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Christianity in the Third Millenium
By Jurgen Moltmann

The number one thousand and the word millennium have a special symbolic meaning in Christianity. They denote the kingdom of Christ to be installed before the end of the world, ushering in a golden age for humanity. Historical Christianity did not await this kingdom but rather identified itself for a thousand years as the eschatological kingdom. The Holy Empire which had been founded by Emperor Constantine was considered the "millennial kingdom" of Christ on earth. According to Augustine, the holy Church, as "mother and teacher of the nations," constituted the "millennial kingdom of Christ."

In the year A.D. 1000, an apocalyptic wave spread through all of Europe. People feared the end, thought to take place after the completion of 1000 years, was near. Satan would be released, the enemies Gog and Magog would begin the final battle, which God would terminate using fire from heaven (Rev. 20). After that, the final judgment would take place. Many people sold all they had and prepared for the worst. But the end did not come and history continued its course, as every reasonable person knows who lives in time. In the year A.D. 2000, we will not expect the end of the world but rather greet the beginning of the third millennium after Christ. We know, of course, that history goes on because life goes on. And so we will continue to live as we have done thus far-until the end comes our way.

One thousand years ago people thought symbolically and expected the world to end, yet history went on. Today we reckon chronologically and think that history goes on forever-yet the end of history is closer to us than it has ever been before. We no longer live in time but rather in the

Jürgen Moltmann is Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Tübingen. He has written numerous major works in theology, including, among the more recent ones, The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions (1990) and The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation (1992).

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end time, that is, in a time in which the end is possible at any moment: through a nuclear catastrophe in a few days, through the ecological catastrophe in a few decades, through the economic catastrophe in the Third World even as we speak. We live in a time in which the end of the human world has already begun and in which it is wholly unclear whether we and our children will be able to avert it. It is not necessary to be apocalyptically oriented to see that "time presses." It is enough just to read the World Watch Institute's yearly reports.

One question is, What awaits our world in the coming century and in the coming millennium? Any answer to that question will be speculative. The future is full of all sorts of possibilities, and the past was always full of surprises. We know nothing. We know the future neither for good nor for evil, and that is one of the present's great mercies.

"What formerly did not exist but could only be imagined is now emerging. one humanity in one earth. "

Another question, however, is, What will the twenty-first century inherit from the twentieth century, and what will the third millennium receive from the second? What unresolved problems and what unpaid bills will we hand over to the coming generations in the year 2000? What investments have we made in the future and what liabilities will we leave behind? For what will the coming generations praise us and for what will they curse us?

I will limit myself to Christianity, even though these questions should be asked in all areas of life. I want to present four problems in order to measure in what sense they constitute an investment and in what sense a liability.

(1)I will begin with a blessing and a curse of the twentieth century. The blessing is the ecumenical movement and the new fellowship of the separated churches. The curse is the new confessionalism and nationalism that are preventing European unity, as the war in the Balkans shows.

(2) Christianity will show two religious faces at the century's end: modernism on the one hand and the new fundamentalism on the other. As is also the case with other religions, we will not have solved the problem but rather made it more difficult.

(3)I will then refer to Christianity's great expansion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on all continents and to Christianity's new centers in America and Africa, as well as to the persistent Eurocentrism of the traditional churches. The first constitutes a good investment, the second a heavy mortgage.

(4)Last but not least, in its third millennium, Christianity will no longer be the exclusive religion of the Western world but rather one religion among others. For the first time, it will be present globally and for the first time it will constitute in each country a more or less marginal

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minority. Are we prepared for an interreligious community? Which religion will represent the "religion of the earth" and prove itself to be a "worl2d religion"?

ECUMENICAL COMMUNITY OR CONFESSIONAL OBSTINACY?

