Shaking the Gates of Hell: Faith-Led Resistance to Corporate Globalization

By Sharon Delgado

Shaking the Gates of Hell: Faith-Led Resistance to Corporate Globalization breaks new ground by describing the global economy and its effects from the perspective of an integrated theology of "the earth as primary revelation" and the institutional powers of this world. It reaches the conclusion that hope lies in nonviolent resistance and ecological and social responsibility based on God's action in Jesus and in the triumph of God over the powers. This book describes today's interrelated social, economic, and ecological crises and makes the case that we face a living hell on earth if we do not address them. It provides an overview of the global economic system and offers a comprehensive theological analysis of the network of primary institutions that make up what Walter Wink calls the "Domination System." It points readers in the direction of hope based on following the way of Jesus, who lived in nonviolent resistance to the powers of his day. This new, revised edition continues the powerful story of the original, extending the analysis of the global economy from the 2008 collapse and recession to its alleged recovery. It addresses the Obama administration's policies on economics, trade, and the environment, and provides further reflections on American foreign and military policy in this so-called New American Century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Release date: Jan 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781506432854

Book preview

Index

Preface

No one can serve two masters; for either [you] will hate the one and love the other, or else [you] will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

—Matthew 6:24 NKJV

Jesus warned that mammon (money/riches) can become an idol, replacing God in people’s lives. Yet money is currently being served on a global scale, as advanced free-market capitalism enthralls the multitudes, consolidates its grip over nations, and extends its institutional power around the world. In this system, dominated by global corporations, money rules. When money becomes an idol, everything is valued accordingly, and Jesus’s exhortation to love God and neighbor is treated with contempt. Corporate globalization, as described in this book, is rule by the false god of mammon on a global scale.

Shaking the Gates of Hell makes the case that the global system of unrestrained free-market capitalism is propelling humanity toward a living hell on earth, and challenges readers to work with others to reverse this growing momentum. We live at a time when humanity and the earth’s living systems face unprecedented danger. The current form of corporate-dominated globalization is escalating plunder of the earth’s riches, increasing exploitation of workers, expanding police and military repression, and leaving excessive wealth and corresponding poverty, violence, ecological devastation, and social disintegration in  its  wake.  The  most  powerful  nations  in  the  world  promote  this growing momentum, which pays off handsomely for wealthy individuals, giant corporations, and the politicians whose coffers they fill.

The destructiveness of the global economic system presents a moral challenge to all people of faith and conscience, especially those of us whom this system benefits. People who live in rich and powerful nations, especially the United States, bear a unique responsibility. Our government dominates key global institutions that affect the lives of billions of people. Our military-industrial complex seeks to ensure unfettered access to the world’s resources and enforces a form of economic globalization that benefits US-based corporations at the expense of people and the earth. Our patterns of overconsumption lead to environmental degradation and growing global inequity. Our actions and our inaction affect others, for our lives intermingle with the lives of people around the world and with the whole community of life.

In this pivotal time, the world desperately needs people who are willing to speak and act clearly, with power and integrity, to move us in the direction of hope. This book points to Jesus as inspiration, guide, and model for resisting and transforming the global system that dominates the world in our time.  Although I write from a Christian perspective, the ideas I present have a universal application. This book is a call to people of faith to bring all the resources of the world’s great spiritual traditions to bear upon the current global crisis, and to join with the growing numbers of people who are resisting the forces of destruction and creating alternatives that sustain life. Only by tapping into these spiritual traditions and connecting with the wisdom of the earth itself will we have a spiritual and moral foundation strong enough to carry us through this time of crisis, when the earth and all its creatures are groaning in labor pains (Rom 8:22).

As this second edition of Shaking the Gates of Hell goes to press, resistance is more widespread and the book’s message is even more relevant than when the first edition was published in 2007. The patterns described have gotten clearer and the insights presented still hold true, confirmed by events that have taken place since its initial publication. This edition updates facts in today’s context and notes developments that have taken place during these intervening years.

