Chapter 10 - How Much does Christianity Help with the Construction of the 21st Century?

Summary

How does Christianity help the task of redefining the sense of human beings living together? What kind of contribution can it make to a spirituality that encompasses the other spiritual traditions of humanity? How can it help to create a new meaning of life?

Before proceeding, we must acknowledge, as many theologians have already accepted, that Christianity is partly responsible for the current crisis. Christianity has enforced with practices, biblical texts and doctrines the idea of human beings as masters and conquerors of creation.

The form by which Christianity organized itself socially also influenced this crisis. That is, by centralizing the power in the hands of clergy and excluding the women and marginalizing the laymen from sharing in this power, this makes Christianity partly responsible, not solely responsible, for the current crisis. The South still perceives Christianity as being too Eurocentric, Western, excluding and not-universalized.

The gesture of Ramiro Reynaga, a native Indian chief in Bolivia, at the time of the visit of the Pope to his country in 1985, is very symbolic for a school of thought that is critical of organized Christianity. Reynaga gave a letter to the Pope in the name of all native Indians which said: “We, native Indians of the Andes and of America, decide to take this occasion to give back to you your Bible because in five centuries it gave us neither love, nor peace, nor justice.