The Task of Korean Church for Peace: Seeking Ecumenical Social Ethics in the Era of Globalization
07/10/15 
Sung Bihn Yim
프린스턴 신학교 이사, 프린스턴 신학교 철학박사
(기독교윤리 Ph.D.), 장신대 목회학 석사(M.Div.)
이글은 지난 3월16일 프린스턴 신학대학원 도서관에서 이상현 박사 연례 신학강좌(Dr. Sang Hyun Lee's Lectureship)에서 행한 강의 원문입니다.
I.. Element that threaten the peace: Globalization and militarization,
the clash of civilization and terrorism
The 21st century is no longer the time of the Cold War. On the other hand, it is not wise to predict that the world peace will be achieved during the 21st century. The 21st century has begun with so called "the war on terror". The initial point of "the war with Terror" was 9/11 tragedy. The event of 9/11 was understood as the threat to peace and justice of the world and to a democratic system. With this shocking catastrophe, the killing thousands of innocent people, we need to evaluate why the event had such an impact worldwide. If we simply count the number of casualities, the tragic conflic in East Timor was a more serious incident than 9/11. If we consider the threat to freedom, justice and democracy, the oppression and torture exercised by the non-democracy regime was more serious than 9/11. The significance of 9/11 invites the Westerner, especially Americans, to seriously examine The Clash of Civilization by Samuel Huntington.
We who are living in the Northeast asia, however, cannot get rid of the concern about Western hegemony and bias toward other cultures in the book of The Clash of Civilization. Even in The Co-existence of Civilization by a German, Harald Müller as well as in The Clash of Civilization", found we the Western civilization centered value systems. While Huntington distinguishes Westernization from the modernization. Harald Müller sees the Westernization as the result of the modernization, which contains the Western centered "general civilization" The common ground of the two scholars is that both are rejecting cultural pluralism. Huntington accepts the cultural pluralism on the worldwide setting, but he seems to refuse it within the context of America. Müller emphasizes the common characteristic of cultures. He has a limited understanding about cultures other than the Western one.
While The Clash of Civilization by Huntington reflects a worldview based on the hegemony of U.S., The coexistence of Civilization by Müller reveals a worldwide plan based on the hegemony of Europe. But these plans reveal a destructive force in the reality of globalization especially when the reality of globalization turns out to be neo-liberalism, which is based on the financial strength of the Western countries such as United States: Americanized globalization accompanies a military strength more apparent since 9/11.
One major point of notice is the co-existence of globalization and militarization. The socio-economic unbalance, known as the 20/80, leads to a social anixiety and regional instability. By overcoming the regional fear against the globalization, the superpower nations, which try to open the global market system, are depending more on their military strength. In the name of national security, which includes the regional and world security, the military budget has been increased and the few superpower nations gained an enormous profit through the military and arms sales. Even the WTO made a special exemption on the import and export of arms, to protect the interest of the superpower countries. And IMF and other financial institutions made special laws regarding the military spending during the restructuring process. The motive of political globalization, which guarantees the interest of super powers by strengthening the military powers, cannot be hidden by attacking few terrorists. To maintain their hegemony, defining the protest for other's own survival and rights as a part of the cultural clash or simply condemning it as acts of terrorists could not be justified ethically. We have already been warned of this in The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr.
Fareed Zakaria pointed out the paradoxial relationship between globalization and terrorism. He said "the two elements that caused the 9/11 are the globalization and the human nature." Both of them, globalization and human nature, are very difficult to change their nature. Free trade, the technological revolution, the information highway, all these changes create a more open society and the openness makes it eaiser for terrorists to penetrate and destroy a society. Therefore, according to Zakaria, the technological development of globalization is partially responsible for terrorism. But the major cause of terrorism is in the incompetence and hatred of the people in poor nations, due to the differences of national strength among nations and its people.
II. Searches for the peace in the era of the Accelerated Globalization
Even though we do not fully accept the theory of "the Clash of civilization", the theory proves that the understanding of culture and religion is an important factor in the settlement of global peace. The cultural difference based on different religions calls for the search of ethical values, which could be shared by the global community. From this point of view, it will be necessary to review the ethical value and the core of the theory that the world commonly shares. UNESCO has suggested the five components for the establishment of global ethics, based on the statement above. UNESCO suggests the following five as the core global ethics: (1) human rights and duty (2) democracy and its elements of society (3) the protection of minorities (4) An equal negotiation and a delegate for the peaceful resolution of conflict (5) an equality between generations as well as within the generations. In the same context, Hans Küng suggested 5 topics of global ethics. (1) the elimination of violence (2) an economic happiness (3) social justice (4) ecological balance (5) overcoming of an individual isolation. To implement the global ethics, Küng suggested that following conditions should be required. (1) an etablishment of science and technology (2) a political economical and educational standard of judgment for the necessary permission on science and technical actions (3) the society that could accomodate the condition of the number (2) According to Küng, since the technical experts have a tendency to concern themselves only the area that they serve, we need to have a political structure that guarantees the participating democracy.