This is the first life-and-death question for Christianity in the present and future. United we can live-divided we will perish! United we can bear witness to God's peace to a fractured world in which all should be able to live; divided we will ourselves become a factor in destroying our world! The ecumenical movement for the unification of separated churches in enmity with each other is without doubt the greatest gift that we have received in the twentieth century. In only fifty years, it has been possible for Christian churches that had excluded each other from the Lord's Supper and, thus, condemned each other to come together to a common table and to be reconciled. The schism between the Eastern and the Western churches, which took place in 1054, and the schism in the Western church, which occurred after the sixteenth century Reformation, have not yet been overcome, but we are on the way toward overcoming these divisions. Both in ecumenical conferences and in local churches today, we are already experiencing a "reconciled diversity." The importance of this for my country, in which fifty percent Protestants live alongside fifty percent Catholics, cannot be overestimated. In the ecumenical movement, we began with the comparison of different church doctrines and orders with the purpose of finding out what separated us, and we discovered that the differences in theological doctrine were not great enough to justify the separation of the churches. On the contrary, we discovered that we could be mutually enriched by our different conceptions. In the area of church order, Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Congregationalists came closer to each other. The Second Vatican Council (1963-66) was a sign of hope and a courageous step for all Christians.

"We no longer live in time but rather in the end time, that is, in a time in which the end is possible at any moment. "

The single unresolved question lies in the recognition or nonrecognition of the universal episcopate of the Bishop of Rome. Even in this area, most of the non-Roman Catholic churches are open to fellowship with Rome (cum Petro), not, however, to fellowship under Rome (sub Petro). A universal "service for unity" would be recognized by most of the churches if it were a service without pretensions of rule or infallibility. And why should not the Bishop of Rome carry out various functions within his own church and to the benefit of community among the churches? After fifty years of joint theological work in the department

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for Faith and Order, the so-called "convergence papers" were developed, the Lima documents on "Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry," which were greeted warmly and accepted by most of the churches within the World Council. Today we are also able "to confess together the one faith" in the words of the ancient confession of faith of Nicea-Constantinople of 381. An authorized ecumenical interpretation of it is available. Not least of all, the Christian churches have begun a "conciliar process" in order to work together for "justice, peace, and the integrity of creation." Major conferences in Dresden and Basel in 1989, al which the Roman Catholic Church participated as a full member, played an important role in the changes in Europe that led to the dissolving of the East Block. Certainly ecumenical impatience exists in many places, especially in Germany-most of all in mixed-confession families-on the part of those who are waiting to go to church and celebrate the eucharist together or who want to remove their membership from the churches altogether. But what was divorced for a thousand years cannot be healed in fifty. We will have achieved more than we dare hope if we and our descendants continue to advance along this same road. 'I hat, however, cannot be taken for granted. On the contrary, it has become increasingly doubtful in the last few years, precisely at the moment in time when we in the new Europe have been given the greatest  

"The ecumenical movement ... is without doubt the greatest gift that we have received in the twentieth century." 

chance for ecumenical community. After the tall of the East Block and the democratization of the socialist countries, a new Europe is emerging. But how have the various churches reacted to the events of 1989? 

This is not the moment of triumph over “godless communism." It is an hour of eruption out of confessional narrowness and of conversion to community. This must be the hour of a Christian ecumenical fellowship for the new Europe, or else the churches will become the relics of an out-distanced past. We do not need a one-sided Catholic or Protestant "new evangelization" of Europe. What we need is an all-Christian, ecumenical assembly able to continue the “conciliar process" that began so hopefully in 1989 in Basel. 

Christianity, however, is well on its way to fail in the face of Europe's kairos. Pope John Paul II has not comprehended the situation as John XXIII did with his ecumenical invitation to the Second Vatican Council. He has not extended an invitation to an all-Christian, European council but has rather called upon his own Roman Catholic Church to "re-evangelize Europe." He did this upon his visit to the former Czechoslovakia at the grave of the Apostle to the Slavs, even though he must have known quite well that the latter was not sent by Rome but came rather from Byzantium. This marked the direction of the "re-evangelization."

