid’
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The new challenges ahead
This changing world order means that we have new jobs to perform, not merely adjusting
in order to adapt to the new conditions and circumstances that prevail, but fundamental
transformations in our perspective on the world and our position and identity.
From superiority to humility and service
The traditional world order was based on a clear distinction in the world. Since 1492,
when Columbus discovered the Americas, this distinction was fundamental for the world
order. It was, from the European perspective, the distinction between civilization and
barbarism, between the Christian and the pagan, between colonial powers and colonies,
between the educated and the uneducated and between the rich and the poor. There
has been an uncontested hegemony of Western countries since 1700. During the few
occasions when this hegemony was contested, such as during the uprisings in China
and the resistance in the colonies, the colonial powers showed their muscles and their
military power to restore order. The Western world was setting the standards and proved
its superiority with regard to nearly all aspects of life: in technology, economics, the
military, sciences and political systems.
16
‘Do not be afraid’
After World War II, when we set up the now existing global world order, it was designed
by and dominated by the Western world. The Breton Woods system to govern the world
economically, the United Nations to create an arena for political negotiations and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights to establish a judicial framework were conceived
and designed by the US, Great Britain, France and, to a much smaller extent, the Soviet
Union in a self-evident way that was in no way contested. The decolonization of Africa and
parts of Asia formally did diminish the position of the big powers, but, due to their political,
military and economic strategies, they were still able to dominate the world.
This dominance is slowly but definitively fading away. When we saw the revolts in
Tunisia and Egypt in January, they were signs of that changing world order in which
the United States was no longer able to manage the process militarily, economically
or politically.
We are entering an era where new forms of political, cultural and economic life will flourish.
No longer will Western Europe and the US set the standards for social and political
institutions. The Chinese are implementing a new sociopolitical system that, measured by
our standards, does not benchmark on democracy, human rights or transparency. They
are combining a rather authoritarian political system with a capitalistic economy. They are
critical of our Western discourses on democracy and human rights. The successes of the
Chinese political and economic model, nevertheless, seem attractive to African leaders
such as Kagame in Rwanda and Meles in Ethiopia. They are much more intrigued by the
Chinese model of authoritarian political and economic governance than by the traditional
European style of free markets and democratic systems.
A similar process occurs when it comes to women’s rights. During my visits to
Afghanistan, Afghan women stressed the need for a better position in their Muslim
country. There is no doubt about their eagerness and ambition to play a more important
and visible role in society, but they will not necessarily follow the same path as their
Western sisters nor will they embrace their feminist culture. There are several roads to
gender equality.
Western society will face the challenge to take a new position in a changing world order.
There is no longer a self-evident dominance and we are no longer setting the standards
on all aspect of public life. We are entering into a world of diversity and dialogue. This
changing perspective is a challenge of humility and service. Yes, Europe has a lot to bring
to the table. The tradition of democracy and freedom, which the protesters in Cairo were
passionately calling for, are deeply rooted in European culture. But it will be a service,
an offer of Europe to the world, rather than something to impose on others to accept.
As an offer and as a service, it will be the subject of discussion and, should the offer be
accepted, it will be transformed and adapted according to local cultural conditions. The
‘Do not be afraid’
17
European history of education with its university system that dates back to the middle
ages has much to offer, to create a space for people to flourish, develop and contribute
to their communities. However, it will be an offer to the world; an offer with our historic
evidence. Yet it remains to be seen how the Chinese university system will develop and to
what extent it will adopt and transform.
Perhaps the biggest challenge to the Western world is that of humility and service, to
step down from the position of dominating the world, to accept that we are part of a
world theatre with other players, and that it is in interaction, dialogue and respect towards
diversity that we will find our new position in this changing world order.
From poverty to inequality
Over the last couple of years, as director of a development organization, I have become
more and more convinced that we need to change our discourse on development and
poverty and put inequality at the centre of our strategies and policies. Poverty is essentially
not a problem of lack of resources, lack of financial means or lack of technology. Poverty
is inequality. The feminization of poverty, the fact that it is mainly women who are bearing
the brunt of poverty, is because of their unequal position in society, in family life and in
wife-husband relations. The most appalling poverty in many developing countries is found
in ethnic minorities or indigenous people who have been marginalized in their society
and cut off from access and participation for a very long time. During my trips to Africa
I became more and more aware of this false poverty discourse. Africa is a rich continent:
rich in natural resources, in minerals and energy. Africa is rich in human resources with
its young vibrant population. Africa is rich in its social capital of strong communities,
its social life and solidarity. However, there is a lack of equality. African people are not
benefiting from their rich natural capital, whereas local elites and international interests
(Chinese as well as US and French) are amassing wealth and profits for their own benefit.
A few months ago, Andy Summer, a researcher at the Institute of Development Studies
at Sussex University, found that 75% of the people currently living under the poverty
line are living in middle income countries. Where our traditional image of poverty is
Sub Saharan Africa, the Congo, Zimbabwe or the Central African Republic, the reality is
that the majority of poor people are living in India, Indonesia, Peru and the Philippines.