Global ethics is based on the common ground which exists among diverse religions and cultures. We should note that it is an economical and utilitarian action to maximize happiness for all people. In that sense, global ethics attracts media and the general public. Taking into the consideration of the accelerating progress of globalization, we need an establishment of a kind of ethics making global scaled solidarity possible.
But the global ethics which was suggested by Hans Küng has not been well accepted by most theologians who consider the nature of religion and the difference of faith structure seriously. Those theologians think that there should be their own method to accommodate the social responsibility and the identity of Christians. They, especially with the insights of Reinhold Niebuhr, think that global ethics lacks the issue of sin and grace, which are the fundamental elements of Christian ethics. From this point, we argue for the ecumenical social ethics rooted in Christianity, which is based upon the serious consideration of the reality such as sin and grace. But this kind of character of ecumenical social ethics should not diminish inclusiveness.
We have already noted that the acceleration of globalization has resulted in the clash of civilization. To resolve the conflicts in this globalization, the ecumenical social ethics has following characteristics. The ecumenical social ethics is different from the global ethics, which attempts to solve global problems without a serious concern of incommensurability among various religions. The ecumenical social ethics should respect the uniqueness of different religious traditions. That type of uniqueness provides a fundamental value structure for social actions. Therefore, it is impossible to execute ecumenical social ethics without serious concern about the uniqueness of the context. At the same time ecumenical social ethics is based on the biblical history and Jesus Christ who is the maxim of the gospel and Church tradition. Because of God's creation and the faith rooted in the salvation history, a realm of ethics that is beyond the earth and universal. The ecumenical social ethics is fundamentally sensitive to the need of social responsibility and unity that are based on the biblical teachings.
III. Seeking for Ecumenical social ethics for the 21st century
Charles West once argued that "the ecumenical movement is characterized by a continual direction of repentance which honest dialogue brings forth, responsibility of which it makes the Christian aware, the witness in action to the work of Christ in the world in both judgment and promise for Christian and non-Christian alike." Such an observation on the ecumenical movement concides with basic insights of Reinhold Niebuhr's 'ethics of responsiblity' I would like to argue that Reinhold Nieburh's 'ethics of responsibility,' revised with reinforcing Christian character formation as a global citizen, as well as being more conscious of the core of the Gospel, "taking the side with the least" may provide us a way to make peace in the era of the accelerated globalization.
Compared to global ethics, which aims at problem solving without serious consideration of incommensurability between different religious traditions, ecumenical social ethics more seriously considers the distinctiveness of each tradition. Since such distinctiveness provides a value-system as the basis of its commitment to a certain social action, it is impossible to construe an ecomenical commitment without serious consideration of such distinctiveness. Ecumenical social ethics starts from its own root. Ecumenical social ethics should be principally based upon the biblical narrative and its culmination in the Gospel of Jesus Christ & Church tradition. The scope of ethical concern, however, is universal, beyond global, because of the faith in divine creation and redemption. At the same time ecumenical social ethics is fundamentally sensitive to the need for accountability and solidarity with the marginalized according to the core of biblical teaching. In this sense ecumenical social ethics is consonant with the argument of Sang H. Lee which emphasizes the 'transforming communitas' based on the liminality of Jesus Christ and His Church'. It is true that ecumenical social ethics should satisfy ethical criteria which overcome sectarian limits, harmonize with humanitarian issues and be based on the biblical narrative and Church tradition.
As Huntington rightly perceived, the acceleratin of globalization could result in the clash of civilization. To resolve the conflicts in this globalization, ecumenical social ethics has following tasks:
(1) The first task of ecumenical social ethics vis-á-vis globalization is to describe, interpret, and analyze the globalizaing political economy. In this stage arises the overall question: 'what is going on and why?' For instance, what are the power dynamics; theological idealogical; and social theoretical underpinnings; multiple long-term implications for human and other life; and historical precursors of corporate- and finance-driven globalization?