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The Jesuit order was redirected toward Eastern Europe. In November of 1991, the European Bishops' Conference met in Rome to discuss this topic. It is, in fact, a program for the re-Catholization of Europe. The dispute between Orthodox Christians and those united with Rome about church buildings in the Western Ukraine is a sad prelude. There Catholization of Polish schools is a frightening overture. The mutual unwillingness to be reconciled on the part of Serbian Patriarchs and Croatian Cardinals is deadly for their people. The World Council of Churches was not able to arrange a round table for Orthodox, Catholics, and Muslims in Yugoslavia.

The Protestant churches reacted to Rome's solo tack in the face of the new Europe by organizing a Protestant European assembly in Budapest in March of 1992. The Orthodox churches followed suit and have blocked all outside evangelization efforts in their "Orthodox countries." They have broken off contact with Rome. The ecumenical spirit has disap­peared precisely in a moment in which we need brave steps in such a spirit.

The worst-case scenario might be as follows: Christianity will flood the new Europe with confessionalism and, thus, contribute to blocking the flow between national and cultural boundaries. Instead of an ecumenical fellowship, we will experience a relapse into ethnocentric confessionalism:  Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, Christian Armenians, Muslim Azerbaijanis, Orthodox Rumanians, Protestant Germans, Catholic Poles, and so on. We will experience Orthodox and Roman Catholic attempts to build up uniformly confessional states in which religious minorities are discriminated against, as is already the case with Protestants in Poland and in the Czech Republic. We will experience a new wave of Protestant fundamentalism. And they will certainly be followed by new waves of secularism and atheism similar to the ones three hundred years ago. People will see that a united European "house" can only be built in opposition to the fragmented, irreconcilable Christian churches, and they will abandon them. In other words, confessionally divided and ecumenically unreconciled churches cannot cope with the challenges of the new Europe.

The new vision is that of an "open European house," as suggested by Mikhail Gorbachev, a home with open doors for the various peoples who live in it and with open windows and gates for those who live beyond it. The new reality, however, is characterized by a new nationalism within and the closing out from "fortress Europe" of what is outside. Evidently, people hold on all the more tightly to their national identity the more confused the situation becomes and the worse their personal situation becomes. Clearly, when startled by too great an openness, many people withdraw into the confessional identity they have been familiar with since their childhood. With socialism, there was lost the last great vision for which people overcame their narrow boundaries in order to be able to build a new future for all of humanity. What remains are the national flag and the national church. What is coming is the pragmatism of the free

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market in which each person has to look out for himself or herself, because Europe already has fifteen million unemployed persons.

Will the Christian churches experience a new birth to living hope and be able to give people new courage for the future? Will Christians draw back into their own rooms and close the doors in each other's faces? Will the gates around the European "house" open or close to the streams of refugees from the Third World? If we live ecumenically, then we will open the doors to each other and exercise Christian hospitality with Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants, and Pentecostals; if we live confessionally, then we'll close those doors. If we live "catholicly" we will also open the doors to those outside and look for fellowship with the Christians and non-Christians of the Third World; if we don't do this, then we are sectarian. The conflict between ecumenical fellowship and confessional obstinacy is, as yet, undecided. We will hand it over to the next century.

MODERNISM OR FUNDAMENTALISM?

Ever since the rise of the scientific-technical civilization we call "the modern world," Christian churches have made great efforts to keep up with progress and to enter into dialogue with the modern situation in life and thought forms. Because the modern world chiefly emerged in the Protestant countries of Western and Middle Europe, Protestant faith engaged itself very early with the principles of the Enlightenment and produced Kulturprotestantismus. Freedom of religion and freedom of thought belong together. Freedom of religion and democracy have developed together. That can be seen especially in the United States.