These are middle income countries with a rather satisfying economic growth in terms of
GDP. Below the surface of macro-economic data, however, huge inequalities are hidden.
The uprising in Tunisia started with a 27-year old university graduate who did not have
access to the labor market and who was trying to eke out a living as a street vendor. He
symbolizes a generation without access to society, without a voice and without being able
to contribute in a meaningful way to the future. This underlines the problem of inequality.
18
‘Do not be afraid’
Inequality, however, is not an exclusive challenge to developing countries. The Herald
Tribune of January 25 referred to a study from which it emerged that 80% of the increase
in wealth in the United States during the last twenty years was concentrated in 1% of the
richest Americans. We see the same pattern emerging in all Western countries: the divide
between the rich and the poor is widening.
Perhaps even more alarming is what I would call the disconnectedness in our societies.
I see a global elite coming up that is totally disconnected from their societies. Elites in
the US, South Africa, Nigeria, India, China, Brazil and Argentina are not at all interested
in what is happening in their own societies or in other tiers of their own countries. While
meeting each other in luxury resorts and at international conferences and doing business
with each other in New York, London or Beijing, they do not care for development or the
fight against poverty.
Equality will also have to be based on a practical foundation. Since the proclamation of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1949, we have seen an ever increasing
framework of rights with all types of entitlements based on equality. There is no lack of
treaties, conventions and international agreements that, in most countries, are translated
into laws and regulations. Governments and the private sector repeatedly refer to these
standards and their laws and regulations. But this framework of political, economic,
cultural, social and children’s rights has not been able to stop the process of increasing
inequality that we are facing. What is lacking is commitment to put it into practice.
Aspiring after finding the good life
Western society has become a myopic society. It is with only one eye that we are
looking to the world and to our life and it is an economic one. Who we are and what
we mean to the world is measured by financial and economic indicators: income,
wealth, bonuses. In public life and public debate the health issue appears to have been
narrowed down to a financial issue of expenditure and insurance costs. The same is
true for the education system. Whether education is contributing towards flourishing
people or communities is not the main issue, instead, the powers that be are examining
it to determine how it can be made more cost-effective and how we can place the
financial burden on the state, the student or the student’s parents. The good life has
become synonymous with economic prosperity and financial capital. We have lost the
ability of putting social, cultural and religious values into the right context due to this
process of reduction. They have disappeared as indicators, even though we are fully
aware that there is no relation between the increase of economic prosperity and the
level of wellbeing and happiness. Further away and more frequent vacations, more
luxury homes, more sophisticated cars and a whole range of electronic equipment and
‘Do not be afraid’
19
gadgets: do they offer the good life? Around one million people in the Netherlands are
on anti-depressants to be able to cope with their lives.
We panic as we did in 2008-2009, when we had to face an economic crisis. The threat
to our Gross National Product decreasing, that is, the fear that our engine is coming to a
standstill, horrifies our societies. It was not a coincidence that in 2009, after the threefold
food, energy and financial crisis of 2008, president Sarkozy commissioned a study to reflect
this myopic view on our life as societies. The Fittousie/Stiglitz/Amartya Sen commission
proposed a new concept to measure our quality of life, making a distinction between three
aspects of life: the economic perspective, the perspective of happiness and the perspective
of the common good. This was in the months that everyone was talking about a new
economy, a green economy. Now, however, governments focus on their debts and the
need to restore economic growth in order to pay for the debt burden.
The need to look for another concept of the good life becomes more urgent in view of the
ecological challenges we are facing. We are realizing that we live in a world with limited
natural resources. We only have one planet and another one is not available out there. We
are rapidly reaching the end of how far we can continue to exploit our planet due to the
considerable increase of the world population over the last century. I will not repeat here
all the data you know by heart: the limited reservoir of clean air, limited oil reserves, the
depletion of the sea and the rapid decline of biodiversity.
The traditional growth model is unsustainable within this reality of limited resources
on our planet and the continuing increase of the world’s population. An increasing
number of economists and political theorists are considering an economy without
growth, where the never ending race for more will end and we will be able to live in a
balanced way with ourselves, with each other and with nature. This should, however,
be closely examined from the global inequality perspective. A differentiated approach
is necessary. Whereas continuous traditional growth in Europe and America would be
detrimental to a sustainable global future, growth in developing countries is necessary
to lift the bottom billion out of poverty. Growth is also possible there without falling
into the trap of the traditional growth model where growth is always at the expense of
the common good.
We, both the global north and global south, need to look within a broader context to find the
good life. Our common future lies in more inclusive and less fragmented lives, but we are
unable to translate this into practical public discourse and to make it applicable in political
decision-making. It seems to me that this problem points to a much more fundamental
issue in our societies where relations are reduced to transactions. Transactions, moreover,
only happen when we can count and measure the value of the exchange that takes place
in the transactions.
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‘Do not be afraid’
If we do not offer a new concept of the good life with new perspectives, where the good
life represents enrichment and a way to live without constant economic growth, we are not
doing enough. A beckoning perspective is needed to live in a new world order.
Imagining a new future
Francis Fukuyama wrote his famous book ‘The End of History and the Last Man’ in 1992.
