Abstract
Globalisation today seems to be an implacable force at work trying to homogenise world cultures into the same format. Huntington’s well-known thesis sees a clash coming between Christian Western civilisation and the rest of the world. This article argues against Huntington that civilised cultures with different identities have comparable structural features. Because contrary cultures are all human constructs with good and bad mixed in, they can, like human relatives, learn from and correct one another rather than demonise others. It is posited that the deepest antagonism disturbing the world is not a Christian West versus the rest, but is largely the struggle between two tyrannical ideologies: a post-Christian capitalistic secularism and a theocratic fundamentalism. A biblical Christian mission of glocal culture formation (global awareness and local action) is offered as an alternative vision for our worsening dilemma. This biblically-rooted diaconal way to be redemptively busy in salvaging cultural activity proffers concrete hope. The life work of Bennie van der Walt is cited as an example, and a few illustrations of glocal artistry provide evidence that such a Christian mission can be deed as well as talk.
Highlights
It is posited that the deepest antagonism disturbing the world is not a Christian West versus the rest, but is largely the struggle between two tyrannical ideologies: a post-Christian capitalistic secularism and a theocratic fundamentalism
Huntington (1996a) is correct in positing that an unarguable religionfaith is at the root of the various world civilisations, and such fundamental faiths usually have a jealous claim on persons
The legacy of Roman Catholic missionnaries exploring the Americas and Asia, and later Protestant denominational missions settling into Africa to plant churches, did not bring Jesus pure and simple, but dressed the church in Western attire, sanitation (“cleanliness is next to godliness”), medicine, trade, and colonial rule
Summary
The biblical perspective, I believe, charters a global outlook and cultivating reach, since this whole world belongs to God who created all creatures. The internet is a transnational globalised system which is not so much here or there as it is nowhere in particular, but it can touchdown everywhere there is a Bill Gates terminal. Such a globalised setup, like the World Bank, seems to think wholesale, but not retail, and has a curious impersonal anonymity. That fact of fallible and sometimes perverse Christian activity is partially why globalisation is an incredibly complex matter, fraught with a living history of mixed good and evil that we existentially inhabit and are called upon to reform, to move into more normative channels, so that we humans may be blessed throughout the world rather than cursed
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