Today’s global economic system continues to be dominated by corporations, driven by money, and powered by greenhouse gas–emitting fossil fuels. Inertia continues to rule in the bureaucracies that make the rules of the global economy (such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization), preventing widespread systemic change and exacerbating the social, economic, and environmental harms described in this book. Although the United States has withdrawn from global commitments, initiated trade wars, and lost standing in the international community during the presidency of Donald  Trump,  it  is  still  the  primary  state  purveyor  of corporate-dominated globalization.

In Shaking the Gates of Hell, I make the case that the system is designed for the results it is getting. This book describes how most people who serve this global system at its highest levels are shaped by its imperatives. They perpetuate the system’s dysfunction while benefiting from the wealth and power it offers those who hold privileged places in society. Millions of less privileged people unknowingly serve this system by internalizing its values and relinquishing their freedom and responsibility for the common good.

This systemic inertia and enthrallment of people to the ruling Powers presents a challenge to anyone who loves Jesus and seeks to follow him. How do we live as Jesus did, in faithfulness to God and in nonviolent but unrelenting resistance to the idolatrous Powers, which lure us into their sphere of influence in so many ways? How do we live in but not be conformed to the human-constructed worldly systems that demand our loyalty, devour our energy, and seek to replace God in our lives? How do we live and share the good news of God’s love in the current social, economic, and political milieu? For people of faith, this is the primary challenge of our time. We are called to resist the dehumanizing influence of the Powers and to act in faith, trusting in the power of God working for, in, and through us to bring about both personal and social transformation.

In addition to identifying the institutional Powers that dominate the world, this book shows that there are other forces at work, including love of life, compassionate concern for others, determination to protect the gifts of creation, and a desire for the common good. I trust that these forces, which emerge from the love that abides at the heart of the universe and is embodied in communities and in people’s movements around the world, are more powerful than the institutionalized forces of domination and greed and will ultimately prevail. Such movements demonstrate the power of participatory democracy and show that there are many alternatives to the top-down global system described in the pages of this book.

Shaking the Gates of Hell calls on people of conscience from every spiritual and philosophical tradition to join in solidarity with people around the world who struggle for peace, justice, and the healing of the earth. This volume especially calls on Christians to follow Jesus into the heart of this struggle in resistance to the rulers of this age (1 Cor 2:8) and to pray and work for the coming of the reign of God on earth as it is in heaven, as Jesus did (Luke 11:2). In this way, we celebrate liberation from the rule of mammon and offer hope to the world.

I am grateful to the congregations and leaders of the California-Nevada Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, who have taught me much about Christian love, commitment to peace and justice, and the institutional challenges of local church life. Without the encouragement of a clergy sister, Pam Coy-Armantrout, I may never have undertaken this project. My bishops and colleagues enabled me to stay connected as an active member of the clergy while writing and serving through a specialized ministry that my husband and I founded, Earth Justice Ministries, which has provided a vehicle for my work on the issues presented in this book.

I am indebted to the International Forum on Globalization and the following authors and activists for deepening my understanding of corporate globalization and related issues: David Korten, Maude Barlow, Naomi Klein, Vandana Shiva, Anuradha Mittal, Martin Khor, Jerry Mander, Kevin Danaher, Walden Bellow, Antonia Juhasz, Lori Wallach, elmira Nazombe, Arundhati Roy, William Greider, Richard Barnet, Bill McKibben, Helen Caldicott, Jared Diamond, and Sandra Steingraber.

I am indebted to many theologians who have influenced my theology, my work, and my way of seeing the world, including Thomas Berry, William Stringfellow, Jürgen Moltmann, Walter Wink, Dorothee Soelle, James Douglass, Carol Robb, Michael Lerner, Catherine Keller, John Cobb, Bill Wylie-Kellermann, Jim Wallis, Ted Peters, and Rosemary Radford Ruether, who read and critiqued an early draft of my chapters on theology.

My friend and colleague Elaine Schwartz read and edited a later draft. Gary Gardner, research director for Worldwatch Institute, read the manuscript and gave me helpful feedback. Their input was invaluable. I am grateful to former editor-in-chief Michael West for his support of this project, and to David Lott, Tim Larson, Lynette Johnson, Bob Todd, and the entire staff at Fortress Press. My thanks extend to Laurie Ingram, who designed the cover, and to Layne Johnson and Kelsey Jopp for helping to bring this second edition to fruition.