He interpreted the fall of the Berlin Wall as the end of the conflict between capitalism and
communism, and the final victory of capitalism and liberal democracy as the only viable
way of organizing societies and economies in the modern world. This seemed at that time
quite reasonable: with a defeated communist system, an ailing developing world, a hidden
China, a stagnating Islamic world (1992 was just after the first Iraq war in which the US
overran the most powerful Islamic army) and a prosperous Western society, there was not
much doubt that liberal capitalism was there to remain unbeatable.
That conclusion seems also convincing from a development perspective: all development
discourse was based on the assumption that developing countries should copy Western
Europe. Kenya should be like Denmark and Vietnam should be an imitation of Norway.
Satisfied with our own political, economic and cultural life, we could not image that anyone
in the world would wish to aim for another future than ours.
But there is more. Western countries are unaware of their own development. Development
is something for poor countries to realize. We are already there. What our society should
look like in thirty years’ time is quite unclear. We, naturally, expect more economic growth,
more sophisticated technology, etc., that is, more of the same. We do not seem to have
the ambition to aim for a future society with new forms of living together, new ways of
decision-making and new priorities to guide us. The future is basically a repetition of the
contemporary.
The Western world is turning this contemporary world into the absolute one, the nec
plus ultra. A culture that has become more and more relativistic in its values is, at the
same time, attaching absolute meaning to its actual existence. This process will cut us
off from the future. In an absolutistic approach to contemporary society we look at the
future as an abnegation of the actual world. The future becomes loaded with negative
meaning instead of being an invitation to a new, better and fuller life of flourishing
people and communities.
The challenge our Western world faces is to look at itself anew as belonging to a specific
stage in a historic process of this world but not the end stage. We have to look at
ourselves as open to a new and better future. In the same way, we have to accept that
we are just one of the players in the dialogue of the global arena and not the dominant,
standard setting one. We have to see ourselves as part of history and not the end of it.
‘Do not be afraid’
21
There is insufficient relativism in the West and therefore we cannot position ourselves
in the changing world.
Hence, I can see four challenges and all are consequences of a changing world order.
Two of these challenges are global, such as the challenge of equality and balance and the
challenge of finding the good life. It is true, emerging economies and developing countries
also tend to become myopic where they solely look at economic and financial indicators.
Two of the challenges are specific to the Western world that has to reposition itself in this
new world theatre.
Christianity’s
transformative values
Does Christianity have any role to play in this shifting world order and in the four assignments
that this new world order is asking us to fulfill? Now that Christianity is losing much of its
influence in the Western world, and the Christian world of Western Europe and the US as a
whole is losing influence in the world, why should Christianity be given a role to play in this
new world order? I would argue that Christianity still has important values and traditions,
not as a Western faith but as a global faith that can help us to understand and cope with the
global transformation. But before entering into the question itself, I would like to make three
preliminary remarks. The first remark is on my understanding of the term Christianity. The
second one is on the relevance of the Christian religion in this process of a changing world
order. The third one is on the universality of Christianity.
My definition of Christianity starts rather broadly: the religion that is based on the life
and teachings of Jesus Christ as reported in the scriptures of the gospels. I am aware
of the diversity of Christian churches, groups and communities, all referring to the
same scriptures but all interpreting these scriptures in a different way and translating
these scriptures in different theological positions, moral teachings and ritual practices.
Therefore, I limit my scope to mainstream Christianity of the Catholic Church, not only
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23
because it is the Christianity I know best, but also because it is the most global expression
of Christianity and, hence, the most relevant to my reflection on Christianity in a changing
world order. So I am aware of the limitations of this choice given the diversity of Protestant
churches, the Orthodox and, of course, the Evangelical and Pentecostal churches that are
so much on the increase in Latin America and Africa.
My second preliminary remark refers to the relevance of Christian religion, perhaps any
religion, in this process of a changing world order. Would it not be sufficient to look at the
four challenges with the body of knowledge from economic or political sciences? Could
we not, as people living in the Western, Eastern and Southern world, deal with them
by using the power analysis that military experts are good at? I think it would not be
enough. A changing world order has not only implications for how we earn our money,
but it affects our identity, who we are in this world and how we relate to other people
and societies. Religion plays a role in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and even in a highly
secularized country such as the Netherlands where still half of the population identifies
itself as believing in a certain transcendental power.
This brings me to my third preliminary remark on the universality of Christianity. To
identify Christianity with the Western world is something that belongs to history and
is something of the past. Christianity, with all its forms and modifications, is a global
religion. Brought by Western missionaries to Latin America, Africa and Asia, it has become
part of the culture and tradition of these continents. Very early missionaries started to
educate indigenous people to form Brazilian, Congolese and Indian priests and members
of religious congregations. Everywhere Christianity proved to be fit for a broad diversity
of ethnic and religious traditions. In India, for example, Christianity is very attractive as a
religion of equality in a very unequal cast-based society. In Russia, Christianity has proved
to be very resilient and has retaken its role and spiritual and unifying force in society. In
China, Christianity is rapidly rising in the aftermath of rigid atheist communism. This gives
Christianity a unique position as the most global of all world religions.