"The conflict between ecumenical fellowship and confessional obstinacy is as yet undecided. "

The Roman Catholic Church has-not totally without reason-resisted the spirit of the French Revolution and supported counterrevolution and the Holy Alliance. Through the First Vatican Council and the oath denouncing modernism of 1907, it tried to protect itself against modernism. In the Second Vatican Council, however, it caught up within four years on the Reformation and the Enlightenment and entered into the Aggiornamento with great verve. It chose the freedom of religion it had still condemned fifty years before. Today, we are experiencing in Europe and in the United States an impressive movement of Catholic Christians and theologians toward the modern world in order to be present where modern people today live and suffer. The times are past in which the Catholic Church could be deemed a medieval museum.

But what are the principles of the modern world? In this context I will mention three:

(a)First is the unprejudiced application of modern science and technology to the comprehension of life in the modern world. Faith does not

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depend on the Bible's world view but rather liberates reason to its own reasonableness. That includes the application of the historical sciences to the Bible and to church dogma. Historical criticism does not destroy the foundations of the faith but, rather, unveils faith's transcendental foundation.

(b)The strengthening of the subjectivity of faith is a second principle of the modern world. Faith is no longer a matter of the state but rather a private matter. Church and state must be separate. The state becomes secular and religiously neutral. I, however, must be personally convinced and decide for myself if I will let myself be carried by faith and if I will stand by it should it become dangerous. The modern subjectivity of faith demands the acknowledgment of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. This, of course, encourages religious pluralism, and it produces the liberalism that established and publicly privileged churches have always feared. But the modern democratic world also demands-through the freedom it gives-the individual responsibility of each person. In the church, in faith and in morality, this individual responsibility should be addressed and respected. Without freedom of religion there can be no free world!

(c) The more modern people become conscious of their freedom, the less they want to be cared for and watched over by a hierarchy of bishops, theologians, and pastors. All polls indicate that people want more participation in the church and that they are ready for responsibility. Pentecostal churches and free churches are growing everywhere, while the hierarchies lose members. We are moving away from hierarchical churches and toward congregational structures in Christianity, and this not only voluntarily but also as a result of the lack of priests. The strength of religious belonging on the basis of birth and custom is diminishing. The strength of individual choice is growing. People themselves are making a new participatory church out of the old church in which they remained passive and were cared for. The number of members will diminish, but the active participation of those members will increase.

Together with modernism arose its enemy and sibling, fundamentalism. Because Protestantism dealt first of all with the modern world and adopted its principles, fundamentalism descends historically from American Protestantism. It was originally a reaction to liberal theology, that is, not a direct reaction to the modern world but rather a reaction to an allegedly false response to the modern world on Christianity's part. It started with a pocket-book series in the United States: "The Fundamentals. A Testimony of Truth" (1910-1915). In this series, eternal, fundamental Christian truths, such as the authority of the Bible, the virginal conception of Jesus, the resurrection and Christ's divine sonship were defended against concessions by liberal Protestantism. For the various fundamentalist movements, it was not at all just a conservative reaction to the dangers of the modern world for the ancient faith but also a militant plan for reconquering dominion over the modern world. That is the reason for the struggle for recognition of "Christian values" in schools

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and in politics, at present especially in the question of abortion. That is the reason why the "Moral Majority" fights for political representatives. That is why all the means of the modern world are used in order to influence the modern world. Evangelical fundamentalists in the United States invest billions in order to run the "electronic church"; they collect money using modern marketing methods; they organize their mission projects, especially in Latin America, like a modern company and use multi-national corporations for their missions.

In the seventies, sociologists seized upon the word "fundamentalism" and applied it to surprising phenomena appearing in the supposedly modern world. As a result of their faith in progress, they had supposed that modernity was irresistible and that the secularization of society would progressively push back the influence of religion. That -is will, President Jimmy Carter's advisers backed the Shah of Iran's modernization program. That is why President Brezhnev and his Marxists supported the Marxists in Kabul. They were counting on religion's "dying out." And then came the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and the mujaheddin in Afghanistan and taught them the fear of God. Unexpectedly and irritatingly for modern sociologists, fundamentalism today is spreading all over the world: in Islam, among militant Hindus and Sikhs, in Pentecostal churches, in Roman Catholic traditionalism and not least in the confessional nationalism in the Balkans and the Caucasus. Fundamentalism today is nothing less than a program on the part of an increasingly influential sphere of holy tradition and ancient values to reconquer modern society using the means of that society. The Khomeini Revolution was a cassette recorder revolution; the Catholic Opus Dei is made up of influential technocrats; evangelical fundamentalism propagates the "gospel of success" and assembles social climbers.