My family, including my grown children and grandchildren, provided emotional support and a welcome change of focus, always reminding me of why I was writing this book. My son Luke turned to the local, planted a vegetable garden, and helped feed me in body and spirit. My sister Kathie Kline gave unwavering support from afar. My husband, Guarionex Delgado, was my primary support through the process of writing this book. I treasure our conversations, including those that took place at various coffee shops where we wrote, and where he shared his poetry and I shared initial writings for this book. He helped me go deep, and I could trust him to be rigorously honest in both appreciation and critique of this work. While dealing with complex and sometimes painful topics, our walks on the beach and in the woods always brought me back to earth, and our salsa dancing brought me back to my body and to the joy of life.

I am deeply grateful for those who have publicly modeled nonviolent resistance, including Kathy Kelly, Medea Benjamin, Louis Vitale, Daniel Ellsberg, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, Judi Bari, Julia Butterfly Hill, Scott Parkin, and so many others. My appreciation extends to my colleagues at the Resource Center for Nonviolence and the extended peace and justice community of Santa Cruz, where I lived and worked most of the time I was writing the first edition of this book, and to my dear activist friends in Nevada County, California, where I lived while working on the second edition. I am indebted to indigenous people and people in communities everywhere who struggle to resist corporate globalization, and to all who organize courageous campaigns and creative demonstrations, including the colorful and lively festivals of resistance that have shown me that in resistance is the secret of joy.

Finally, I gratefully acknowledge the Holy Spirit, who motivated and supported me in the writing of this book. To God be the glory.

Introduction: A Moment of Profound Choice

The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.

—Matthew 13:31-33

For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, Move from here to there, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.

—Matthew 17:20

In this age of globalization, a sense of personal powerlessness is pervasive. Institutional Powers far beyond human scale dominate the world. We not only witness, but also participate in institutions and systems that cause great harm to people and the earth, even as we seek to live with integrity. Our complicity in social disorder and environmental destruction, and the scope of changes that are needed, can be paralyzing. It is easy to lose heart and forget that the power that brought the universe into being is still at work on behalf of life, sometimes through us.

Still, every so often there is an uprising, an outbreak of hope, an upwelling of spirit that awakens a sense of possibility, a movement that motivates people to take courageous action in the direction of social change. At such times, what has seemed impossible suddenly becomes possible, motivating people who had all but given up to risk everything for the vision of a transformed world.

What motivates some people to take a stand of resistance to social harms that seem inevitable or to take creative actions when the hoped-for outcome seems impossible? I call it faith. Not necessarily religious faith. I have atheist friends who at times have demonstrated more clarity of call, selflessness, trust, courage, commitment to work toward societal healing, willingness to suffer for a just cause, and persistence in the face of incredible odds than many Christians. This is faith in action as I understand it.

Surely the Spirit is at work in movements for peace, justice, and the healing of creation. I have been involved in many such movements over the years, from the peace, anti-nuclear, and Sanctuary movements in the 1980s, through varied social, environmental, and climate justice movements in the 1990s and 2000s, through the rise of the global justice movement that links these and other ongoing movements together. Such movements may seem weak and foolish by human standards, especially when compared with the political, economic, and military Powers that dominate the world. But God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength (1 Cor 1:25). These mustard-seed movements have brought about significant changes and may yet save us.

I begin this introductory chapter with the story of my participation in demonstrations in Seattle in late 1999, during meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO), when the fledgling movement for global justice made itself known to the world. The slogan of this movement is itself a statement of faith: Another world is possible.

Teamsters and Turtles, Together at Last!