(2) The second task is to develop alternatives to the dominant paradigm in the light of the ethical criteria, and to bring into public discourse alternatives that already are being crafted but remain largely ignored by powerful leaders. Here the initiative question is 'what could be?'
(3) The third task is to assist in discerning which modes of global eonomic interaction are more consistent with the ways of God revealed in Jesus Christ and the Spirit. Here the following question should be responded: 'what ought be, and what norms guide discernment?' For example, 'what ought be the purpose of economic life, and what paradigms best serve that purpose?'
(4) The fourth is to identify obstacles curtailing the power to live toward more faithful alternatives. The question: What disable moral agency? Here we will identify ways that Christian theologies have contributed to complicity with neo-liberal globalization.
(5) The fifth is to recall and rekindle agency for over coming those obstacles. The question: What enables moral agency? While we agree with the postmodernists critique of universalizing descriptive accounts of human reality, we distinguish between descriptive and normative accounts. Moral agency in theological terms is the power to embody a fundamental moral norm of Christian life as being demonstrated through the trinitarian relationship in God. It is true that liberal notions of moral agency, until challenged by feminist theory, womanist theory, and postmodernist theory, referred to the power or potential of individuals to act freely, autonomously, and rationally-and hence responsibly- in accord with moral norms. In theological ethics this became the power or the potnetial to make free and rational choices in resonse to God's invitation. However, we, with the help of Neibuhrian insights on human beings and power, are able to recognize that agency with basic anxiety comes to be formed in a historical matrix of structural factors and power relationship. With the insights by 'ethics of conviction' such as Liberation theology become we clearly realized tht this agency is also shaped by continuing legacies of oppression and survival. Constraints to agency include the matrix of oppression and domination in which the agent is formed. Now agency is viewed through an inter-structural lens. Memory, vision, imagination, and hope form and mal-form agency. Practice is the shaper of moral agency. The power to embody a responsible way of living is the purview of both the community and the individual, where the latter is understood as being-in-relationship. We need to acknowledge the fact tht moral agency is, by definition, political.
(6) It is important to note that the task for ethicists to propose and define practical steps toward what ought and could be. Ethics should respond to the question: What does this mean for everyday lives in terms of lifestyle, public policy, institutions, social systems, belief systems? We should take the key step of ethical formation & policy making: to offer guidance about how we might form a valid ethos and develop those attitudes, institutions, habits, policies, and programs that are in accord with a more ethically viable ethos, rightly legitimated by a valid theological view of ultimate reality.
The interpretation and the ethical judgment of the acceleration of globalization suggest that the task of the ecumenical social ethics as follows. It needs to provide the worldview based on the Kingdom of God and the Trinity so that a person or a local community could have a Christian lifestyle. It should guarantee a person with a non-idolatrous and self-respecting environment. We need to overcome the Western-centered hegemony which was evident from the clash of civilization. The ecumenical social ethics should demand a righteous responsibility of a nation to prevent an abuse from multi-national corporations. It also should encourage NGOs(non-governmental organizations) and other cultural institutions to make cultural policies, which are not manipulated by consumerism. The goal of ecumenical social ethics is an establishment of an ecumenical culture. The ecumenical culture that we pursue is based on the rejection of the idiolatrous absolutism and, at the same time, the respect of each culture. It protects the uniqueness and diversity of each culture. Furthermore, the ecumenical social ethics pursues a more constructive hybridization among different cultures. It pursues an adventurous culture based upon freedom.
IV. The role and task of the Korean Church from the view of ecumenical social ethics.
The world is getting smaller and integrated due to the accleration of globalization. But, on the other hand, the life of individual people and community are being scattered. Individuals and communities are degraded into producers and consumers. People no longer have the sovereignty over their own decisions. Due to the labor market change, family members are being scattered to find a work all over the world. Local communities are controlled by the market values. People are at a point of losing their traditional culture by the profit oriented foreign cultures. In a situation like this, the Church has to not only comfort the disconnected and isolated communities,l but also proclaim the prophetic judgment on the economical & political powers that cause the disconnection and isolation.
It needs to be pointed out that the production can freely move one place to another, but laborers cannot. Therefore, the laborers become an easy target as an expendable variable. It is a paradoxical fact that the devastation of labor market is the weakest factor, known as Achilles heel of globalization. The low wages of the laborers will decrease their spending and the less spending will impact the market. But a more serious problem may be a social violence by the devastated workers. This situation is called "unpredictability" of globalization, along with "unavoidability" and "ambiguity".
