Britain
2009 14.3 4.9 5.1 3.35 2.18
2010 14.8 5.4 5.3 3.33 2.22
Source: Bloomberg, 2010, posted in Jutarnji list, August 17, 2010.
Therefore, can it be that while thinking about postmodern times, it is possible to
consider the role and place of the Christian church and the spreading of the good
news, and whether the church can serve people, especially those who are vulnerable
in various ways, and that through works of charity in tangible practice, the
church can show the world how to “love your neighbor as yourself ”?
In his book, Confused God, Thomas Ruster, a theologian from Dortmund, asserts
that Christianity was perceiving and experiencing itself as a religion which
was able to mediate the relationship with ultimate reality, not only to individuals
but also to the society as a whole, but in the present day, that is no longer the case
because capitalism has overtaken Christianity in mediating the relationship with
ultimate reality, with what is determining and shaping our lives.
Ruster concludes that capitalism is a modern religion and that if Christianity
wants to remain faithful to God, of whom the Holy Scriptures testify, and which
can not be identified with the ultimate reality, should, as soon as possible, terminate
the relationship, that is, enter “dissolution” with capitalism as a modern
religion, and that theology has the task of conceiving possible ways to ultimately
achieve this dissolution. To achieve this, it is necessary, according to Ruster, to
re-analyze the salvific and the redemptive understanding of Christianity that has
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KAIROS - Evangelical Journal of Theology / Vol. IV. No. 2 (2010), pp. 223-236
lost its relevance and is unable to mediate the experience that the God of whom
the Bible testifies is the one who brings salvation.
In the Bible, the words of Jesus Christ that speak about the way to eternal
life are written: “... Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your
strength and with all thy mind, and your neighbor as yourself ” (Luke 10:27). Can
the present-day Christian church persevere on the path of promoting and living
the way of love, or will it be over-burdened by prejudices of affiliation to, for example,
Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, or Protestantism?
Globalization and Faith
Can modern-day capitalism provide a way out of the addiction to materialism,
the orientation towards obtaining profits, or towards debt obligations which creates
citizens who invest everything into their own pride, skills, talents and knowledge?
Can an answer be expected from, in Nietzsche’s terms, a super-man who
considers himself a deity?
As Veselin Drašković states (2007:259), globalization represents “a historical,
realistic, contradictory, uneven, unstoppable and irreversible process” which,
through its manifestation, changes the international, economic, and other relations
in the direction of increased integration.
With the fall of socialism, particularly in the late 20th century, and with
the development of capitalism in formerly socialist countries which was based,
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