Is There a Theology of Globalisation?
Responding to David Batstone
by Allan Patience
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 64
Winter 1999

Introduction

Allan Patience
Allan Patience teaches in the Globalisation Studies programme at the Victoria University of Technology.

GLOBALISATION IS ESPECIALLY noteworthy for the drama of the metaphors it has evoked-and, for that matter, provoked. Theologian David Batstone's language on the topic is a robust example of what I am referring to: a "whirlwind of social forces", "shift in personal and collective identities" and so on. Unfortunately, sometimes metaphors can get in the way of the message. To some extent that is a difficulty with Batstone's arresting essay. Images can end up as the false focus of our understanding: we have to beware of making a fetish of globalspeak. The excitement, immensity and melodrama (not to mention its excessive PR glitz) of global discourse must not be allowed to get in the way of a human-scale understanding of its very human consequences-and, we need to note, its divine possibilities.

Maybe a useful thing about David Batstone's essay is that it could provide an opening up of discussions on globalisation to Australian theology. That is certainly to be welcomed for what it could do for the ways we should be thinking about, and therefore taking hold of, globalisation in this country. The false drama of globalspeak notwithstanding, my concern is that if we don't get a moral grip on the processes of globalisation they will get hold of us, mercilessly.

Batstone's writing may also move some Australian theological thinkers towards some new imaginings, inspired by a rapidly (and, not infrequently, mysteriously) transforming and increasingly intimate (in Batstone's language, "networked") world (see, for example, the excellent volume edited by Joseph A. Camilleri and Chandra Muzaffar, Globalisation: The Perspectives and Experiences of the Religious Traditions of Asia Pacific, International Movement for a Just World, 1998). If not, Australian theology could once again be left behind, not infrequently seeming to outsiders to be dithering, lonely, derivative and compliant (though feminist theology seems less guilty of these unoriginal sins).

This cannot be allowed to go on in the face of a globalising world that could, perhaps most effectively, and ruthlessly, through its postmodern apologists, relativise religious thought and experience into oblivion. Furthermore, Australia is fabulously positioned to take a lead in religiously dialoguing in a world that is increasingly in need of conversations across faith, cultural, language, regional, economic, gender and other boundaries.

The label globalisation covers a host of meanings and Batstone has tried to dissect some of them. But he has over-stressed the relentless universalising effects of technology: "The melding of telephone, television and computer capabilities forge a critical redistribution of information that within a decade or so will link together nearly all beings and all objects." This is apocalyptic stuff. It is part of a revved-up globespeak which promotes talk about the trillions of dollars washing round the world at the touch of a currency trader's computer button, inundating smaller economies and curtailing state sovereignties everywhere-except the US and Western Europe, of course (see Dick Bryan and Michael Rafferty, The Global Economy in Australia, Allen and Unwin, 1999).

Batstone wants to get with this dubious language and its aggressive metaphors. Communities (based on older, imagined sentiments) will dissolve; libertarian choosings of what Oakeshott would call "utilitarian friendships" will abound (just how useful, rather than dramatically loveable, will our friends be to us?); centralised and hierarchical authority will collapse; democracy as number crunching (if that is what democracy has ever been) will pass away in the face of "communications networks"; people will learn to be oriented individually and organisationally to change rather than established orders; a lowering of political and policy vision will occur as a kind of political dumbing-down; information networks will push traditional teaching and learning aside; work will change (some jobs will disappear altogether); knowledge will be freely available; governments will emerge as new kinds of players in controlling the forces of globalisation; inclusive citizenship will be the order of the day; the mistakes of history will persist for those who can't cope with the new world; self-help not government assistance will be the order of the brave new day; global citizenship will arrive; the environment will be at last addressed; and so on.

But let's try to slow this breathless, gee whiz analysis down a bit.