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

Part 2

MANY OF BATSTONE'S DRAMATIC prognostications have remarkable similarities to things that have happened at earlier times of rapid economic, social and political change. The Industrial Revolution, after all, constituted a profound watershead in the human experience, especially in terms of opening up mass production. No matter what we think of capitalism (and I don't much like its moral hollowness), the fact remains that probably many more people have been fed, housed, educated and kept well relative to the hunger, homelessness, poverty of pre-modern times. When the French Revolution (despite it terror) ushered in possibilities for democratic politics in Western Europe, many commentators predicted that the world was about to be ruled by mobs. Well, mass democratic politics today are frequently less than admirable, but far fewer people today live under tyrannies than did people in pre-democratic times. When cheap paperback books became available in the 19th century, not a few opined that this would be the end of civilised culture as we knew it (the damned working classes will start getting views on things!). Yet far greater proportions of people today read the classics than ever before in human history-and if we think that is without benefit then we should be voting for One Nation and burning books.

Yes, we are at a threshold of immense change. But that should not be over-stated. For all its flaws and evils, modernity's invention of democracy and mass education have overwhelming been for the good. The curtailing of ruthless and narcissistic rulers and the informing of people of their real situations and their rights as dignified and worthy citizens of the world, are arguably the best aspects of the modern era in history, marking modernity out as a significant step forward in the human adventure.

Whether this era is now coming to an end continues to be seriously and fruitfully debated (see, for example, Robert J. Holton, Globalisation and the Nation-State, Macmillan, 1998; Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, Stanford Univeristy Press, 1990). Let us not, however, lose sight of the gains of modernity, even as we identify and criticise its immense failings (Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, CUP, 1989). And it may well be that modernity's greatest achievement will, in due course, come to be seen as opening up the possibilities for constructing a humane and spiritually enriched gobalised world.

This is where Batstone's language gets a bit in the way. His globalisation is a bit too much sound and fury. Its central focus is what the eminent idealist International Relations theorist Richard Falk calls "globalisation from above" (On Humane Governance: Towards a New Global Politics, Pennsylvania UP, 1995). Globalisation from above is, inter alia, the revolution in communications technology and global finance-the late-20th century reconstruction of the very old processes of imperialism. It is what media conglomerates, the IMF and global currency traders do as they send out voracious tentacles all over the globe seeking markets and profits to advantage an already rich and powerful (and very greedy) minority based mainly on the east coast of the US and in Western Europe.

But Professor Falk also draws our attention to what he terms "globalisation from below". This is a more human-to-human process. It comes about through immigration, tourism, cultural exchange programs, NGOs and churches (in overseas aid projects), and the like. As more of this activity moves around the globe, and as our communications technology makes the world's many crises, wars, tragedies and natural disasters (most of which have causes closely linked to human failings) vividly evident to us (through on-the-spot television reports) we see things happening to people that move us to the point of mobilising us. Instead of seeing the victims of these crises as 'others' they become 'us'. Globalisation can also become a process of universalising compassion. This is its great up-side.

But for 'others' to be come 'us' (for the world to become humanly and humanely intimate with itself: which is what globalisation from below can be all about) we have to get to know each other far better than we now do. Prejudices about each other have to be dispensed with. People have to realise that the cultural, religious, ethnic, linguistic and regional differences that we see in the world are sublime evidence of an ultimate creative principle. For this to happen, the great civilisations need to be in genuine dialogue with each other. Otherwise, they may well fall into the grim and violent post-Cold War future predicted in the apocalyptic and influential book by Samuel Huntington (The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon and Schuster, 1996).

This is where Australian theologian thinking could start playing a leading role. Within the foggy myths of Australian secularism we are nonetheless heirs to a broadly Judeo-Christian religious traditions (or set of traditions). There are three elements that such a framework could draw on to put in place a genuine Australian theology: Aboriginality, multiculturalism and proximity to Asia. All of these elements will achieve immense salience as Australia fully enters the processes of globalisation. Imagining them intelligently, with a view to fully understanding their divine implications, is the first thing an applied theology could well contemplate.

But it is the third element that is of most immediate global consequence. Australia's basically Euro-religious inheritance is astonishingly well placed to open up a permanent international dialogue with Asia's Great Traditions. Finding common ground on issues such as human rights with Indonesian and Malay Islam, with East Asia's Mahayana Buddhism and Southeast Asia's Theravada Buddhism, with Hinduism in all its rich expressions in South Asia, with the forms of neo-Confucianism alive in China, Korea and Japan, will I contend, be a fairly easy process. And then we could be at the head of a global religious conversation that would be a loving counter to the threats of a clash of civilisations.

So in being awed by the drama of globalisation from above, let us not lose sight of the human possibilities in globalisation from below. At the forefront of these possibilities is a religious challenge for Australia. It is a challenge that could lift up our hearts and give us a theological influence that so far has eluded us in this country.

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