From a psychological point of view, the fundamentalist identity is an inhibited identity without openness toward others and without openness to future changes. People cling to "fundamental values" and see only enemies all around them, against which they must protect themselves and close themselves off. Openness and pluralism are seen as the greatest dangers. Behind all of this lie deep grievances. For fundamentalists, "a world has perished." For Muslims, the decline of the once triumphant Arab world Empire is deeply traumatic. For Christians, the great trauma is the decline of the confessionally uniform religious state. In the United States, the dream of a "Christian America," of the innocent "savior nation" and of the kingdom of God on earth has been lost. These factors make it easier to understand why the new fundamentalism in Islam and in Christianity thinks apocalyptically and waits for the final battle of Armaggedon or for the "mother of all battles" against the "great Satan" United States.

Why are fundamentalism and apocalypticism spreading today? Because the fundamental trust in the modern world has been lost. Modern faith in progress counted on the fact that time would continue forever. After Hiroshima, however, we know that time can end at any moment.

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We can, therefore, no longer trust in time and are left only with trust in eternity. Modern trust in technology counted on the earth patiently putting up with all our exploitation and contamination, but, since Chernobyl, we know that the earth will not suffer us much longer if we continue to act as we have until now. We can no longer trust in the earth, only in the hereafter, in heaven. Precisely this confidence in eternity and in heaven is what the fundamentalist gospel promises, preaching the "timeless truth" of revelation and the "absolute commandments" of divine law. Fundamentalism thus puts itself in contradiction with the foundations of the modern world. The more the latter crumbles in the "dialectic of the Enlightenment" (T.W. Adorno) and in its self-made catastrophes, the more followers fundamentalism will find.

Thirty years ago, we thought that fundamentalism, as old-fashioned and outdated, as repressed and primitive as it is, would soon disappear. Today it looks as though it, and not modernism, will determine the shape of the coming century. At the end of this century we will hand over the conflict between modernism and fundamentalism without having resolved it.

"People themselves are making a new participatory church out of the old church in which they remained passive and were cared for.”

But are modernism and fundamentalism really enemies? Don't they really belong together in their deepest layers, so that one can think of what they have in common as well? I will try to show this only at one point.

As the religious situation of modern society proves, fundamentalism is not a cure against pluralism. Seen the other way around, neither does fundamentalism let itself be placed pluralistically, that is, it does not lend itself to definition as one religious possibility among others. Pluralism is a one-sided obsession with the possibilities of plurality-therefore "pluralism." But there can be no plurality of attitudes and opinions without a common foundation. There can be no variety without unity. Therefore, there can be no freedom of religion without the acknowledgment of human rights. There can be no Christian pluralism without a common Christian foundation; otherwise the name "Christian" would not be justified. On the other hand, fundamentalism is a one-sided fixation on the foundation-thus, "fundamental-ism." But there is no living foundation that does not bring forth a multiplicity of individual life. A foundation that demands uniformity is not a foundation of life but rather of paralysis and death. "No egg is exactly like another"; each and every Christian is an original by God; none is an imitation. In a living church, the orientation toward the foundation, who is Christ himself, and toward the colorful variety of spiritual gifts complement each other, so that neither pluralism nor fundamentalism are necessary.

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EUROCENTRISM OR GLOBALIZATION?

In the year 2000, the mass of Christians will not be in Europe but, rather, in the two Americas, Asia, and Africa. The centers of Christianity, however, are still in the Vatican in Rome, in the World Council of Churches in Geneva, and in the Patriarchates in Constantinople and Moscow. Is Christianity a European religion, a Western religion of the First World, or is it a world religion present with the same right in America, Africa, and Asia as it is in Europe? Christianity is moving toward its third millennium with the heavy liability of its messianic Eurocentrism and of its being the dominating religion of the First World. How did this come to be?

