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Theological Education Incarnating Globalization in ATS Schools: Issues, Experiences, Understandings, Challenges Volume 35 Number 2 Spring 1999 ISSNi 0040-5620 ii Theological Education Incarnating Globalization in ATS Schools: Issues, Experiences, Understandings, Challenges Volume 35 Number 2 Spring 1999 i ISSN 0040-5620 THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION Volume 35, Number 2 Spring 1999 DANIEL O. ALESHIRE Executive Editor JUDITH A. BERLING Issue Editor NANCY MERRILL Managing Editor MARY McMILLAN Production Assistant Theological Education is published semiannually by The Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada 10 Summit Park Drive, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15275-1103. For subscription information or to order additional copies or selected back issues, please contact the Association. phone: 412-788-6505; fax: 412-788-6510 e-mail: [email protected]; website: http://www.ats.edu Manuscripts should be mailed to the Managing Editor at the address above. Please submit three hard copies of the manuscript; documents in electronic form will be requested subsequently. Guidelines on manuscript formatting are available upon request. To be considered for the journal, articles must address issues related to graduate theological education in North America. Submissions are reviewed by mem- bers of the ATS Communications Advisory Committee, who then make recommenda- tions regarding their publication. © 1999 The Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by means of any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act, or in writing from the publisher. Permission is hereby granted without charge for the reproduction and distribution of this work, or any of its parts, for educational purposes by the faculty or administration of member institutions of The Association of Theological Schools, provided that no fee or compensation is charged for copies, use of, or access to such information beyond the actual cost of reproduction or access, and that the copyright notice is included intact. Requests for permission for all other uses of any part of this work should be addressed in writing to the Managing Editor, The Association of Theological Schools, 10 Summit Park Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15275-1103. This periodical is indexed in Religion Index One: Periodicals, Religion Indexes: RIO/RIT/IBRR 1975- on CD-ROM and ATLA Religion Database on CD-ROM, published by American Theological Library Association, 820 Church Street, Evanston IL 60201-5613; E-mail: [email protected]; WWW:http:/ /atla.library.vanderbilt.edu/atla/home.html. ii Contents Foreword Robert J. Schreiter, S.J. 1 The Changing Terrain of “Globalization” in the ATS Editor’s Introduction 1 Stumbling in the Right Direction 3 William Lesher and Donald Shriver The Changing Terrain 17 of “Globalization” in ATS Conversations Fumitaka Matsuoka Words and Deeds: 27 An Informal Assessment of Globalization in Theological Schools Daniel O. Aleshire 2 The Dynamics of “Globalization” and Their Theological Significance Editor’s Introduction 33 The Calculus of Global Culture 35 Kathryn Poethig Religion and Theology in Global Culture 53 Robert J. Schreiter, S.J. with excerpts from The New Catholicity: Theology Between the Global and the Local Globalization, Faith, and Theological Education 67 Max L. Stackhouse A Decade of Special Issues 79 on Globalization in Theological Education iii 3 Report on the ATS Telephone Survey on Cross-Cultural Relationships Collective Wisdom: What ATS Schools Have Learned 85 about Establishing, Sustaining, and Evaluating Good Cross-Cultural Relationships Judith A. Berling 4 Particular Cases Getting Down to Cases: 99 Responses to Globalization in ATS Schools Judith A. Berling 5 Looking Toward the Future Editor’s Introduction 141 Globalization, World Religions, and Theological Education 143 M. Thomas Thangaraj If Globalization Is True, What Shall We Do? 155 Toward a Theology of Ministry Max L. Stackhouse One in Christ: An Intra-Christian Conversation 167 on Christianity and Difference in a Global World Robert F. Ferris and Judith A. Berling Resistance to the “Globalization” Emphasis in ATS Schools 181 from Theological Educators from Other Parts of the World William Lesher and Barbara Brown Zikmund iv Foreword Robert J. Schreiter, S.J. The thirty-fifth Biennial Meeting of The Association of Theological Schools declared the 1990s to be the “decade of globalization.” The intent of this proposal was to prepare the member schools for what was then perceived as the substantive changes taking place in their environments. These changes were likely to have an impact on the conduct of theological education and the practice of ministry in North America. The term “globalization” had followed upon “internationaliza- tion” as a way of describing those changes, some of which were as yet dimly perceived, although firmly intuited. Don S. Browning helped set the