A careful study of the unpredictability of globalization teaches a social solidarity of people, who are lack of political, economic and cultural competitiveness. Christian social ethics should always be concerned with the least ones first. We must realize that the social dichotomy of the rich and poor is being more globalized. A worldwide destruction in ecology is also accelerated by the process of globalization. We need to pay more attnetion to maintain the eco-system in the areas of the 2/3 nations. The competing arguments for development vs environment result in a situation like chasing two rabbits. The environmental policies intiated by 1/3 nations and the few superpowers could lead to maintain the status-quo of the economic division between 1/3 and 2/3 nations. In a situation like this, we need to demand the 1/3 nations to help out the 2/3 nations with the envionmental technology and economic aids. Globalization of the super power nations might also destroy a local culture, with the thinking that the culture of the super power nations supersedes the culture of other nations. Therefore we need to respect the regional culture and continue discuss a global culture which protects all human rights and security.
Globalization might lead to a theological criticism of the trend of enforcing people to follow the image and life of super power nations, instead to follow the image of God and the life of Jesus Christ. Even with the criticism, the idolatrous movement is a tidal wave that cannot be stopped or reversed easily. Times like these are an opportunity for the Church to fully functin as the body of Jesus Christ. As a critical majority to bring a constructive transformation, it is a critial time(kairos) for the believers to decide and to take practical actions. In a time such as this, from the perspective of ecumenical social ethics, the Korean Church as 'transforming communitas' could execute the practical function and task for the establishment of peace and its values.
V. Values for the settlement of peace
1. Human dignity
God said "let us make human being in our image, in our likeness." (Gen. 1:26) The human dignity, focused on the value of human being, is the core of Christian value system. Because a human being is created by the image of God (Imago Dei), we have received a special value, importance, and responsibility compared with other creatures. The fact of being created by the image of God is divine evidence that we were both with natural dignity. The sacredness of human life also reflects how we should treat each other. All human relationships should be pursued with the goal of human dignity. Huam relationships should not harm or damage the dignity of any human being. Since Christian values are free from the political ideology or consumer power, Christian values based on human dignity could contribute to the peaceful globalization process.
2. Love and Justice
If a believer has an assurance of calling to serve the community and neighbors, love and justice are the necessary norms of Christian culture. What is the true meaning of love and justice in our culture? The meaning of Christian love and its application is rooted in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. The life of Jesus Christ shows us Agape love, love that is beyond our selfishness and willing to self-sacrifices for others. Love lets us give up our own needs and serve neighbors for the benefit of them. Love is unconditional and its realm is unconditional as Jesus Christ showed his mercy and proclaimed the gospel for the sinners, ill ones and the ones rejected by society. His life was the reflection of God's infinite and unconditional love for humanity. It was proven that the love of Jesus Christ is sacrificial love, beyond his own interest, through his death on the cross for the salvation of humankind.
But is it possible to implment Christ's love in our culture? Christian realist, like Reinhold Niebuhr, said that it is not possible to directly apply Christ's love into our distorted society. Since the goal of love is to seek our a way to benefit our neighbor, they said it is possible to impact the culture indirectly through justice. It means that the love, the unconditional kind that benefits our neighbors, should be changed into another love, the conditional kind that conditionally benefits them. In the reality of the world, love clashes with sin, evil and the ideas, which are mutually exclusive and competitive thinking. Therefore the life that we want to serve the neighbors to benefit them demands us to live the life of justice.
The values, which are rooted on faithful love and justice, could help to build the community based on the cultural formation. And it could stop the destruction of local communities, which is a negative result of globalization. Love and justice could also help the local people to expand their boundary of practicing love and justice, by regulating the nationalism and local exclusivism. A critical weakness of globalization is the negative impact caused by the combination of the post-modern consumerism and the self-fulfillment based on individualism. In this context, the faith based love and justice teaches the communal love and justice, to overcome the critical weakness of globalization.
3. Life centered ecology and Common good
Churches' engagement in the world is centered around the concept of the "Kingdom of God," which was proclaimed by Jesus Christ. "Kingdom of God" means the realm controlled by God's will, and it exists among us. The central message of Christ was the Kingdom of God. At the core of the Kingdom of God is God's continuous sovereignty over the created world and, at the end, God's saving of the world in history. The Kingdom of God should be established on this earth, just like in heaven. Therefore the Kingdom of God is related with a person and social peace, justice, freedom, and well-being.