"The Christian center on earth is not to befound in Rome, Byzantium, or Geneva but rather in Jerusalem. "

Christianity began as a messianic revival movement in Israel. The original congregation of the twelve apostles lived in Jerusalem and waited there for the speedy return of the Lord. The Jewish persecution of the Christians, on the one hand, and, on the other, the astounding experience of the Holy Spirit, who came equally to Jews and Gentiles, soon led to a mission to the Gentiles. Gentiles could become Christians without first becoming Jews. Because of its rejection in Israel, Christianity spread in the Gentile world at first in every direction, especially-it seems-in Syria and Mesopotamia. On the Damascus road, the Jewish persecutor of Christians, Saul, had the conversion experience that made him into Paul, the missionary to the Gentiles. Paul, however, was a Roman citizen and directed his mission toward the Roman empire, as his letters to the Corinthians, the Ephesians, the Colossians, and, not least, to the Romans prove. He understood his task as taking the gospel to the limits of the Roman empire and had already planned a voyage to Spain when his fate overtook him and he was beheaded in Rome.

Only after the conversion of Constantine did the mission to the Roman empire become the religion of the empire. The Councils of the ancient church, convened by the emperors, had the function of securing the unity of the church so as to establish the unifying religion of the empire. This led to the unfortunate cutting off from the Roman empire of the other missions in the direction of Africa and of Asia and to their exclusion from the official church. The chances that Jay there can still be recognized by traces that have remained: in Armenia, a great Christian kingdom developed; all of Ethiopia became Christian; in Babylon, there was a cathedra Petri; and the so-called Nestorians took Christianity as far as China.

Among most of the peoples outside of the Roman empire, Christians remained a minority. In the Roman empire, however, they became the

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all-controlling majority. Both in Byzantium and in Rome, and later in Moscow and in Vienna, the "Holy Roman Empire" was interpreted as the "millennial kingdom of Christ" on earth. Thus, it obtained a messianic character. Not the church but the emperor "evangelized" by subjecting the peoples to his Christian Empire. The German Kaiser's mission to the Germanic and to the Slavic peoples and the Spanish kings' mission to the Indians meant spreading the kingdom of Christ through baptism and the sword. Instead of spreading the gospel of Christ in order to awaken faith, they spread the kingdom of Christ in order to rule the world in God's name. The Protestant powers, Great Britain, Prussia-Germany, and the United States, took over this political messianism. in the nineteenth century and proclaimed "the Christian age" for the rest of the world. Together with the Christian faith, Western civilization was spread; together with Western civilization, the colonization of the peoples; together with the colonization of the peoples, their subjection to the Western world market.

It is wholly understandable that the affected peoples perceived Christianity as the "white man's religion," the "religion of the Western world," and the religion of the winners and of the successful, both in the good and the bad sense, and imitated it or rejected it. Wherever one travels, one finds traces of Western Christianity: the architectural style of churches in Korea is a bad imitation of North American churches; in Nairobi the churches are called St. Andrew's (Presbyterian) or St. Patrick's (Irish-Catholic). In West Africa, a Catholic St. Peter's church is being built that is larger than the Pope's in Rome but looks exactly like it. All over the world, one finds the divisions of European Christianity reflected in many different denominations. We haven't exported only the gospel-we've also exported our lack of peace. That is the heavy liability of Eurocentrism in Christianity.

Latin American, African, and Asian Christians need to free themselves from this inherited liability. In order to do that, they must "inculturate" themselves and thus come to be at home in their own cultures as we are in ours. They will build their churches in their own architectural styles and name them after their own martyrs. They will sing their own songs and write their own catechisms. They will develop their own moral teachings and write their own dogmatics. They will finally organize and administrate themselves at the local, regional, and continental level and no longer look to Rome or Geneva or Wittenberg. They will-it is to be hoped-no longer cling to their missionaries' denominations and will overcome the divisions in European denominations. They will live in the one church of Christ and forget the European church schisms.