Our human family stands at an unimaginably perilous and promising crossroads. In defense of life and with a great thirst for justice, a global movement of movements is beginning to coalesce. It may soon be poised to launch the most momentous social crusade in human history.[1]

—Chris Moore-Backman

Lying on my bunk in King County jail, wrapped in a thin blanket, alone in the cold cell under lockdown, I felt time pass slowly. I could hear vague sounds of drumming and chanting; supporters were gathered outside. Kaleidoscopic images went through my mind: people marching and chanting together, colorful costumes, banners and giant puppets, police in riot gear, rubber bullets and tear gas, injured protestors, people cheering, people singing.

Songs I had been singing with other protestors came to mind, including an old Malvina Reynolds song:

It isn’t nice to block the doorways, it isn’t nice to go to jail.

There are nicer ways to do it, but the nice ways always fail.

It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice; you told us once, you told us twice,

But if that is freedom’s price, we don’t mind.[2]

Having nothing better to do, I added two new verses based on my recent experiences:

It isn’t nice to breathe in tear gas

or be doused with pepper spray,

To be shot with rubber bullets

or hear their sound grenades.

It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice;

we told you once, we told you twice,

But if that’s the price of justice, we don’t mind.

It isn’t nice to be beat up

or be dragged away to jail,

To spend long hours in holding tanks

or lockdown without bail.

It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice,

but if that is the price

To save the earth from dying, we don’t mind.

As I lay there hour after hour, I experienced a sense of triumph, solidarity, divine presence, and joy. I had come to Seattle expecting to participate in nonviolent demonstrations that were purely symbolic. But just two days before, through nonviolent direct action, we had succeeded in shutting down the first day’s meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO), one of the most powerful and, as I will demonstrate, dangerous institutions the world has ever seen.

All this took place twenty years ago. Events that unfolded that week have come to be called The Battle of Seattle, and so it was, although most of the demonstrators were peaceful. I introduce Shaking the Gates of Hell with this story because it was a watershed moment in the unveiling of the ruling Powers and in the convergence of the movement for global justice, both of which I write about in this book. It was also a watershed moment for me.

How amazing it was to be one of the fifty thousand people who came to Seattle to protest the harmful effects of the WTO. Environmentalists dressed as endangered sea turtles marched side by side with labor unionists to oppose corporate globalization, together with a diverse coalition of advocates for a peaceful, just, and ecologically sustainable world. One of the many signs read Teamsters and Turtles together at last.

Seattle churches were highly visible in the demonstrations. As an ordained United Methodist minister, I was proud that First United Methodist Church of Seattle was a central meeting place for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). First United displayed a sign reading NGO Central. It hosted teach-ins, planning meetings, and worship services, and it was a beginning point for various marches throughout the week.

Jim Wallis of Sojourners Community preached at a glorious service of Christian worship at St. James Cathedral, lifting up Jubilee 2000, a worldwide movement calling for cancellation of the debt of the world’s poorest nations. Sweet Honey in the Rock sang at an interfaith service filled to overflowing. It was followed by a march to the Seattle Kingdome, where the opening gala of the WTO was being held, and where thousands of us formed a human chain that encircled the arena. There we held a candlelight vigil calling on WTO delegates to consider the victims of corporate globalization and to use their influence to cancel the debt that is starving the poor.

Rising early in the morning on November 30, I put on my clergy collar and went to First United Methodist Church, where my affinity group huddled to make final plans. We then walked toward the Seattle Convention Center where the WTO meetings were scheduled to begin. I sat down on the sidewalk in front of the Convention Center at the intersection of Union and Sixth Streets, linking arms with my eighty-three-year-old friend Ruth Hunter on my left and a trembling young woman on my right. About fifty of us sat in drizzling rain blocking the entrance, surrounded by hundreds of supporters.

Although the estimated ten thousand people at the various intersections surrounding the perimeter of the Convention Center were peaceful and well disciplined, police reacted brutally. After two hours, they put on their gas masks and suddenly began to attack. I felt the pain of hard rubber bullets hitting my back, felt the sting of pepper spray, heard loud, explosive concussion grenades, and gasped in suffocating clouds of tear gas. When I could no longer breathe, I struggled to my feet and helped drag Ruth away. Similar police actions were taking place at other intersections. But despite the pepper spray and tear gas, rubber bullets and concussion grenades, nonviolent demonstrators continued to come back again and again, determined to prevent the WTO from advancing its destructive agenda. Suddenly, cheers went up as we got word that WTO officials had given up and canceled the first day’s meetings. We had shut them down. We later joined the colorful, diverse AFL-CIO’s People’s March, which included 25,000 mostly peaceful demonstrators.