My basic position is that the principles of Catholic social teaching are highly applicable
and useful in this changing world. These four principles of Catholic social teaching human dignity, common good, solidarity and subsidiarity - are a well-balanced set of
values where the interests of the individual and of the community are both taken into
account. Catholic social teaching has always maintained the dignity of the individual,
created in the image of God, where each and every person is unique and has unalienable
dignity. It has always taken a strong position against any sort of totalitarianism, which,
referring to the interests of class, community or state, has sacrificed the interests and
the dignity of the individual. On the other hand, Catholic social teaching has strongly
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opposed economic and political systems that focus on the individual and lose sight of
the community.
This Catholic social teaching is the basis for my view on the contribution of Christianity to
a transforming world:
• The principle of human dignity is the basis from which to address the issue of equality;
• Solidarity and subsidiarity together are fundamental for building communities that will,
at the same time, hold people together but are also able to accommodate diversity;
• The principle of common good is a basic notion to formulate the concept of the good life.
Catholic social teaching as a whole, being aware of the teachings of the gospel on the
Kingdom of Heaven and trying to translate these teachings into a specific social and
economic reality of today, always focuses on the future of new generations.
Christianity as inclusive community
From its very origin, Christianity has presented itself to the world as a religion in which the
community was the basis. The last supper of Jesus with his disciples was a deep moment
of community, the Pentecostal event was a community event and the stories in the Acts of
the Apostles talk about communal life in which “they had everything in common”. Being
baptized into Christianity is becoming part of a community.
In this community approach, Christianity was inclusive from its very beginning. The
story of the Epiphany, when the three kings visited the new born child in Bethlehem,
makes it clear that Christianity has never been an exclusive club of chosen people who
set themselves aside from others. The message of Christ “I am sending you to the ends
of the world” was a message for his disciples and a calling for us to be inclusive in our
missionary work. Christianity has proven to be an inclusive religion in two ways.
The first is the missionary tradition of Christianity. Even if it is true that Christian missionaries
were part of the dominating colonial powers and perceived their role in the same way as
the colonizers, based on a feeling of superiority and on the distinction between Christians
and pagans, missionaries have always been able to connect to the other culture. The
specific position of missionaries compared to the political and economic colonizers was
visible in the process of decolonization. In Indonesia and Congo, for example, the Dutch
and Belgian colonizers who were politically and economically part of the system were
kicked out of the countries whereas the missionaries could remain in the new decolonized
country.
Traditional Inca and Maya rituals and symbols are still present in Latin America in popular
Christianity. During one of my trips to El Salvador, I participated in a celebration to protect
nature where Christian and indigenous rituals and prayers were neatly integrated. The
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25
Jesuits who came to China in the seventeenth century are another example: their aim was
to carefully integrate elements of the traditional Confucian tradition into Christianity. Many
of the national Christian churches and religious groups in Africa, such as the Kibangists in
DRC, mix Christianity with traditional African religion.
The second aspect of inclusiveness in Christianity is its capability to bridge social
distinctions in society. People from different ethnicities, social classes and political
preferences are coming together in Christian communities. It is true that sometimes
Christian communities struggle with the social divide. In some parts of India, Dalits have
their own parishes distinct from the parishes of members of higher classes. In some parts
of Africa the ethnic divide is reproduced in different religious communities. Nevertheless,
the basic feature is that of an inclusive community. Bishop Romero of San Salvador always
referred to the paramilitary forces, which eventually killed him, as his brothers, for whom
he also felt responsible as their bishop and whom he wanted to address constantly to
try to restore peace and justice in his society. This will, naturally, lead to embarrassing
situations at times. During the dictatorship of General Pinochet in Chile, the General was
a member of the same Catholic Church from which the Vicaria de Solidaridad constantly
tried to mobilize national and international forces against the dictatorship.
This culture of community and inclusiveness is a very relevant feature of the Catholic Church
in our changing world order where diversity will be the rule. We are living in a multi-polar
world where there is no dominance of one over the other where dialogue and mutual
acceptance and understanding are necessary to create a just and sustainable world.
Equal before God
For Christianity, as for the other monotheistic religions, there is a fundamental distinction
between God and everyone and everything else. This is shown when Christianity proclaims
that there is but one God and no other gods. As such, Christianity declares all divine
pretensions idle and vain. In our relation to God, which for Christians is the basis of their
faith and their existence, we are all equal. This is quite radical because it inevitably leads
us to the conclusion that, for God, Pope Benedict and a 82-year old women suffering from
dementia are equal and that a nameless mother in the slums of Calcutta is, in His eyes,
equal to any world-famous politician or artist. We, of course, see things differently. We make
all types of distinctions and we are fond of ranking people: the best-selling artist, the most
famous politician, the best woman in sports, etc. But we should always be aware that it is
our human need and tradition that makes us behave in this way. It has nothing to with God.
This sense of equality has a long tradition in Christianity. For example, Jesus never questions
who is better or higher in rank in the gospel. When the disciples argue amongst each other
who will be the most important in the Kingdom, Jesus gets angry.
