“I came that they may have life anda have it abundantly” - John 10:10
That to which you bind your heart, that is your god. - Martin Luther
At the beginning of a new millennium the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil (IECLB), gathered together in its XXII National Assembly, in Chapada dos Guimarães, Mato Grosso, from the 19th to the 22nd of October of 2000, concerned itself with its responsibility confronted with the situation in which our nation and the Brazilian people find themselves. Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, who sees the afflicted and exhausted multitudes as sheep without a pastor, also moved us to perceive a reality that cries out for justice, peace and a dignified life. We deplore and denounce the multiple mechanisms that promote injustice and exclusions. In the creation, God granted humanity all that is necessary for a dignified life. Included in this is the opportunity to work and take part in its benefits. The Gospel does not permit us to remain conformed when on the one hand there is a accumulation of wealth and on the other the basic essentials are lacking. We announce the coming of the kingdom of peace and justice which challenges us to be its heralds and instruments. For this reason the IECLB emitted the following manifesto.
1. Our inconformity
Do not be conformed to this age... (Romans 12:2)
The life of humanity is threatened. A great evil occupies all of the spaces and there are powers that take on the role of God. However, whoever gives into this temptation and holds the power, seeks to divest themselves of the condition of created, in order to submit men and women, youth and children, nature and the world to their own interests. The fruit of this self-sufficiency becomes a true idol designated in Scriptures as the power of money (Mammon). This same idol, adored and venerated, is the foundation of the hegemonic social-economic-political system of the world today. We are witnesses that this system demands sacrifices, makes its victims and promotes pain, suffering and death. Some of the consequences of this tragic action are mentioned here:
* Due to the uncontrolled flow of capital, this system promotes a true financial circle dance that, thanks to the new technologies of communication, makes it possible to daily move around billions of dollars in virtual money, which has caused economic collapses and led entire nations into suffering, anguish and despair.
* Through international financial organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank this system has imposed structural adjustments upon the poor and indebted nations increasing their dependence and directing their scarce resources to the payment of debt services.
For example, in the year 2000, Brazil paid 64 billion dollars to servicing the debt. In the last 10 years it has already paid 200 billion and still owes 240 billion dollars. This same dynamic has led the nation to create internal debts, making basic investments in the service areas (such as in education, health care, nutrition, housing, sanitation, transportation, pensions and retirements, etc.) unfeasible for the municipal, state and federal administrations.
* Because the priority of this system is to maximize capital gains, it has also disrespected the environment, destroying forests, polluting the air and the water and squandering nonrenewable natural resources as if they were limitless. The traditional subsistence farming, already affected by the international technological and genetic competition, is being increasingly substituted by farming of crops for exportation as a way of balancing out the payments. This process is further degraded by the practice in developed countries of subsidizing agriculture, thereby causing an accentuated decrease in the price of the agricultural and natural products on the international market.
* In the same way this system promotes a giant migratory flow of people seeking work opportunities and better living conditions in other parts of the country and outside the country. Ethnic identities and minorities are disrespected and violated. The process uproots people, destroying their cultural values and provoking a deep insecurity, making them easy preys of all types of manipulation.
* Likewise, this system generates an enormous quantity of people who are excluded from the rural areas and the metropolises. In this way it facilitates the proliferation of violence and the growth of criminality of all sorts, such as assaults, kidnappings, contraband, drug trafficking, sexual exploitation of women and children.
* Aside from this there is a deep change in the working conditions. In spite of new opportunities being created, the system also causes widespread unemployment. And this in turn, causes anguish and despair among the affected or threatened persons as to the future. In the effort to survive, the web of underemployment and informal jobs expands without a minimum of social security.
* The advances in scientific research which involve genetics and biotechnology, make the people feel insecure and exposed to, as yet, hidden interests. The risk that these advances may serve to manipulate and be used for predominantly commercial ends causes us great concern. An ethical social reflection about these resources as well as their social and political control is indispensable.
* We are witnesses to bellicose regional conflicts and violent manifestations that, aside from their economic causes, are also motivated by ethnic and even religious reasons. The money spent on weapons would be sufficient to pay off all the external debts of the world or guarantee that the basic needs of the world population could be met.
This entire situation that has been denounced here is in flagrant contradiction to the immense scientific technological capacity that exists today of generating resources, a capacity that has never existed in history up until the present. If these resources were socially well distributed, they would overcome all the iniquities mentioned and guarantee a dignified life for all of humanity. This contradiction leads us to the conclusion that the reality of suffering and injustice denounced above is not a fatality, much less is it the will of God, but it is the fruit of human ambition and of the concentration of wealth and power among people, groups and nations. As a church we recognize our part in this guilt. That is why in this context, we feel obligated to confess this guilt, but above all, to confess our faith, our hope and our commitment based on a God of justice and peace.