That night, Seattle suspended civil liberties so that the next day’s meetings could go on. The next day, hundreds of individuals and groups were arrested simply for walking into downtown, which had been declared a No Protest Zone. I was among them.

The Seattle protests marked a turning point, an awakening to what is at stake and a convergence of varied struggles for a peaceful, just, and ecologically sustainable world. Resistance to the current form of globalization, dominated by corporations, could no longer be ignored. The movement for global justice had emerged on the world scene.

Corporate Globalization

If there is an idol behind the idols of corporate globalization, it is Mammon. Here is the spirituality that drives the logic of growth. Capital consolidates. Money begets money. The rich get richer. The bottom line is acquisitive. Name it as you like.[3]

—Bill Wylie-Kellermann

When people use the term globalization, they usually mean global economic integration, that is, free capital flows, trade, and investment across borders, without barriers or government interference. Globalization also refers to cultural integration, complete with Western-style development, technology, media, and marketing. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a leading proponent of economic globalization, points out that this process is broadly perceived as the Americanization of the world.[4]

The term corporate globalization is a way of describing the current situation, in which transnational corporations dominate key social, economic, and political institutions and steer human culture, government policies, and international trade and investment in ways that prioritize economic growth, particularly corporate profits, above all else. For it is not really American culture that is being exported. Rather, corporate culture is being superimposed over the varied cultures and traditions within the United States as well as throughout the rest of the world. Some call it the McDonaldization of the world.[5] This system has also been called empire, a form of colonialism dominated by the United States, which uses its political, economic, and military power to extend unregulated capitalism around the world. Others call it corporate rule.

Because the current form of advanced free-market capitalism is widely understood as made in America,[6] this volume examines US institutions that promote, export, dominate, and enforce this now-global system. For decades, the political process in the United States has been dominated by corporate and other dark money interests and mired in partisan conflict about highly contentious and visible issues such as health care, immigration, civil rights, social programs, budgets, and tax policy. However, until recently there has been little debate among members of the two major parties about the underlying system and ideology that these conflicts express. While Democrats call for a social safety net that would temper some of the most harmful effects of capitalism, elected officials of both parties have, for the most part, supported financial liberalization, that is, economic reforms based on liberalizing financial and corporate regulations, as described in this book. Because of this broad bipartisan support, the current economic model has been given the dubious title of the Washington Consensus.

The first edition of Shaking the Gates of Hell was published during the US presidency of George W. Bush, at the height of the war on terror and on the cusp of the global recession. Since that time, people in the United States have moved through the Yes, we can spirit of the presidential campaign and election of Barak Obama, the sobering reality of his presidency, the financial crisis and bailout of big banks, an economic recovery that enriched the one percent but left millions behind, the proliferation of hate groups, increasing surveillance, the acceleration of climate change, the expansion of drone warfare, and further progression along the path to permanent war.[7] There have been changes in policies related to immigration, environment, drugs, crime, health care, and energy as well as other important developments, including the 2010 Citizen’s United decision by the US Supreme Court, which expanded corporate rights and accelerated the erosion of democracy.

In 2016, many were shocked by the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency, but the attraction of his nationalistic America-first message is at least partly a reaction to the economic decline of the middle class caused by the very system of corporate-dominated globalization. The harmful impacts of the neoliberal (or trickle down) economic model described in this book are intensifying everywhere, as environmental devastation and global inequity soar.[8]

Meanwhile, far-right parties and authoritarian leaders have gained national power not only in the United States but in countries as diverse as Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the Philippines, Venezuela, and Brazil. According to the Center for American Progress, such regimes seek to roll back democratic norms and institutions once in power in order to entrench their authority and quash political opposition and typically thrive on xenophobic paranoia, bellicosity, and a disavowal of any form of global cooperation in favor of a blunt, country-first approach to international affairs. (Sound familiar?) Far-right populism continues to gain ground around the world, including in fifteen member nations of the European Union.[9] Vital left-wing populist movements are also growing, especially among the young.