We, however, will have to do away with our claims to domination. We will have to reject the false dream of the "millennial kingdom" of Christ and place ourselves as willing students in the fellowship of the many Christian churches. We will impose no uniform catechism and no uniform dogma on the churches in America, Africa, and Asia. We will not measure their faith with the ruler of our own experiences. The Orthodox

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Church will have to give up its claim to have the "true doctrine," the Roman Catholic Church its claim to be the "true church," and the Protestant churches their claim to possess the "true faith," if they are to gain the greater ecumenical fellowship with Christians in Asian, African, and American countries.

"We can no longer trust in the earth, only in the hereafter, in heaven. "

Ecclesiastical Eurocentrism is ripe for life in a museum, since the great mass of Christians in the year 2000 will not even live in Europe but outside of it. Without decentralization it won't be possible to achieve a new blossoming of Christianity. Without pluralism, life dies. We do not need a new center and a new hierarchy but a worldwide covenant of free and equal churches, congregations, and Christians. Then we will be able to see our common origin once again. The Christian center on earth is not to be found in Rome, Byzantium, or Geneva but in Jerusalem. We will look to Jerusalem with the vision of a remembered hope for the original and final fellowship of Christians from every nation with the Jews.

A WORLD RELIGION OR A RELIGION OF THE EARTH?

One hundred years ago, we lived in societies that were relatively closed in a religious sense: one state, one law, one religion. Today, multi-cultural societies are spreading everywhere, especially in the First World countries in Europe and America. Religious variety enriches these societies but also clusters together the stuff of which conflict is made, which can manifest itself in racial hatred and wars of religion. This makes it all the more important for the various religious communities to know and to respect each other. One and a half million Muslims live in Germany today, mostly Turks, and yet the knowledge about Islam among Germans is minimal. People live alongside each other and keep their distance. That can be dangerous and indeed has already become so. The great religions must come to dialogue with each other. The goal of interreligious dialogue cannot be the melding of all religions into a unified religion but rather a mutual acquaintance and the discovery of one's own identity in relationship to others. Openness toward others and steadfastness in one's faith are the conditions for interreligious dialogue. Someone who cannot be open toward others will learn nothing new. Whoever gives up his or her own identity becomes superfluous. In interreligious dialogue, the religions do not remain separate, but neither do they become mixed up. What emerges is a network of relationships that allows a fruitful interchange of religious thoughts and forms and also allows for joint actions in society. Anyone who expects more than this is hoping for too much; anyone who expects less hopes for too little.

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There are tribal and national religions, nature religions, and political religions. We can speak of a "world religion" only when a religion is directed to each and every person as a person. Only then can it become universal. In this sense, Neo-Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam are-according to their own claims-"world religions."

The word "world" has, however, gained another meaning as well. As a result of world politics, world economics, and world civilization, the peoples of the earth today are actually growing together into one world. What formerly did not exist but could only be imagined is now emerging: one humanity in one earth. And yet humanity exists in the midst of deadly conflicts. That is why we do not speak only of the emerging one world but also of the division of the world into a First World and a Third World and of the oppression and destruction of the latter by the former.

Should we not ask, A "world religion" for which world? For the First World or for the Third World? Which religion is a "world religion" in the face of this conflict between the different human "worlds"? If we observe the aforementioned religions, we see that Hinduism brings with it the Hindu caste system, Buddhism shows indifference in the face of domination and oppression, Islam represents the religion of the Arab victors and Christianity in its Eurocentric form is the religion of the First World. In order to become a "world religion," these religions must free themselves from the social prisons in which they exist.

