Kairos 30th Anniversary
Statement:
Dangerous Memory and Hope for the Future
We gathered in Johannesburg (near
Cottesloe) from 17 to 20 August 2015, to celebrate how the 1985 South African
Kairos document, “Challenge to the Church,” responded to a moment of truth in
the most painful days of Apartheid. That Kairos document inspired three decades
of Kairos movements in many different contexts. This celebration has now
re-inspired us toward a common humanity and a concern for human dignity and our
environment.
The pain of Marikana and the reasons
behind it (multinational profit before people and corporate greed) hovered over
our conference.
The 2009 Kairos Palestine document,
“A Moment of Truth,” a cry from the Palestinian Christian community, carries a
disturbing echo of the dangerous memory of the South African story of
Apartheid. Kairos Palestine has evoked a powerful global response from Kairos
contexts around the world. The catalyzing power of Kairos Palestine was deeply
felt in our gathering. We were inspired by this renewed energy. Palestine is
the space where our sacred texts are contested.
There was much to celebrate in this
gathering. Our Kairos conversations were intentionally multi-generational and
broadly international. We were grateful to engage deeply with Muslim and Jewish
perspectives. We found much joy in our solidarity and shared struggles. We were
particularly encouraged by the inter-generational nature of this gathering and
how that can be nurtured and encouraged. We are particularly inspired by the
birth Zinzi Kairos Mbenenge during the conference. “… for unto us a child is
given”!
A NEW KAIROS
We have reached a new moment of
truth, a new Kairos. We recognize how the coming of Jesus and his teaching
about a new kingdom and a new reign against the Roman empire of his day has
completely passed us by. We lament that, by and large, the church of today has
become distracted from this mission of preparing the way for God’s reign.
In our time, we find that various
sites of pain and struggle are joined in a Global Kairos, a shared quest for
justice. In our discussions, we named our shared struggle against the scourge
of this global empire of our times. Empire is an all-encompassing global
reality seeking to consolidate all forms of power while exploiting both
Creation and Humanity. The empire we face is not restricted by geography,
tribe, language or economy. Empire is an ideology of domination and
subjugation, fueled by violence, fed by fear and deception. It manifests itself
especially in racial, economic, cultural, patriarchal, sexual, and ecological
oppression. Empire deceptively informs dominant, white supremacist, capitalist
paradigms controlling global systems and structures. Global empire is sustained
by weapons and military bases (hardware) along with ideologies and theologies
(software).
We rejoice that resistance against
empire is manifested in a plurality of struggles throughout the world.
Struggles against ecological injustice, gender injustice and patriarchy,
landlessness, abuse of people on the move, refugee vulnerability, political and
religious persecution, social exclusion, denial of indigenous rights,
neglecting children’s rights, harm to LGBTI persons, access for the differently
abled, and racial supremacism represent only a portion of the struggles against
empire. Since 1985, Kairos documents have expressed resistance to these and
other realities in Central America, Europe, Malawi, India, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and
Palestine. In this conference, we were pleased to receive new Kairos documents
from siblings in Swaziland, Nigeria, and the United States. The memory of
unjust suffering in all contexts is dangerous to the purposes of empire.
In our listening to one another, we
found that the context of suffering and pain created by Israel’s oppression of
Palestine contains all aspects of empire. Palestine is therefore a microcosm of
global empire, a critical site of reflection that can bring experiences in
other locales into sharper focus. Palestine does not eclipse other situations
around the globe but instead intensifies the need for greater interconnection
and mutual engagement.
All Kairos movements emerge from
sites of grave injustice and deep pain. Every Kairos document is a cry to God
and to the world. We confess, however, that we have served two masters and
preached a gospel that requires nothing of the rich young ruler, even as we
build empire on the widow’s mite. We recognize that we and our church
institutions have often closed our ears to our siblings’ cries and drowned them
out. In many cases, very little action has followed. The church has often been
ambiguous and cautious in its response to human suffering. Sometimes, the
church has engaged in active opposition to the liberating work of God present
in communities of resistance, increasing church complicity in structures of
injustice. The church has often provided theologies of domination in the
service of Empire. In our discussions, we found that the South African Kairos
indictment of Church Theology is as relevant in our time as it was in 1985.
RESISTING IMPERIAL THEOLOGY
The dangerous memory of the South
African Kairos document provided a prophetic critique of State Theology,
theologies that validate and confirm forms of state terror. It identified as
heresy theologies that justify Apartheid. In our time, we are called to expand
this critique and rejection of state theology to address Imperial Theology, the
‘software’ that justifies imperial exploitation and oppression. We were
encouraged to find that, although Empire seeks to divide communities from one
another, peoples’ resistance can unite us across religious, ethnic and culture
divides.
Imperial theology is at work in the
continued oppression of Palestinians and the crisis now engulfing what is known
as the Middle East. Analysis and rejection of the State Theology supporting
Apartheid in South Africa was an essential element in exposing and resisting
that sinful system. In its dominant forms, Zionism has been used to justify the
dispossession, transfer, massacring, ghettoization and exploitation of the
Palestinian people. Zionism has become an element within the dominant
structures of empire. Politically, we call for an intensification of all
economic and political pressures on the State of Israel, including the
Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). In
our biblical interpretation, we strongly distinguish between biblical Israel
and the modern State of Israel. Theologically, we declare to be heresy any Christian
theologies that support the Zionism informing Israeli oppression.
We now therefore resolve
- to act and pray, inspired by the dangerous memory of
Jesus Christ, God’s siding with suffering and poor communities, aiming to
do all we can to return the global and local church to the mission of
Jesus to enact the reign of God, opening toward a new way of relating to
humanity and the earth;
- to encourage all Christians to respond to the
Palestinian Christian call to “come and see” the living stones of the Holy
Land, providing hope to all who suffer under the cross of illegal Israeli
Occupation;
- to advocate that international law must apply equally
to all. We reject the imperial dictate that imposes sanctions on some
regimes while vetoing and criminalizing popular calls for sanctions on
egregious violations of international law;
- to impress upon our churches, seminaries and
theological institutes the need to deepen theological engagement with the
pressing challenges of the world, including the global systems and
structures of empire and to promote Kairos spirituality;
- to reflect intentionally on the South African
experience of the effectiveness of the BDS efforts and express our full
support for an intensification of BDS as an effective, nonviolent strategy
against global empire;
- to create appropriate systems to ensure that young
people will be nurtured and mentored in the Kairos understanding of faith,
hope, and love and supported in their growth into leadership;
- to express public support for those working against
corruption in South Africa; while we rejoice that political apartheid has
ceased in South Africa, we lament that economic apartheid continues; we
commit to working toward Kairos Africa to ensure that the hopes of the next
generation of the African continent are not dashed by Empire; and
- to foster and nurture the Global Kairos for Justice
movement; we are because you are.
We are hard pressed on every side,
but not crushed; perplexed but not in despair,
persecuted but not abandoned; struck down but not destroyed. (2 Corinthians 4)
20 August 2015
