Insights about community come from unexpected places. For
example, in recent years coalition work on the negative
impact of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
(WB/IMF) has given rise to reflections on God’s call to
community living.
A faith-based group centered in Washington, D.C., with
connections across the country, has challenged the WB/IMF for
several years on their half-century of largely ineffective
lending practices toward poor nations. Known popularly as the
Religious Working Group, this interdenominational gathering
has acquired increasing expertise in the arcane and complex
world of international borrowing and lending.
They have mastered concepts such as "multilateral and
bilateral debts," "preferred creditor status,"
"structural adjustment programs," and many more.
They continually discuss effective approaches to the staffers
and directors at the international lending institutions, and
assess the strategies employed after each meeting with those
policy makers.
Each fall, on the occasion of the annual gathering of
WB/IMF operatives from around the world, the Working Group
holds a prayer service to ask divine guidance for themselves
and these institutions in the all-important work of global
development and justice. On Good Friday each year, they
conduct a public Way of the Cross through the streets of
Washington, D.C., stopping at the centers of economic power
where decisions taken often result in Jesus being crucified
again.
Predictably, a strengthening of ecumenical and community
bonds has resulted from the countless hours that these
Christians from various traditions have spent together. What
is common in their theologies and ethical convictions has
become so much more relevant than what divides the members of
the Working Group.
The experience of this effective group of Christians
proves the oft-cited point that ecumenism will happen not so
much as a result of doctrinal discussions, but through
real-life activities on behalf of a suffering world.
Eucharist would seem much more appropriate for RWG members
after a tough session at the World Bank or International
Monetary Fund than among a group of religious experts
discussing transubstantiation.
IT’S NOT SURPRISING that the Religious Working Group
has distilled its experience into a set of principles that
guide their work. But it is curious at first blush that the
group’s work on this most global of issues—world
debt—has led them to formulate a principle regarding
community: "God intends all people to live in covenant
community according to the norms of love and justice."
However, when one reads the rationale for this statement,
the direct connection between international indebtedness and
grass-roots communities becomes apparent. How can people live
together peacefully when they cannot meet their
families’ needs, share life as peers, enjoy a measure of
personal dignity? Unemployment, decreasing wages,
deteriorating working conditions, and environmental
damage—direct results of IMF structural adjustment
programs in debtor countries—undermine communal living
at the most basic level. To paraphrase what is said about
politics: All economics is local.
What this Christian community, the Religious Working
Group, has demonstrated is something highlighted in a new
book on Mark’s gospel. In Say to This Mountain,
by Ched Myers and others (Orbis Books, 1996), the authors
(myself included) apply Jesus’ promise about the
possibility of moving mountains precisely to the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund. Despite the enormous power
and influence of these institutions since World War II, the
mountain will be moved—in this case is being
moved—when committed people, acting today in community,
decide that "50 years is enough."
JOE NANGLE, O.F.M., is executive director of Franciscan
Mission Service and a member of Assisi Community in Washington,
D.C.
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