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

EMpire hand, and realpolitik talk about global power structures, on the other – have thus
opened up new opportunities in handling a difficult topos. In the internal Reformed
dialogue this expanded terminology led to the crucial breakthrough. On
the one hand, it seriously addresses the helpless of many people in the North and
also the shame of ultimately being on the side of the winners in the “imperial”
structures, without really being able to impact on the political reality of the division
into winners and losers. On the other hand, discovering the existence of
“lordless powers” challenges us to engage in even more critical reflection and
spiritually work through the consequences.
Cuban theologian Ofelia Ortega clearly describes the ambivalence of this perception
but with the profound certainty that here the last word has not yet been
spoken:
The Empire functions today, as never before, through colonization of subjectivity. It is
a complex construction of a colonized subjectivity. This is more than imperial ideology
- we are facing an imperial subjectivity—which ends up in suicidal annihilation of the
human being, of human freedom, of human judgment, and from a dreadful ecological
perspective, of human and natural life on the Earth. (…) Paul, the militant of antiimperial
eschatology, announces that imperial reality is ending. There will be an “after
the Empire”, an after every empire, also of this one, because the empire is just the face
of this world, never its truth. Above and against the final word of the empire, the cross,
there comes God’s truth, Resurrection. It is a beyond, beyond the power of the empire,
beyond the ideology of the empire, beyond imperialized subjectivity. 17
Our own limitation and our compulsion to find a final form of words prompts
us to pray in all humility and ask for God’s guidance and transforming power.
Perhaps it is now, for the first time, possible to speak with clearly defined terms:
to separate the necessary � �theological � talk about �empire �and
the consequences for
our faith from their absolute, eschatological overtones and to work out how,
with the aid of political science, we can gain clarity about our options and opportunities
for achieving more just global structures. This way, talk of empire
will cease to be abstract and become extremely real.
Martina Wasserloos-Strunk, (1963) is a political scientist specialising in political
theory. She is a member of the Moderamen of the Reformed Alliance Germany. As a
member of ATTAC Germany she is responsible for communication between the Reformed
Alliance and civil movements working towards a just economy. On behalf of
the European Area of WARC she published the book "Europes Covenanting for Justice".
17 Ortega, Ofelia: Communion and Justice, Contribution to the Global Dialogue, September
2009, Johannesburg.
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– Empire - Provocation with a Perspective – 79