Connect with those struggling for food and freedom, European Christians urged

European Christians have been challenged by a Reformed church speaker from the South to connect spiritually with other cultures while assessing their own history and plotting the future of the continent.

"What have you learned from Europe's adventures and exploits - in Africa, the Far East and the Americas, from the ways of dealing with Jews and Gypsies? What have you learned about how to treat people?" said Patricia Sheerattan-Bisnauth of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC).

"Europe's legacies of racism, colonialism, disdain for other people's cultural values and the collusion with those who pursue hegemonic power is a challenge for European Christians."

Sheerattan-Bisnauth is executive secretary for WARC's Office for Church Renewal, Justice and Partnership. She was speaking in Mannheim, Germany, at the recent Kairos Europa Conference on "The Cultural Violence of Global Capitalism".

"In order to make sense of our world, we need to connect with people from the underside of history - those who struggle for food, freedom, dignity and the life of community against every system of death and destruction and those who struggle for emancipation of the mind and for spiritual renewal.

"Europe can be energised by the spirituality of liberation from Latin America and Africa's philosophy of ubuntu. Discerning lenses are needed to read the signs of our times and to respond to the call to bear witness to the hope of God's 'kin-dom' - where all people can exercise their right to dignity and freedom, where they can live in peace and harmony, and where love, compassion and justice undergird the life of the community."

Sheerattan-Bisnauth's address at the three-day gathering was titled "Mission and Spirituality of Resistance on the Basis of the Gospel".

She said that there is a notable number of people today searching for spiritual renewal and meaning for their lives, though they are unable to connect deeply with themselves, with each other or with the world.

"People are realising more and more that there has to be more to life and that spirituality leads to deeper levels of being," she said.

At the same time, Sheerattan-Bisnauth pointed to the role of many different Christian traditions at the World Social Forum in Kenya earlier this year and to resistance movements around the world where Christians play key roles. "Christians are being drawn more and more to the call for a spirituality of resistance, rooted in the midst of peoples' struggles."

She described spirituality as a life-giving and empowering energy that enables people to be fully human, live in peace with one another and with the cosmos and resist the powers and principalities which reduce, deny or destroy life.

Sheerattan-Bisnauth said the challenge for Europeans is to better connect with those within the continent itself and with the rest of the world, particularly those who are suffering from poverty and violence.

And Europeans need to better understand the continent's role in the transatlantic slave trade in order to set a new direction. "Critical understanding of the slave trade and the expansion of Europe can serve us well in reading the signs of today and the role of the West and its pursuit of power, wealth and the preservation of its way of life," she concluded.