I am working on my MA in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. Last week I took a course on the Gospel of Matthew and we read a fascinating and provocative article by Musa W. Dube Shomanah (she is a lecturer in the department of religious studies at the University of Botswana), called 'Praying the Lord's Prayer in a Global Economic Era.' We have to be honest with ourselves that if you follow the ancestry of American Protestantism, it leads through Western Europe, the Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution. This means, then, that those in the Global South (Asia, Africa, South America) have the same faith but a different heritage. Their influences are different. So to read their perspectives is helpful and humbling.
She says that 'the global era is an age characterized by increasingly interconnected economic systems of different countries, nations and continents. This closely knit economic organ is in fact a relationship of dependence and interdependence, of exploitation and exponential profit, of economic giants and dwarfs, indeed, of masters and servants, as well as of massive monetary losses and gains.' She proposes that the Christian faith presented in the Lord's Prayer offers an alternative vision for living in the global economic era with its political, economic, social, and religious realities. She then goes on to say that she reads and interprets the Lord's Prayer 'as an invitation to Christian communities to assume active responsibility against all that hinders the daughters and sons of God around the world from coming to the full realization of abundant life. For Christian communities, nations, institutions and individuals to pray and ask for deliverance from evil in this global age entails repentance accompanied by action, a willingness to hear the Lord's Prayer and to recapture the implications of praying it. To say "your kingdom come", to say "your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven", is to become responsible partners, guardians of justice, active daughters and sons in the establishment of God's rule in the world.'
Amen.
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