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Since then, during its two thousand years of history and on a regular basis, this equality
has been embodied by religious orders and lay communities but also by individuals.
Saint Benedict, Saint Francis, Charles de Foucault and the Taizé community, for
example, were all signs of that deep belief that equality combined with the virtues
of humility and service is at the heart of Christianity. Often, these religious orders
originated as a countermovement looking for the roots of faith and not being satisfied
with the more mediocre form of Christianity of their time. The sense of equality is
always at risk in organizations when there is a hierarchy, when money and property
come into play and when power relations are an issue. This requires constant renewal
and revitalization of basic values and principles. Equality seems to be one of the most
difficult qualities in society to obtain. Perhaps we would be better off by talking about
a constant process of balancing and rebalancing given the reality that equality is an
unstable situation that is always disturbed by changes in socio-economic, political,
cultural or military relations. There is always a need for people and organizations to
address new forms of inequality and unbalance.
With this sense of equality as one of its basic values or at least its tradition of constant
struggle to address inequality and reestablish equality and balance, Christianity could
find ways in which to respond to the challenges we face in our changing world; a world
in which inequality is increasing and becoming a bigger threat, leading to conflict and
violence.
Christianity as a holistic perspective of the good life
I believe we urgently need a new perspective on what the good life means. The reality
of a world with limited natural resources and a still increasing population will make the
Western world rethink its fundamental values and future perspectives. Christianity has
something to offer: it can enrich our view of the good life beyond economic growth and
the next round of electronic novelties, or better: it can help us cope with a future with degrowth and not having a new fashionable outfit every season.
When Pope Paul VI spoke about integral human development in his encyclical Populorum
Progressio, he meant a holistic development (the development of each man and the whole
man) that includes the social, the economic, the cultural and the spiritual aspects of life.
“The development we speak of here cannot be restricted to economic growth alone,”
said the encyclical in 1967. With this approach, Pope Paul VI stood in a long tradition of
Christianity looking for a good life in a broad sense. Perhaps some, a bit cynical, will point
to the wealthy and luxury lifestyles of popes and cardinals in the sixteenth and seventeenth
century in Rome, but the way Christianity has fostered social life in societies, its support
for culture and education, and the enormous number of Christian, religious and lay people
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who volunteered in the care of the sick, the handicapped and the poor has been a constant
presence of the conviction what the good life means. Nowadays, researches on voluntary
work and on social capital have time and again shown that there is a positive correlation
with Christianity.
In his encyclical Caritas in Veritate Pope Benedict XVI is highly critical of the dominance
of economics in the world and the way in which measuring and counting seem to have
become the most important competences of people. He underlines that Caritas, Love, is
the main issue when we ask ourselves who we are and how we relate to each other. He is
critical of the neo-liberal economic system - without becoming ideologically entrenched for reducing all human relations and transactions to financial ones.
Christianity in history
Let me start my reflection from the basic notion that, in Christianity, faith and history
have always been connected. The God of Israel actively engaged Himself in the history
of His people. He guided them on their wanderings in Egypt, through the Sinai desert,
to Babylon. Judaism and Christianity have always understood their religion as closely
connected with the historical reality and have interpreted important historical events in
the light of God’s commitment to His people. Christianity always understands itself as a
vocation to make this world a holy place in the same way as every individual Christian has
his or her never ending calling to aim for holiness. Jesus Christ cared for the sick and the
needy: he shared bread and fish with the thousands at the lake to show the commitment
of God to His people. In the stories of the gospel you cannot make a distinction between
the religious component of the story and the specific daily life component. The challenge
is not to step outside of history to become holy and to realize salvation but the challenge
is to always make God’s presence in history visible. For Christianity, believing that God
created this world and sustains this world throughout history, the presence of God in
history is the founding reality of life.
This has important implications for our understanding of the changing world order.
Christianity does not need to add something of God to this process of change in order to
fulfill its mission in this world. It has to understand where God is present in this process
of change, sometimes in charismatic leadership but also sometimes in the call for justice;
that is, something in those who are building true communities. In the story of the burning
bush in Exodus, God says to Moses: “the place you are standing on is holy ground.” This
is the basis for the role of Christianity: the place where we as Christians are standing is
holy ground. It is not holy because we are there, it is holy because God is there. It is up to
us to understand His presence and His calling and in this calling, His request is to answer
to this holiness of the ground we are standing on.
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The intertwined relationship of history and faith is a fundamental feature of the
contribution of Christianity to the changing world order. The second Vatican Council
confirmed that relationship in the first words of the Gaudium et Spes constitution: “The
joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of our time, especially of those who
are poor or afflicted, are the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the followers of
Christ as well.”
A second aspect of the connectedness of Christianity and history is the way Christianity
looks at the future. In the gospels, the notion of the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of
Heaven is a basic concept. Christianity lives in the expectation of that kingdom, is deeply
convinced that this world is not the final stage of history and that we are open for a better
future. That future will be given to us by God. In the end we are not masters of the future
and we are not designing and implementing the future, but we are receiving it as a gift, as
grace granted to us. This enables Christians to be relativistic about today’s world: it will
forego and transform. From the perspective of God as the absolute and the everlasting
to whom we belong, we do not connect ourselves for better and worse to today’s world.