They must be willing and able to overcome the divisions and humiliations between the First and the Third Worlds and to work for one common world in which all of humanity can survive. The great established religions are so chained to their class structures and forms of domination that they cannot do justice to their claims of universality. Christianity will only become a "world religion" when it gives up its Eurocentric character and ceases to be a religion of the First World to become a religion that is present in a like manner and with equal rights among all peoples, especially among those of the Third World. As a result of the shift of Christianity's center of gravity toward the peoples of the Third World, the chance that this might happen is no mean one. In order to realize it, however, Christians in the First World must give up their privileges and esteem the fellowship of all peoples higher than their own advantages.

To become a "world religion" has still a third meaning. It goes beyond the human world and is directed to the one earth on which and from which we all live. Today there is only one platform on which the representatives of the various great religions can meet. There exist the great interreligious encounters in the conferences of the various dialogue programs, especially those organized by the Christian churches. In this context, however, the suspicion always remains on the part of non-Christians that they are being subjected to a new mission program or that they are expected to cooperate in exporting a Western cultural model. There is, however, another, wholly different platform, in which the representatives of the different religions can come together much more easily. I am speaking of Earth Day in the United States (April 22), of the

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Global Forum conferences, of ecological conferences. The representatives of the various religions meet here because they recognize a common problem that they can only solve together: the destruction and the preservation of the earth. What have the great religions contributed through their faith and morality to the human destruction of the earth? Where do we recognize their world-denying, apocalyptic spirit and how can we convert to become once again children of this earth, which bears and feeds us all? The great religions have surprisingly little to say in the face of the modern ecological emergency. The representatives of the formerly so scornfully called "nature religions," however, have begun to speak out, and we hear their message of harmony with the earth and with the moon, of nature's cycles and rhythms, and of the "religion of the earth" with awe.

Certainly, we modern persons cannot return to a natural paradise such as that. We need to translate these early insights and attitudes of humanity toward the earth into the future of our civilization if we are to survive together with the earth instead of being destroyed along with the earth by this modern civilization. Not a religion that conforms itself to the existing world civilization but only a religion that becomes a "religion of the earth" can be considered a "world religion."

"The great established religions are so chained to their class structures and forms of domination that they cannot do justice to their claims of universality."

The more the ecological crises spread, the more people will search for this "religion of the earth." We will no longer measure ourselves against each other as different peoples and different relious communities but as the human species struggling for its survival. World politics will become earth politics; world economics will become earth economics. Out of our different religions, a "religion of the earth" will emerge that will teach us the spirituality of the earth in order that we may recognize ourselves as "children of the earth."

Humanity is a lately born species on this earth. Most animals were here before us. Humanity is evidently still in a stage of puberty, is intoxicated by itself, has to try out its powers in competition and to suck the earth, its mother, dry; it does not think of its children nor of the future of survival. No other living being willfully destroys air, soil, and water and endangers itself. No intelligent life form accumulates an overabundance of food on the one hand and on the other allows millions of its children to die each year. No other life form displays such a thieving relationship to its own mother.

If humanity wishes to survive, it must grow up and become wise, forgetting its pubescent dreams of omnipotence. We are not lords, but rather "children of the earth." We will have to move away from the

89 - Christianity in the Third Millenium

principles of exploitation and competition to the principle of cooperation. We will have to become adults, one way or another. Either because we are convinced it is necessary or as a result of catastrophes, we will have to become mature.

Christianity is a young religion on this earth. It is only 2000 years old. As a young religion, it has filled most of all the young peoples with its messianic spirit. It has made Europe into a continent of reformations and revolutions. It has called the experiment of modern world civilization into being. As no other religion, Christianity is bound to the fate of the modern world. For this reason, Christians must also overcome their puberty and become mature and wise. We are not meant to dominate the world but rather can only survive together with other religions and work to the service of humanity's survival. We can learn how to relate to the earth from humanity's more ancient religions. Christianity will also come to adulthood and find its way from faith in progress to the balances of life. Christianity will also rediscover its own spirituality of creation and find resonance in the religion of the earth in order to harmonize in God's great song of creation, which will save the world.