agenda for globalization at that same 1986 Biennial Meeting. He defined what he saw to be the four areas in which globalization could be discerned: world mission and evangelism, ecumenical cooperation, dialogue with other religions, and the pursuit of justice and libera- tion. What was clear was that the world was becoming a more interdependent place, and that the so-called First World churches needed to rethink their relationship to the so-called Third World churches, and to the world that both inhabited. To help move along the member schools into coming to grips with globaliza- tion, the Association set up a Task Force on Globalization and gave it a wide- ranging mandate to develop programs that aid schools in engaging the phenom- ena of globalization, to develop a literature on globalization and theological education, and to explore how globalization might become part and parcel of the wider understanding of theological education. A generous grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts was obtained to support this broad effort. Throughout most of that period (1986-1998), William E. Lesher, president of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, ably led the Task Force. Because globalization was still a less than univocal concept throughout the rest of the 1980s, efforts were made in the ATS not to foreclose the discussions prematurely by arriving at a single definition. This had the disadvantage at times of less focus than might have been sought, but it had the distinct advantage of keeping the broad spectrum of theological opinions within ATS in the conversa- tion. Globalization was certainly about interdependence and the development of communication technologies that created a greater interconnectedness in the world. It had distinct implications for the four areas that Browning had laid out in 1986. But a sharper focus was still to be sought. It was history, rather than any efforts on the part of ATS itself, that gave greater clarity to the meaning of the word “globalization.” In retrospect, at the end of the decade of the 1990s, a move by ATS to declare the nineties as the decade of globalization was clearly prescient. The events between 1989 and 1991, from the v collapse of the Berlin Wall to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, brought into focus what globalization was indeed becoming. The forces that created it had begun much earlier, but they came together in a powerful stream with currents that could now no longer be avoided. The powerful communication technologies developed in the 1980s became vehicles for a form of what Latin Americans call “neo-liberal capitalism” to sweep across the planet in the wake of the collapse of state socialism in most of the countries of the so-called Second World. The end of a bi-polar political arrangement set up in the wake of the Second World War crumbled. For more than a generation the world order had been arranged in dualities of East and West, capitalism and socialism, democracy and commu- nism. Suddenly these contrasting poles could no longer order our understanding of the world. By the end of the 1990s, the word “globalization” had become commonplace throughout the world. For those who benefited from its technologies and its speed, it has come to represent a new world order. For many more who experience it only as economic and social dislocation and loss of local autonomy, globalization appears as a new stage of oppression of the many poor by the few rich. Both perceptions are correct. They reveal the deep ambivalence about how these technological, economic, and social forces have come together to create a genu- inely global phenomenon that appears to brook no alternatives. The ATS Task Force on Globalization has moved through this entire history, covering the better part of two decades. The Task Force initiated a variety of conferences on globalization and theological education, as well as a summer session for faculty. It provided grants and consultations to member schools so that they might work on specific aspects of globalization. It published no less than five volumes on globalization and theological education, appearing as regular issues or special supplements to Theological Education. It developed case histories, surveys, and reflections on globalization and the self-study process. The work of the Task Force ends with the 2000 Biennium. This sixth and final volume produced by the Task Force presents a kind of summing up of fourteen years of work on behalf of member schools. It begins with reflections by some of those who have been leaders in the discussions since the early 1980s as well as articles that try to present the long view on what has changed and been achieved throughout those years. In a second section, an extended essay by a younger scholar looks at the state of the question about globalization as seen from the social sciences. Two persons from the Task Force respond to her work.

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