In the United States, with Donald Trump as president, disaster follows disaster as he governs by tweets. Trump administration political appointees come and go, but they are consistent in working to reverse policies and dismantle regulatory agencies that serve a beneficial purpose, including those that promote international stability and cooperation. Meanwhile, the repressive functions of government are being expanded. The Trump administration has expanded domestic powers for law enforcement agencies and instituted harsh tough on crime policies for dealing with drug offenders, whistleblowers, protestors, and immigrants. Globally, the administration’s nationalistic America First agenda has led it to abandon support for the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear agreement, the Cold War–era Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and other forms of international cooperation. Its reckless and erratic approach to international relations is having a destabilizing effect on political alliances, foreign and military policy, and global trade.

Still, even with these dramatic swings in US political leadership and these changing developments, so much has stayed the same. Even as the Trump administration threatens war with Iran and Venezuela, provides weapons for Saudi-led strikes that are creating famine in Yemen, engages in nuclear brinksmanship,[10] and increases drone strikes where the United States is not officially at war,[11] business as usual continues. Even as droughts, fires, hurricanes, and floods fueled by climate change ravage regions in the United States and around the world, the economy is growing and the stock market is rising, indicating that all is well—at the top—until the next bubble bursts and the next bailout begins. This is what counts under the rule of Mammon, embodied today as the global system of corporate-dominated capitalism. Regardless of who is president, money can always be found (that is, borrowed) to fund the massive US military-industrial complex and to prop up the financial institutions that are too big to fail.

Challenges to this dominant neoliberal model have become more visible in recent years, strengthened by the strong showing of Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries and by the 2018 midterm elections, which brought a historically diverse Democratic majority to the House of Representatives, including several outspoken progressives. The 2020 elections will be decisive.

The Powers That Be

In short, to behold America biblically requires comprehension of the powers and principalities as they appear and as they abound in this world, even, alas, in America.[12]

—William Stringfellow

One of this book’s foundational theological concepts is the idea of the Powers, based on William Stringfellow’s analysis of the powers and principalities referred to in the Bible (Eph 6:12). The Powers, as the term is used in this book, refers to the institutions in which human beings function and the larger systems of which they are a part. This work primarily focuses on the dominant institutions and systems of our age, referred to in colloquial terms as the Powers that be.

Most institutions are created to enhance life, but an institution can take on a life of its own, so that its primary purpose becomes maintaining its own survival, growth, and extension of power. When this happens, people are dehumanized. They become like cogs in a machine, serving the needs of the institution, rather than the institution serving the needs of living beings.

With transnational corporations, this problem is compounded. Though corporate charters are supposedly granted for the public good, in practice the primary purpose for which corporations exist is to pursue profits and generate wealth for their shareholders. Their survival and extension of power depends upon the continuous generation of wealth. This goal is generally (and legally) more important to a corporation than the well-being of its workers, consumers, the communities in which it operates, the public, or the earth itself.

Because of their wealth, political influence, and global reach, huge transnational corporations drive the accelerating movement toward corporate globalization. They are expanding their reach and accelerating the pace at which they exploit the world’s resources as they seek to integrate all of humanity into the global marketplace. Governments are getting out of their way by eliminating regulations that constrain corporate activity. The mainstream media, dominated by corporations, promotes programming and commercials that implant a corporate worldview into people’s minds.

The point is not that all corporations are bad (though some are), nor that we need to eliminate them (though some corporations should be disincorporated), but that their proper role is to be servants, not dominators, of life. Corporations should not have the power to make decisions that harm human beings or the earth for the sake of generating private wealth. But this is precisely what is happening.