The end of history culture of Fukuyama is basically non-Christian. For Christians, the
future is not a possible loss of what we have achieved, a denial or the threat of the actual
world order; it is a possible next step in our aim for a better life and a more flourishing
community.
I have tried to define the basic values of Christianity that are relevant in a world that is
facing a rapidly changing order and is confronted with major challenges. Christianity as
the religion that builds on the gospel, the teachings of Jesus Christ and the tradition and
experience of the Catholic Church as the most global of the Christian Churches, has basic
values to offer that are relevant in this changing world.
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The living gospel
The Catholic Church:
between commitment and
retrenchment
The last issue I would like to discuss in this lecture is related to the Catholic Church
and whether this Church is able to bring the potential contribution of Christianity, as
described above, to the table.
The most global Christian community
As I said, the Catholic Church is the most global church in Christianity. Caritas Internationalis,
the social institution of the Church, of which Cordaid is a member, counts 165 members.
Caritas can be found in almost every country: in Vanuatu and Iran, in Brazil and Iceland, in
Kazakhstan and Mali. The Catholic Church is deeply rooted in society, being not only present
in capital cities and towns but also in remote areas and in parishes in the bush and the desert.
The changing world order has its implications in all of these countries and all of these remote
areas. Yes, in the remote areas of the Central African Republic where indigenous people are
confronted with a mining company searching for uranium, in the desert of Ethiopia where
young people are leaving to find a better future somewhere in Europe, on the Pacific islands
where climate change will have its impact on the mere survival of the community. Basically
everywhere a changing world order and new global challenges have become a living reality.
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In this reality, the Catholic Church is very well positioned to live up to the message
of Gaudium et Spes and to realize that “The joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of
the people of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted, are the joys and
hopes, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well”. I have seen Catholic
communities and their leaders living up to the words of Gaudium et Spes everywhere in
Africa, Asia and Latin America.
In Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, I once visited a program funded by Cordaid, of
the Scalabrinas sisters. Every day an airplane landed at the airport with deported illegal
immigrants from the United States. The sisters organized a reception centre for them,
provided them with food and water, with a bus ticket to get to their families and a bed
to rest. In the globalizing world of migration, they represent a faith that values the life of
each and every person. A life marginalized and rejected in North America, is taken care
of by these sisters.
Throughout thirty years of war, the Catholic Church in Southern Sudan was one of the
only institutions that kept communities together. During the hardships suffered during
this period in time, they ensured that food and medical assistance were provided
but also prayer to strengthen and comfort people regardless of religious and tribal
distinctions. When all international organizations had left the country for security
reasons, they stayed in an act of solidarity.
In Bangladesh, Caritas Bangladesh is one of the largest social institutions. With only
1% of the population of the country being Catholic, Caritas Bangladesh offers all types
of social activities and 90% of their staff is Muslim and 95% of the beneficiaries are
Muslim.
I could continue for hours with these types of examples. They are examples of a Church
that is inclusive, that represents the good life, that is committed to the cause of the
common good and that advocates equality.
Able to influence
Institutionally, the Church in the Southern hemisphere is still in a strong position to be
a government, business and civil society partner that can contribute significantly to the
changing world order. In Africa, the Church is an important player in society. In Asia, the
Church is well-organized and although representing a minority, the international network
of the Church is seen as relevant and therefore could play a broker role. In Latin America,
the Church still has a strong role although there is a waning influence, partly due to the
rapid increase of the Pentecostal and Evangelical churches and partly due to secularization
and the way the Church responds to this.
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From my global perspective, I see a clear distinction between the Church in the Southern
continents of Africa, Asia and Latin America, and the Catholic Church in the Northern
hemisphere, in Western Europe and North America. It is mainly the Church in Western
Europe and Northern America that seems to be too far caught up in a paradigmatic
framework that hampers it to engage meaningfully in this changing world order. In the
northern hemisphere the Church is so introspective, that I see more of a process of
retrenchment than a process of reaching out to the changing global world.
I have identified three main challenges that the Catholic Church as a whole and the Church
in Europe and North America in particular will have to confront:
• The first challenge refers to the position of the Church seeing itself as distinct from
the world. The Catholic Church is still struggling to find its position in a secularizing
world. Since it is no longer in the centre of power (Spain, Portugal and Germany), it
tends to turn its back to society and to address society only in a critical way by blaming
it for its culture of death. When it refers to this, it is, in fact, referring to well-known
moral issues such as same sex marriage, euthanasia and abortion. My point is not so
much the issues it has selected, since they are, after all, important ones. I believe that
the fundamental issue is that the Church still takes the position of criticizing society
from the sidelines instead of really and fully engaging in society. There is hardly any
mutual engagement, because the Church maintains a relationship of one-way communication. The Church puts its issues - mainly the already mentioned moral issues - on
the table of society but does not engage with the huge problems of modern society.
