Alternative Globalization Addressing Peoples and Earth

the land. Justice calls for deep transformation of relationships within society
and with the earth.
In this understanding, justice - itself a gift of God’s grace - is “transformative
justice”, a term coined in the context of the WCC’s work on overcoming
racism. Transformative justice emphasizes the constructive task of building
just, participatory and sustainable communities wherever human beings
have to bear the consequences of inequality and exclusion in the economic
and political system. Injustice is the systematic exclusion of people from
the decisions affecting their communities. It is the destruction of their
capacities to be self-providing, self-organizing, and self-governing in
meeting their own needs and that of the land. Justice is present only when
there is equitable distribution of social goods, as reflected in the Jubilee
legislation. It also honours the Jubilee affirmation that the earth has its
own requirements for its own regeneration. But the heart of transformative
justice, as a matter of human agency, includes recognition and
participation. This means communities and societies that:
• are genuinely inclusive and participatory (political, social and cultural
justice);
• are ready to correct mal-distribution of power and to overcome the
gap between the rich and powerful and the people in poverty within
and between countries (economic justice);
• accept humanity’s dependence upon the earth, and support sustainable
ways for organizing and developing themselves and the sharing of
natural resources (ecological justice).
The focus of this form of justice, then, is a clear preference for participation,
mutual recognition and the agency of every member of a community, and
the critique of all forms of power-concentration in the hands of only a
few. The fruit of transformative justice is human dignity and peace.
2.5 Sharing life at God’s table: an example of an AGAPE
economy of life
A glimpse of transformative justice can be seen in Jesus’ meal with sinners
which the early church came to practise as the eucharist. The early church
celebrated the eucharist embedded in the agape-meal in anticipation of
the eschatological banquet, the final celebration of life in its fullness. In
Acts 2:42ff. and 4:32-35, the early Christian community is depicted as a
community sustained by a love- and life-nourishing relationship with God
and with one another, a community sharing the necessities of life
exchanging stories of empowerment and hope.
Like the Passover meal, the agape-meal is a transformative meal. It recalls
the “dangerous memory” of a liberating God, and calls for a different form
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