If corporations continue to amass greater wealth and power, poverty and inequity will also grow. More and more people around the world will be deprived of the necessities of life. Communities that have been self-sustaining for generations will continue to disintegrate as local artisans, small businesses, and small farmers lose out to competition by transnational corporations. Native peoples will continue to be driven off their lands. Jobs will continue to be lost to technology and outsourcing, and labor standards will spiral downward. Places of beauty and diversity will continue to be devoured to create wealth for the few. The resulting social upheaval will require increasingly repressive police forces and ever more jails and prisons. Rich nations, especially the United States, will continue to enforce the corporate colonization of the planet through military power. These patterns are already well underway and are leading to extremes of wealth and poverty, social upheaval, repression, terrorism, war, misery, and ecological collapse.

In short, if we do not turn things around, we face a living hell: a hell on earth. The gates of this hell are open and looming before us.

This is a matter for the soul, for corporate domination is pervasive. It is hard to see beyond the corporate culture in which we live because it is not just around us but also within us. In a very real way, we are it!

Looking at the spiritual aspects of this crisis can help us find ways to face it squarely and to address it in creative and positive ways. Though there are powerful forces at work that threaten life, we need not fear. We can meet this challenge with courage if we are deeply grounded in our relationship with God.

A Spiritual Struggle

Get wise to the powers. Recognize their wiles and ways. Trust God alone for justification.

—Bill Wylie-Kellerman[13]

This book proposes a way for people of faith to respond to the growing power of corporations and their domination of the world’s cultures, governments, and global institutions. Our response must have both an inner and outer dimension, since the commercialization of culture and the commodification of life affect our inner lives as well as the outer world. Our bodies, minds, spirits, and relationships are affected by corporate globalization and by the ideology that accompanies it.

How can we respond creatively and effectively to the challenges posed by corporate globalization in ways that leave us feeling inspired and spiritually energized rather than depleted and hopeless? The response that I propose is faith-led resistance to the current global order, resistance that involves every aspect of our lives.

The title of this book, Shaking the Gates of Hell, is based on the quote by John Wesley that appears as the book’s epigraph: Give me a hundred preachers, and I care not a straw if they be clergy or laity, who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I will shake the gates of hell and set up the Kingdom of God on this earth.[14] John Wesley taught that personal spirituality and social concern must be linked. Concern for one’s own soul and concern for the world are two related and inseparable aspects of faithfulness to God. Wesley also taught that personal faithfulness can have profoundly positive effects in the world. These concepts are foundational to the faith-led resistance I point to in this book. Radical faithfulness to God will give us the clarity, energy, compassion, and courage we need in this critical time.

When Wesley speaks of fearing nothing but sin and desiring nothing but God, he is speaking about two different but related aspects of faithfulness. Desire for God is at the heart of the spiritual journey, a journey that is also characterized by the struggle with sin and evil. Even Jesus had to struggle alone in the depths of his soul to overcome the temptation to be less than God was calling him to be. He felt the lure of status, wealth, and worldly power but chose instead to live out the values of what he called the kingdom of God. The spiritual struggle against such temptation is no small thing, and for those who seek to be faithful, it is a struggle that needs to be fought again and again throughout life. These inner struggles equip us for struggles in the outer world.

The temptations with which we struggle, however, do not arise in a vacuum. They are related to external forces that diminish life. There are powerful social, political, and economic forces at work in the world that are harming God’s good creation, leaving environmental destruction and human wreckage behind. These forces tempt us to seek justification by conforming to social pressures. They influence us. We participate in them. Our inner lives mirror the outer world as microcosms of the whole.

Today, society’s dominant institutions promote a worldview that reinforces corporate globalization, supported by a market-based ideology that is so widespread, systematic, and influential that it has been called a religion. Most economists, government officials, and much of the public accept this pervasive ideology unquestioningly. And yet, as we will see in later chapters, this ideology is based upon assumptions that contradict common sense and upon values that are directly opposed to the compassion and wisdom of the world’s great spiritual traditions. To the degree that we internalize, accept, or give in to the dominant worldview, we participate in and further the reach of corporate rule to the detriment of our souls.

