BREAK THE CHAINS OF OPPRESION AND THE YOKE OF ...

“Appropriate and insightful,” were the terms used by Peter Bukowski, Moderator
of the Reformed Alliance in Germany, 1 to describe the talk about empire. Appropriate
and insightful because talking about empire brings into focus the power
constellations that are shaping up politically and shows us what coalitions of
economic and military interests have established themselves. Empire-talk compels
us to analyze the situation.
That being so, it is hard to follow the repeated claims from the North that the
wording of the Confession contains accusations and conflicts to be read “between
the lines.”
Empire – an old term for new-style dominance
What the Accra Confession says about the structure of “empire” has long been
consensus in other disciplines. Political science, for example, has been working
intensively on the subject of empire at the same time. The topic is downright
fashionable as an object of analysis in both conservative and left-wing circles.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have presented a lucid analysis of the postmodern
empire, but other academics have also described the new type of power
structures of the globalized world. What an empire is, how it functions—or also
how it does not function, what internal logic it follows, whether it is even needed
in the global context and under what preconditions—the question of the
foundations of imperial sovereign structures in the age of globalization, the differences
over against the classical “empire” of the old days, the new alliances,
combatants, technical insignia of dominance and communication orbs have
been sufficiently described and applied to the easily identifiable empires of the
global age.
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Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt give this description:
In contrast to imperialism, Empire establishes no territorial center of power and does
not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers. It is a decentralized and deterritorializing
apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its
open, expanding frontiers. Empire manages hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies,
and plural exchanges. 2
By contrast with many church responses, Negri and Hardt do not describe the
new-style empires as totalitarian and thereby inevitable and absolute. 3 The au-
1 http://www.kirchentag2007.de/presse/dokumente/dateien/BIB_9_1266: “As a theological
definition, talk of empire (as Jesus used the word Mammon) is appropriate and
insightful, precisely because it makes us more aware of the fact that political and/or economic
forces and constellations confront us almost like persons.”
2 Hardt, Michael/Negri, Antonio, Empire, Havard University Press, 2000, xii.
3 Hardt, Michael/Negri, Antonio: Multitude, War und Democracy in the Age of Empire,
Penguin USA, 2004.
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– Empire - Provocation with a Perspective –