And Kingdom of God means the realm that God controls, therefore the Kingdom of God movement is to glorify God and love our neighbors. The core of the movement is transforming a community into a mature and gorwing community. God reveals himself through the trinitarian being and human history. Through revelation, God shows us the nature of the Kingdom of God. Therefore the trinitarian community consists of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and God's sovereignty in the history is a model for the Kingdom of God. God who is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, becomes one unity with the fellowship and love. By learning from this trinitarian relationship, we should overcome the difference and diversity with love and fellowship to become one body. This kind of living should be actualized in our culture.
The concept of Kingdom of God guides the believers who want to participate in the peaceful unification process of North and South Korea. It teaches and guides justification, participation and attitude of our actions. But this theological concept is very difficult to apply to non-Christians, who are also invovled in the unification process. Therefore the concept we could substitute for the Kingdom of God is the concept of 'common good'. According to this concept, people are ordained by God, who is the ultimate destiny. Each person is related to God who is the greatest common good. Therefore the goal of all our actions is to unite all human beings and God. The good that we pursue has two dimensions, public and private. The common good is relational and social. It is naturally good and is itself good. On the other hand, the private good is functionally good. Private good is not good in of itself, but as to benefit others. It is suitable to be good for the world and human beings only when they assist common good. Money, daily things, service businesses, and most economic goods are categorized as private and are functionally good.
The communal good not only respects individual human rights but also teaches to seek out the good for neighbors, society, the world, and God. The common good includes all the social good that help to accomplish and complete individual goals. The common good prioritizes not only the dignity of man and woman and the rights of human being but also the nature of our society and our destiny, the purpose that is bigger than ourselves. A soceity is more than a unified body of these three: individual goods, profits and respected choices. It includes organizations which compete for their own interests and the unstable institutions working for special interests. In a well-organized society, or ecology, partial thing exists and functions for the complete one -- the common good, universe, and divine good -- the bigger good of God.
To Christians, the concept of 'the common good' provides a solution to overcome the extreme individualism, which is based on radical ethnic exclusivism and post modern consumerism. In a larger sense, the common good benefits all creatures. Therefore the common good is not only for human lives but also for all lives of creatures. It has an ecological meaning. The purpose of the common good should be the harmony of human beings and nature. The common good teaches us to judge our actions based on how the action effects everything; ourselves, others, other species and the entire ecology. In this action, we find a way to overcome the negative effects caused by the globalization.
VI. The practical task of Korean Church for the peace settlement based on ecumenical social ethics
1. To provide a vision for the unified community of North and South Korea:
First of all, the church should lead the reformation of South Korean society as a prerequisite model for the unified Korean community, overcoming the division of South and North. it should also challenge the church to educate and sensitize Christians, about 22-35% of the total population of Korea, about the God centered unification community, before teaching about the ideology of division between North and South Korea. What a God centered covenant community means is a community based on the highest dignity of all members according to the God-given Imago Dei. It is the community based the highest dignity of all members, regardless of their awareness of that dignity. Therefore, the covenant community does not favor a partial group, like Christians or South Koreans. It respects the dignity of all members who are created by the image of God. It seeks a way to be faithful to God who is master of the universal community. Therefore the unification community could not be a nationalistic community. The vision of the unification community that the church should proclaim and educate is a peaceful community that the dignity of all members should be equally reflected. The vision must be theological as well as historical so that it could embrace the global community.
2. To accommodate inclusive social culture.
Secondly, to serve the global society, the church should make a strong effort to accommodate cultural diversity. Korean Church should also overcome socio-cultural difference of North and South Korea. To overcome the difference by understanding of North Korean culture, Korean Church should continue the education of "Correct Understanding of North Korea" systematically. The church should pay more attention to the cultural exchange of North and South Korea. The Sunday school curriculum should include lessons that help to understand North Korea and the peaceful unification process.
At the same time, the task of Korean Church should be the transformation of South Korean social culture, which is pre-dominatly a consumer-based culture. From the North Korean point of view, the accommodation of such culture could be a moral embarrassment for them. In some sense, such a view of North Korea could be a prophetic message to South Koreans and churches, which are contaminated by the consumer culture. Of course, the exclusive self-reliant ideology culture of North Korea should be reformed too. But it is a secondary task for South Korean churches. When South Korean society is reformed as a culture of respecting all human dignity, harmonious relationship of freedome and justice, South Korea could enhance the capacity to invite North Koreans for the unification community.