For hell is not a place. Like heaven, it is a state of being that we can experience here and now. The Powers do not simply threaten the future, they oppress and extinguish life today. Rather than living in the hell of psychological bondage and spiritual oppression, we can claim our freedom as children of God and allow the heavenly reality of divine grace to break in upon our lives. We can live according to the values that Jesus proclaimed, embodying those values with our lives. Together with people around the world who are awakening to this historical crisis, we can shake the gates of hell, resisting the horror of a barren, violent, and poisoned future while creating new and viable alternatives for human life in society and in communion with all life.

Resistance as Hope

You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no results.[15]

—Mohandas Gandhi

We are at the beginning of a new era in the earth’s history. Humanity has reached a crossroads, a moment of profound choice between two incompatible futures. One direction seems almost inevitable: the world’s dominant institutions and prevailing ideologies are driving at an ever-accelerating speed toward a market-based future dominated by transnational corporations. The billboards along this multilane freeway advertise the benefits of where we are headed: toward a wonderland of accumulated wealth and general prosperity, technological achievement, economic and cultural integration, and peace through US military domination. Most people are simply going along or being forced along for the ride. But increasing numbers of people are choosing to get off the main road, to walk to the side and off the pavement to find another path, one that leads toward a global future of equity, justice, ecological and cultural diversity, and peace through mutual respect and cooperation. People are defending or changing their lifestyles, working within their communities, and creating alternative institutions. Some are even hiking back up to the main road and blocking it with their bodies, linking arms with others, trying to prevent the tragic consequences of a world given over to greed.

Who will decide which road will be taken? We will. We must. This is our right and our responsibility as human beings. We can refuse to take on the responsibility and allow the institutional Powers to make these decisions by default. Or we can exercise our freedom by refusing to collude, by resisting the Powers that would lead us to destruction, and by embodying life-giving alternatives here and now. This is a profound spiritual choice, since it involves shaking off spiritual domination by the Powers.

It has been said that great evil requires great resistance. Struggles for justice have always required people who were willing to stand up with courage and to step out in faith. At this critical moment in the earth’s history, each of us is called to exercise our human freedom, to choose whether to go along the broad road that leads to destruction or the narrow path that leads to life. As we open ourselves to the Spirit, we create an opening through which change can happen in the world. As we choose, we are part of humanity’s choosing. We are a part of the earth’s passion for life.

Will we be successful in stopping the global consolidation of corporate power and the empire it supports? No one knows what the outcome of our actions will be. However, the movement for global justice is strong and growing. People who have been working passionately on various issues for years are seeing their causes converge. They are coming together in the struggle to resist global annihilation and to develop creative alternatives for a hopeful future. People are rising up. This is a global movement, largely nonviolent and deeply democratic. As a popular book on the topic proclaims, We are everywhere.[16]

Theologian Jürgen Moltmann says that Christian hope is hope that the world will be different.[17] The seeds for an alternative, hopeful future are being planted even now by individuals and groups around the world who are working for a world in which each person’s work contributes to the common good and provides dignity and a living wage, everyone has the right to basic necessities of life, corporations are accountable, widespread use of poisons is prohibited, nuclear weapons are dismantled, and wilderness is protected as the common heritage of all creatures. The seeds for widespread spiritual, social, economic, and political change are being planted as people participate in nonviolent resistance and develop alternative ways of living, often modeled on indigenous and other traditional ways of life. We are living at a pivotal time in the earth’s history, and this is a worthy struggle, a struggle for the renewal of our human family and the regeneration of life on earth.

It is my conviction that God is working on behalf of life through every person who is engaged in this work. The question for Christians is, where will the church be in this global movement for change? Will we give spiritual and moral support, provide leadership, and share our resources, as happened in Seattle? Or will we work against change or sit on the sidelines and be left behind as irrelevant? Will the church, through sins of omission or sins of commission, be complicit in transforming the blessing of God’s world of beauty and abundance into the curse of a world plagued with desolation and misery? Or will we work with others to help bring about the vision of a compassionate, just, and ecologically regenerative world, as God created it to be?

Book Overview, Structure, and Organization

Shaking the Gates of Hell is divided into three sections, each describing a distinct aspect of