Global Reconciliation Panel Says Poverty and Disease Should--and Can--Be Overcome
Episcopal News Service. April 22, 2002 [2002-101]
Tracy J. Sukraw, Editor of The Episcopal Times, the newspaper of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts
(ENS) At a recent symposium on global reconciliation at Episcopal Divinity School (EDS) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the message from prominent Anglican leaders that we must overcome poverty and disease in our world, coupled with a Harvard economist's belief that we can actually do it--and do it now--made a compelling case for action toward making "God's dream" come true.
Panelists Frank T. Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, and Desmond Tutu, retired archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, each spoke of the power of human agency in fulfilling "God's dream," in Tutu's words, that creation might live justly and in peace.
But surprisingly, it was the economist in the group, Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for International Development at Harvard University, whose message was perhaps the most optimistic.
"We can actually end absolute poverty in the world," Sachs said. The unprecedented wealth of countries like the United States and the scientific and technological progress of this "new age" of globalization "make it possible for us to reach all of the world if we care to do so. We have become so extraordinarily rich without knowing it, because we're always looking across the street and perhaps not looking across the world," he said. If we cared to shift our gaze, he said, "we'll find ways to have neighbors of prosperity in all parts of the world."
Rich and poor as partners
The April 6 event marked the 10th anniversary of Episcopal Divinity School's Anglican, Global and Ecumenical Studies program. Other panel members were Archdeacon Fagamalama Tuatgaloa-Matalavea, the Anglican observer to the United Nations, and the Rev. Dr. Joan M. Martin, associate professor of Christian ethics at EDS.
Globalization--"not a simple you're for it or you're against it" phenomenon, Sachs told the audience of several hundred--has not solved the problems of the world's poor. In terms of some of its economic, political, ecological and cultural ramifications, it has actually had an adverse effect in some of the world's poorest and conflict-ridden parts.
"People are not just suffering, they are dying by the millions, going right over the edge every year for lack of food, lack of access to the most basic health services," Sachs said. He cited annual death tolls in the millions from AIDS, as well as curable diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, respiratory infections, tetanus and measles.
The $35 to $40 per person that Sachs said it would cost to bring live-saving measures to 8 million people in the lowest income countries is well beyond those countries' reach. "It's not that the money involved is so vast, but that the poverty is so extreme," he pointed out.
Yet as disastrous as the current picture is, Sachs said, the future is not yet written. "Indeed we do have within our means a way to find a path around the abyss. It really lies within our hands" to "spread the benefits of prosperity and economic productivity which [now] are enjoyed by only a sixth of humanity."
Sachs estimated that one penny of every $10 earned in the world's wealthiest nations would save 25,000 lives every day: "We can do this. We can do this for health, we can do this for education, we can do this for hunger, we can do this for access to clean water and sanitation--if the rich and the poor of the world will be partners."
By spending one penny out of every $100 on international health assistance, the U.S. is "the stingiest of all donors in the world," he said, ranking 22nd out of 22 donor countries at the beginning of this year. President Bush's February commitment of an additional $10 million for the world's poor is a hopeful step, Sachs said.
U.S. citizens must make their political leaders see that "a vote for foreign aid is not a dangerous vote, it's a necessary vote. It's something we have to do for our own humanity and our own security," Sachs said.
Questions of power
Sachs called for "a global ethic that is consistent with our global times," and ethics professor Joan Martin, in her response, asked, "Who has the power and by whose power do we live?"
"It seems to me that unless we talk about the structures of power...unless we talk about what equity means in a world where there are very rich nations and very poor nations, then we will not address some of the fundamental obstacles," Martin said. She criticized U.S. domestic policy on environmental and welfare and employment issues, saying that the U.S.'s track record for serving the poor at home makes her question its will to form the partnerships required internationally to address the plight of the world's poor.
Martin said that if it is true that local congregations are the fundamental channels of God's mission, then "there are many implications for the training of women and men in local churches" and in seminaries for "training leaders for the church and the world" in light of commitments to justice, compassion and reconciliation.
"Every one of us as Christians, we are sent, even as Jesus was sent, to recover that which God has given us and which we, through our humanly constructed world, have lost," she said.
Network of relatedness
Griswold spoke of ongoing work by the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops toward reconciliation--individually, communally, globally and across faiths. "I think often people of faith are rather passive in the face of the overwhelming complexities that determine our common life, and I think that in a variety of ways, God says to us, I'm involving you in my project."
He praised the work of the Episcopal Church's Office of Government Relations in Washington, D.C., as well as Episcopal Relief and Development, but said that the Anglican Church, as "a worldwide network of relatedness," has "not yet taken seriously the possibilities that reside in those multiple relationships."
Matalavea, who as Anglican observer to the UN represents 73 million people in 165 countries, too, talked about the possibilities within the Anglican Communion, and spoke for the well-being of families worldwide. "Women and children are among the most vulnerable people in the world and are numerous among the have-nots in our global community," she said.
God's plea: 'Help me'
Referring to Sachs's statistics that 25,000 die every day for lack of food and basic health care services, Archbishop Tutu pleaded with the assembly to remember, "That's somebody's mother. That's somebody's son."
In whispered tones that brought the room to a dramatic hush, Tutu spoke of "an incredible paradox": "We have an extraordinary God, a God who is omnipotent and so extraordinarily impotent. 'Help me," is God's plea."
The image of all people being called by God into one human family is not sentimental, but radical, because it requires provision "to each according to their need, not according to their ability," Tutu said. "God says, Go and be what you are already. Go, go, go and wipe God's tears."