a small planet.
Rethinking the future . . .
A theology of oikos is a coherent framework for presenting afresh a global ethic for the interrelationship between economy, ecology, and ecumenism. Amplifying my previous McFague quotation:
The issues are global, systemic, economic and political: hence the solutions must be as well. An ecological liberation theology will involve at least two such tasks. One is envisioning an alternative good life, and the other is working to make systemic changes, especially economic ones, so that this alternative vision can have a public impact. The alternative notion of the abundant life would be radically different from the current ‘good life’ from which most of us benefit.14
This oikos book represents a lifetime of praxis, both action and reflection, upon such oikos thinking, inevitably challenging our westernized views and comforts as McFague’s quote predicts we should.
What lies ahead are three topic-focused sections—“Economy,” “Ecology,” and “Ecumeny”15—before a concluding three-part section, which attempts through both biography and practical advocacy to demonstrate making such oikos a prophetic reality now. Each of those three topic-focused sections contain their own three chapters: one explores the subject, another explores humanity’s predilection to its abuse, while each section’s final chapter offers some alternative Godward patterns of that topic’s daily expression. Within all the analysis and advocacy is the God-talk about it, enabling us to weave new patterns of theology to speak into the world’s debates as Earth’s crises deepen for all its peoples.
As the central focus is to make the unifying oikos link, I can only paint the broad brushstrokes of each part of this triptych. Other than the narratives offered and the geographical examples provided, much of the detail and pointillistic moments for you will be provided by your experience, reading, and context.
Some years ago, the zoologist John Walsh led the rescue of animals trapped or abandoned by the rising waters behind Surinam’s newly built Afobaka dam. He recounted his experiences in his book, Time is Short and the Water Rises.16 The economic and ecological waters respectively threaten to drown our planet metaphorically and literally, as ecumenically more of God’s people live at odds with both one another—whether poor or rich, of faith or not—and with our fellow species. No longer is this just about Antarctic whales or the Nenet and their caribou. It is about the agenda of the world between them, too. “Time is Short . . .” means it is time to read on . . .
1. Caribou are called reindeer in English-speaking Europe and Australia.
2. www.seashepherd.org.
3. Francis, What in God’s Name, 108–10.
4. Francis, Earth, Air, Fire, Water, 75.
5. Francis, Shalom, 138–48.
6. Kirby, Death at Sea World.
7. Costanza, ed., Introduction to Ecological Economics, 179.
8. McFague, Life Abundant, xii.
9. Brandt, ed., North-South.
10. Brueggemann, Living toward a Vision, 40.
11. Francis, Shalom, 19.
12. Francis, Foxes Have Holes, 103–11.
13. Francis, Shalom.
14. McFague, Life Abundant, 35.
15. I have deliberately kept the word “ecumeny” rather than the better known adjective “ecumenical.” I first encountered the frequent use of the word “ecumeny,” as a noun meaning “those who are ecumenical” or more loosely “the outward looking (religious) community,” amongst English- and German-speaking Lutherans. The term was frequently used at the annual German Kirchentag, a city-wide ecumenical festival of lectures, seminars, worship, and other gatherings.
16. Walsh and Gannon, Time is Short.
1 Render to Caesar?
They say, “See Venice—and die!” I nearly did—but that is a story for later.
Historically, Venice virtually sat at the crossroads of the trade routes from China and the rest of Asia, across to Africa, through the Mediterranean, and up into Europe. Because of late-medieval, regional, internecine violence, folks escaped into the shallow Venetian lagoon area, building houses, quays, and market spaces on pilings driven into the sandy or clay banks, hidden just below the surface. It grew to be the world’s greatest trading city.
For half a millennium, the Venetian ducat was the basis of gold currency: it was not two centuries ago that a ducat would buy a closet of fine clothes or a feast for family and friends or a night with the best courtesan. But as in so many rich societies, the laboring poor had been kept in order with a daily evening meal and tiny wages. Those who managed workers had part of their wages paid in easily dried sale (sea-salt), giving rise to their payments being known as salare, hence “salary.” That pure sea salt was a sought-after commodity, its production being controlled by the doge (Venetian ruler) and the merchants, who traded in ducats. Those with just a salare could use their salt to trade with the city’s restaurants, shopkeepers, local fisherman, and the vegetable sellers who came across the lagoon by boat.
Venice was a mercantile trading economy, where the richest could fund explorers such as Marco Polo or the captains of ships from other nations, who subsequently discovered the Americas and East Indies.1 Venice provided a prophetic microcosm of currency trading at different levels.
Learning from my past
As elementary schoolboys with a few pennies each week, we bought bubble gum whose unique selling point was the enclosed, facsimile, historic US bank notes. The phase lasted about a year as weekly, we accrued more “wealth”; occasionally, you might get a $10 or $100 bill, among the more usual early greenbacks. Boys from a neighboring housing project preferred to trade and keep Confederate (not really understanding the politics) to the Union notes my group preferred. There were more of those Confederate collectors, so our bartering power increased—we would give only three Confederate dollars away in return for five Union ones. We began trading other things, like pens and pocket knives, for these mock dollars and, in our childish ways, we were learning lessons
