(2004.04.28)
Statement of Christian Social Forum 2004
Statement of Christian Social Forum 2004
With the topic of "The Changed World and Reforming of the Christian Social Movement", more than 200 of Christian social mission workers, Church ministers, lays, women, youths and students who are working in each areas to follow the Christ who is 쟲enewing the history participated in Christian Social Forum 2004 held in il-young Methodist Church training institute, from March 29th to 31th. The preparatory committee for Christian Social Forum, consisted of more than 40 social mission groups and National Council of Churches in Korea, commonly sponsored the forum. We spent two nights and three days for doing meeting, sharing friendship and dialog with the holy spirit who is changing the world and reforming the Church. We opened our heart in the precious time and shared the reflection of practices done by various Christian social mission groups last decade and discussed faithfully for the sake of building the vision for the new world on the basis of the reflection. Therefore we declare following statements for the foundation of new practice with the common points of views in spite of various differences.
- The world is changing rapidly and the changes include a great number of new potentialities for God"s justice and peace, at the same time negativity. We especially found out Christian social movements" new mission is against neoliberal globalization which causes most of people"s poverty, despair and violence in the world. Furthermore, realizing 쟴he power of Capital challenging against God controls not only the lives in political-economic world but also the human souls, 쟷e have to response on the essential problems earnestly and wholly. We also see the globalization from the bottom, the resistant globalization and the globalization for the alternative world are occurring against globalization of financial capital. We, workers of Christian social movements, confess Holy Spirit leads these hopeful movements.
- We reaffirm the United States of America"s unilateral diplomatic policies are the important causes to drive the whole world to wars and violence at all times. the United States of America"s unilateral diplomatic policies regard the third world countries against the benefit of the United States of America as the evil in the name of faith. We declare the series of wars and violence broken out are unjust. 젨Therefore we, Christian social movement groups participated in Christian Social Forum 2004, suggest the people"s action against dispatching troops to Iraq to all the peace movements groups in Korean society. We also agree that peace movements should radically expand the reunification movements to the more active and creative ways than the passive ways of resisting anti-peace. Christian movement groups determine to develope the peace education for reunification and make them 쟞pplied in the various educational places.
- Christian social movements have traditionally concentrated on protection for the right of the week in societies. But we realize commonly that Christian social movements should be strengthened for the right of the Min-jung being suffered more and more in the neoliberal world. Now we recognize that the Christian social movements with Min-jung are required to support for the struggles for realizing the alternatives by Mun-jung themselves, which is the church"s own ability, beyond the passive actions of protecting the week.
- The struggles of Christian social movements for human rights in the stream of alternative globalization should expand them to the movements for assuring the social rights to dignify social existences of human beings beyond protecting the rights of individuals" freedom. But we cannot deny there still are the situations of 쟣undamental human rights deprived. We agree that the abrogation of the law of head of family is starting point for the equality between women and men. We also believe that wherever the migrant workers live and work their human rights should be protected. We also confess that the Holy Spirit who breaks the unreasonable wall between human beings works in the migrant workers" struggles for the human rights in the situation of new culture. We also urge that the human rights of the people who reject the duty of military service for the sake of faith and conviction should be respected and a system of accepting social duties by various ways like the alternative military service system. But Christian social movements come to recognition that painful self-reflection is required on the assumption of all christian actions for human rights. We confess our responsibility of sin of anti-human rights done in the name of Christian customs, traditions and faiths.
- We agree that the whole Korean Christianity should be transformed. It is true that the Korean church"s serious problems are also obstacles to the Christian social movements. We acknowledge the ecumenical spirit of equality, justice, solidarity of peace in all creatures again and affirm that these are to be the system for guarding the movements. We reaffirm that the ecumenical leadership should be consisted through solidarity of the active responses of leaders in each places, not distributed by denominational and ecclesiastical authorities. The Christian social movements recognize that the appropriate reconstruction of the ecumenical leadership is urgently required for the sake of maturer movements.
- We realize that the Mammon"s controlling power with the form of neoliberalism out of the storm of Capitalism influences on the lives of individuals, the unconsciousness as well as spirituality. This reality stresses the importance of cultural movement which we have overlooked once again. We think that the contemporary values of the world and pathological attitude could be made out of the popular cultures. The Christian social movements learn from the various popular cultures for participating actively on the one hand. On the other hand, we agree on striving to develope our precious inheritances, thoughts and fruits of practices for sharing with people in contemporary world. We also pay attention to the influences spread by revolution of the electronic mediums on the most parts of lives with the light and darkness. We believe that all of these situations ask us to reflect the Christian social movements and reconstruct properly.
We go forward to the each place for practices with a lot of enlightenment and tasks and through discussions and reflections for 3days. We affirm that we deepen what we realized and recognized in the forum in each place for practices and make the solidarity firmer in order to settle our difficulties with the common endeavor. We affirm that the Christian social forum should be held every year with deeper matters and what we agreed and discussed in the forum should always be communicated in the places of the Christian social missions through the alternative ways. We also affirm to reconstruct the system for discussing with responsibility. In spite of our weakness, we go forward to the places of practices with the new Christian social missions following the Christ be with us ever forever.
March 31th, 2004
All the persons present in the Christian Social Forum 2004.