Saying that all problems of modern society will vanish if modern society adheres to the
doctrine of the Church is too easy and not convincing. Without positioning itself - for
better or for worse - as part of society, the Church will not be able to contribute to the
challenges the world is facing in the changing world order.
• The second challenge for the Church is to see itself as a historic and ever transforming
entity. I believe that the Church has copied the end of history approach for itself. In declaring almost everything as unchangeable, be it the celibate rule, democracy in the church
or homosexuality, the Church tends to make the contemporary the absolute: there can be
no other theology, no other ecclesiology and no other moral teaching. Claiming that eternal truth is there to be protected by the Church and that that eternal truth is held by the
Catholic Church, the fundamental notion of Christianity, being open to a new, different
and better future, becomes obscured. In the last few years, the Church has blamed secular society for being relativistic and for pretending that the Church defends the absolute.
As I stated earlier, secular society with its end of history culture has in fact become rather
absolutist, whereas the Church, in claiming to be the holder of absolute truth, denies its
fundamental belief that there is only God and His future is the absolute, and that human
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existence does not have absolute truth but lives in the expectation of the Kingdom, not
as a possession but as a grace. The Church and secular society need to start a dialogue
to both benefit on these issues of relativism and absolutism.
• The third challenge for the Church lies in the notion of equality. The reality of a hierarchical and clerical, male dominated Church is seriously hampering attempts to
make the Church a real champion of equality. All the rhetoric about equality and the
important role of the laity and women cannot hide the reality that the position of the
laity and the role of women is still an issue of embarrassment for the Catholic Church.
The decision-making and checks and balances are all within male, clerical circles. The
sexual abuse scandals have proven what derailment can be caused by such a lack of
openness, where the checks and balances are not public but within a closed circle. The
problem of equality for the future is not to issue new declarations or conventions, or in the wordings of the Church - new sermons and theological reflections. In the secular
world and in the Catholic Church, the real issue of equality is to put it into practice.
In the Church this means: to make priests accountable to their communities, to make
bishops accountable to their parishes and to open the road for women to become leaders in the church. I am sure that the female priesthood will not be the first step, but it
should not categorically be excluded when we start down this path of equality.
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Catholic development
agencies in a changing
world order
In my introduction I formulated two challenges for organizations such as Cordaid. In the
first place, Cordaid, as is the case with regard to every development organization, has to
reposition itself in a changing world order in which traditional development relations and
development aid are becoming more and more inadequate. If the traditional North-South
divide as a rich-poor divide is no longer the basic paradigm and, therefore, aid - the transfer
of money, technology and skills - is no longer the appropriate answer, and if new global
issues are given priority and if formulating the good life is much more than measuring
GDP, development organizations have a huge task in ensuring that they transform. At
the same time, as a Christian and more specifically a Catholic organization, Cordaid has
to reflect whether its Catholic roots are a relevant asset to be responsive in contribution
to the changing world order. I will reflect on three issues that I defined as key issues to
address: equality, community and the good life.
Equality
Cordaid has been defining development as the process of changing the power relations
in society for a few years now. From a perspective in which poverty is caused by a lack
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of financial, technological and intellectual resources, we moved to a position where
poverty is the result of processes of exclusion and marginalization. This is why we are
engaged in the movement of the pastoralists in the Horn of Africa, in the struggle of
indigenous tribes and communities in East India and the Papua regions in Indonesia.
Marginalization in their own societies and exclusion from access to political and
economic decision-making, make them poor. The question of equality is, therefore, at
the centre of our work. Power and inequality are everywhere and at every level in society,
not just at a national level in the political arena of governments and parliaments. You
will also find them at a household level where women are excluded, have no rights and
no entitlements to own land or to inherit. They can be found at a community level where
youth is not seen as an actor for development.
Our commitment to equality is why we have put the issue of women’s right as the highest
priority in our programs. It is also why we, in our healthcare program, have taken up the
position of women’s health, including sexual and reproductive health, as a key issue. We
know that this issue meets with a lot of suspicion in the Catholic Church, but this cannot
be ignored when developing a strategy on equality.
The Catholic Church is an important actor in many of these equality-focused programs.
In East India and Papua, religious orders and bishops have made clear commitments in
spite of pressure from governments and the military not to do so. In our commitment
to strengthen the position of women in healthcare, we find grass root Catholic health
institutions that share the same vision.
In our mission statement we formulated “every person counts” as a reflection of the
human dignity clause in Catholic social teaching. Where political systems can accept
sacrificing people for the sake of the greater society, Christianity can never live with such
a profit and loss approach.
The issue of equality will have the highest of priority in the post-2015 agenda when the
fifteen years of the Millennium Development Goals will be over. We can no longer be
satisfied with simply addressing the symptoms and the consequences, we have to dig
deeper and commit ourselves to work on the root causes of poverty. Inequality is the most
important root cause.