2. Confessing our hope
Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you (1 Peter 3:15)
The theology of grace encourages and strengthens us in the hope and in the transforming commitment in the face of an ideology of growth and unlimited accumulation. It also prevents us from having a theology that exalts consumerism as an end in itself or that glorifies prosperity separated from the values of justice. What we have and what we are is not our merit but represents a gift and grace of God. We are only a part of the divine creation. The creation is entrusted to us to care for it, never to exploit it.
We highlight a theology of love that gives of itself in opposition to an ideology that promotes exclusion and feeds on a culture of self satisfaction.
We believe in the God of life who hears the cries of the suffering people and the groans of his creation.
We believe in the God of life that expects mercy and does not impose sacrifices.
The idolatry of our days is excluded as an authentic option already in the words of Jesus: No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. (Mat 6: 24) The kingdom of God and his justice does not combine with the accumulation of wealth by some in detriment to meeting the existential needs of the collective.
We confess that the faith in the God of life frees us for acts of grace and service, of work and leisure, of celebration and solidarity because it relativizes the centrality of economics.
At the same time we confess our limits and our precariousness when it comes to living and experiencing sharing and the promotion justice and a dignified life for all. We are aware of the contradictions, failures and temptations that are present in the congregations and the church. We feel that we are also involved in the present economic political system to the point of being co- participants in a game with rules and ends that we disagree with. This crisis of values brings with it other serious consequences such as the trafficking and use of drugs and the increase of corruption in the public and private sectors in a scale never before imagined. We live in this ambiguity. We all are in need of liberation, renovation and a change of direction. We need repentance and a new life.
However, in faithfulness to God's Word and to the faith awakened and encouraged by the Holy Spirit we are urged to proclaim the reason of our faith in an era of enormous challenges as well as an era of great needs and temptations.
We believe in God who creates, maintains, saves and consoles.
That is why we reject pseudoreligious doctrines disguised as political economic systems and projects that promote death and demand veneration and adoration of themselves.
We believe in Jesus Christ, from whom we receive new life. We are forgiven and freed from all ties in order to serve in a free and thankful way all creatures because God in his love involves all and everything and excludes no one.
That is why we reject doctrines that preach of separating the material and spiritual spheres, depreciating the world and society and exalting the spiritual values. We equally reject all forms of racial prejudice and ethnic discrimination.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, who through the Word and the sacraments creates and maintains the church. The church is not formed of people free of guilt but of sinners justified by the grace of God, people called to make up congregations, to worship God and witness to their faith in a world marked by sin. This faith moves the church and all of its members to live in love and give of themselves in serving ones neighbors especially those who are smaller and weaker, forsaken and desolate, who have been unjustly treated and who suffer needs of any sort. As a human institution, the church itself and its members let themselves be questioned by the Word, in their faults, so that its service may be closer to what God wills.
This is why we reject doctrines that adapt the church to the world to such a point that it serves the hegemonic ideological and political interests, thus losing all of its critical prophetic dimension. We equally reject an individualism that, even though it affirms the dignity of each human person, in practice it scorns the person's insertion and fraternal living in community. We negate that a person should be totally self-sufficient, instead we affirm the necessity of serving one another.
3. Our vocation and action
Serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.(1 Pedro 4:10)
According to the biblical witness and to the reformer Martin Luther, faith will never remain idle. Consequently, Christians of the Lutheran confession are called to:
* Deny the ideology that supports the accumulation and concentration of wealth for the benefit of a few and in detriment to meeting the basic needs of the human beings and of maintaining God's good creation.
* Deny the worship of capital and the religion of consumerism as definers of the meaning of life.
* Deny economic models that do not consider the necessity and the urgency of a self-sustaining development that preserves life on the planet.
* Deny all forms of individualism that are aimed solely at self-satisfaction, disregarding the importance of collective and communitarian relationships as well as reciprocal service and solidarity.
* Deny any form of proselytizing competition among the churches, but affirm the necessity and the possibilities of ecumenical cooperation.
* Deny all types of intolerance and disrespect of persons of religious orientations that are different and distinct from the Christian faith, but value all endeavors in favor of peace and life.
Finally we recognize that the church as a communion of congregations centered in Christ, seeks to remain faithful to the God of Life. In this way it becomes, through the Holy Spirit, an instrument of encouragement, articulation and fulfillment of the evangelical promise and vocation to be the light of the world, salt of the earth and yeast in the dough. The Holy Spirit awakens us and opens our eyes to a new vision. It inspires us to act with creativity and boldness. It frees and empowers us to place concrete signs of the new life in solidary sharing, according to God's will.
In this way, the IECLB joins itself ecumenically to all the Christian churches and cooperates, as far as possible, with governmental and non-governmental organizations in order to promote justice through the healing of social ills. This is what the Missionary Action Plan of the IECLB (p. 14), approved at the XXII Assembly in Chapada dos Guimarães affirms. According to this Plan, we are all committed to the mission of Christ, who came so that all people may have life and have it in abundance (John 10:10).
Chapada dos Guimarães, MT, October 22, 2000
Huberto Kirchheim Darcy Laske Helio Erni Walber
Pastor President of the IECLB Church Assembly president of the IECLB Church Council President of the IECLB