Community
In its strategy for the next five years, Cordaid has developed a concept of global communities
of change. In order to be able to effectively address issues of poverty and exclusion
in our complex and global world, financing isolated programs and projects will not be
sufficient. The bilateral relationship with partner organizations is, in itself, not enough
to work on social transformation. All meaningful processes of social transformation
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are multi-stakeholder processes where a variety of actors play a role. Building global
communities where people and organizations with a diversity of knowledge, experience
and influence will meet and work together, is our response to changing world order. It
is based on the community notion that is, as I explained earlier, basic to the Christian
tradition. This notion of community in the Christian tradition is always a community
within diversity. Only organizing like-minded groups and individuals is not enough.
Christian communities that bridge the divide of class, ethnicity and political affiliation
are of immense importance to the process of transformation. It requires the courage to
leave the comfort zone of organizations and engage with the other who sometimes is an
adversary or even an awkward person.
It requires a culture of transparency and of real engagement. I have learned much from
Francisco de Roux, a Colombian Jesuit, who has done a lot as a mediator in the struggle
between the army, the guerilla forces of the FARC and the paramilitary groups. Everybody
knew his position as a defender of human rights and as a champion for the victims of
violence and torture. He was, however, also a credible builder of bridges between the
different parties. This example of clarity on position and, at the same time, of real
engagement in processes of change is our inspiration for the communities of change
approach. I firmly believe that it is a genuine Christian concept of community.
This community approach has inspired us to take up the issue of migration as an
important issue for the next few years. In the North and South, the migration issue,
diversity and the living together of people from different social, cultural and religious
backgrounds will become vital to our globalizing world.
take the limited natural resources of our world and the need to share them in a just
way into account, the notion of prosperity must be redefined. An increase in GDP,
production and consumption must not be the first and sole indicators of prosperity.
Flourishing communities should be our target where caring for one another, generosity
and enjoying the gifts of the community and of creation will be part of our wellbeing.
Without such a new redefinition of prosperity, we will face stress and frustration in our
northern hemisphere when we need to deal with sharing power and sharing the wealth of
creation. Such a vision of the good life must be firmly based on the principles of Catholic
social teaching where the care for the individual, the community and creation are seen as
integrated aspects of that good life.
For Cordaid, the relation with the Catholic Church will remain an important pillar of its
strategy. As a worldwide network, it offers tremendous opportunities to build global
communities and to connect people. We have a lot in common regardless of whether this
is explicit or a silent covenant, because of our shared basic values and spirituality.
The good life
Up until now a comprehensive vision of the good life has not yet been part of Cordaid’s
strategy. I see a clear task for the organization in this area. I believe it will be important to
develop such a comprehensive perspective on the good life. Now that the model of Western
Europe can no longer be the perspective for development for sustainability reasons, we, as
a development organization, must formulate a new horizon. Such a new horizon should
be built on two basic notions: justice and sustainability. These basic notions are already
values that underpin our strategy. To build a vision of the good life based on these notions is,
however, still a task for the near future. We already have the building blocks: the last few years
we made climate change and the stewardship of natural resources two of our core issues. We
also made clear in addressing the issue of religion and development in the public debate on
development, that development is more than just economics or basic services.
Such a vision of the good life is also urgently needed for our work in the Netherlands
and in global North. If we want to cope with a new world order and if we fully want to
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37
Afterword
To conclude, I would like to thank the School of Theology at Tilburg University for inviting
me to speak here. I was, in fact, invited to reflect and to dig deeper into the consequences
of the transformation our world is currently facing. It was a real honor to address all of you
today. I would like to thank Staf Hellemans in particular for his advice during the process
of preparing this lecture.
“Do not be afraid” is perhaps the most powerful message of Christianity in these confusing times of a changing world. It is a message that – and here I will believe others who are
better in counting - occurs more than 350 times in the Bible. It is the message to Abraham
when he leaves Ur, to Moses when he liberates his people, to David when he takes up the
fight with Goliath, and to Mary when the angel announces to her that she will give birth to
Jesus. It is also a message for today and tomorrow:
• Do not be afraid of the future because it will be God’s future, given to us.
• Do not be afraid of the diversity of others, because all of them are your sisters and
brothers created in the image of your God.
• Do not be afraid to share because sharing is the way to create abundance.
Maybe some of you have recognized in the title of this lecture the title of a book published
a few years ago on the life and work of Mgr. Muskens. I dedicate this lecture to his inspiring
work. His open eyes for the world, his competence to connect and his trust in God will
always be a source of inspiration for me and for Cordaid.
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‘Do not be afraid’
39
Literature
Fittousie commissie
Overlopen naar de Barbaren, Erik Borgman
God op zijn plaats, Ian Buruma
Een seculiere tijd, Charles Taylor
Goden Breken, Marc de Kesel
Christianity and contemporary politics, Luke Bretherton
Happiness, Richard Payard
Human Dignity in the context of Globalization, D. Loose and S. Waanders (eds)
Geloven dat het kan, René Grotenhuis
Over grenzen heen, René Grotenhuis
Dead Aid, Dambisa Moyo
Minder pretentie, meer ambitie, WRR rapport
Wees niet bang - het levensverhaal van Tiny Muskens, Arjan Broers
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41
Colofon
copyright
drs. René Grotenhuis
vormgeving en druk
Van der Perk Ontwerpstudio en Drukkerij
Groot-Ammers
fotografie
Cordaid, Den Haag
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