Korean Church should enhance the cultural understanding of migrant workers to facilitate their settlement in Korea. The church should encourage the members to lead healthy cultural engagemwent. Working with diverse NGOs' the church should build a healthy and inclusive culture, which embraces not just North Koreans but also the global community, in Korea. The church needs to initiate the hope of peaceful global community.
3. To build Political and Economic institutions for human beings.
Thirdly, to guarantee the freedom, the church should participate in setting up political and economic institutions for human beings. The church should lead in creating a righteous social structure to produce peace. The church should take an interest in making and executing the legal system, which protects human dignity, freedom, equality, and justice. In the global market system, the church also should take interest in building ethical values, such as a transparent corporate culture and community ethics in highly competitive society. If we think that these matters are not related with the church, then we are abandoning our responsibility as God's children and denying God's sovereignty. To build a more righteous political and economic system in South Korea, the church should educate the people on the matters of political participation and economic justice. To live like "the chosen people, the priest like a king, the holy nation and the people of God", the church should engrave the sense of Christian citizenship on the heart of Christians. The church should nurture authentic Christians so that they could establish the righteous tax system. In considering the global location of Korea and the socio-political situation in the Northeast Asia, Korean Church also needs to work with churches in China and Japan. Korean Church needs to participate in the formation of righteous and peaceful regional community.
VII. Globalization and Peace: Korean church and ecumenical social ethics
There were times that people were very optimistic about globalization. But as globalization becoming more institutionalized, no one optimistically praises globalization. Socio-economically, there has been a collapse of the middle income class, so called 20/80 society, and resulted in a larger gap between the rich and poor. Like the situation in Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the identity and function of ethnic country are now in questions. The war of Iraq, after 9/11, proves that political globalization accompanies with it a military globalization. "Such a political globalization forces nations to participate in highly competitive economic globalization. In situation like this, each country is eager to strengthen its national competitiveness by neglecting the people who are in the poor and weak social class. This kind of phenomenon caused by the globalization threatens peace and stability of a society and world. The class of civilization teaches us the cultural aspect of globalization but, on the other hand, it makes us to realize that the process of globalization is far from the peace that we pursue.
At this moment, Niebuhrian insights on Christian realism challenge us to seek for a more responsible answer in the process of globalization. Taking into the consideration of the context of the Korean Churches, we found out that the ecumenical social ethics could be the proper answer to the problems of globalization. The actualization of ecumenical social ethics of the Korean Church should start from Korean peninsula, like the saying "think globally and act locally." That is why the peaceful unification of Korea is the primary task of the Korean Church. To establish a peaceful unification community in Korea, South Korea must first reform its society to respect the dignity of all people beyond the cultural and racial diversity. Therefore, the actualization of Korean Church for the peaceful unification requires the social reformation of Korea.
However, is it more important to remember that the positive role of the Korean Church for peace begins and ends with the church being the church. Of course, it is necessary to understand and analyze the social context in which we work to be able to function more responsibly. In this sense, we need to encourage the work of the laity and acknoledge our position as a member of civil society. However, the church being the church rests on the basis of the individual citizen being a true Christian, and also the Christian being a true citizen. A citizen in this sense is a member of society who carries out their social responsibilities. The criticism that the Korean Church receives about not having fulfilled her social responsibility is, at the same time, pointing to the fact that the Korean Christian has not truly lived a life of faith. Therefore, we must first re-affirm the basics of what it means to be a Christian. The acknowledgement of the close relationship between faith and life, a new confession of the sovereignty of God, and a continous self-renewal founded on the confession of deep-rooted sins are important pre-requirements that need to be addressed in order for the Korean Church to properly carry out her social responsibility. Such a life of re-evaluation and re-assessment of the basic foundations of faith allow us to have a more open attitude to the Gospel. Such an open attitude to the Gospel will help the Korean Church to carry on the traditon of 'ecclesia refomata semper refomanda.'
Such churches will also help the individual Christian to live a more responsible life as a citizen combining a life of "love God" with a life of "solidarity and journeying together with the weak and poor" which is the core of ecumenical social ethics. Here I deeply agree with Dr. Sang H. Lee when he emphasizes, "all Christian churches that aspire to be the churches of Jesus Christ the Galilean must situate themselves at the periphery, not at the center of their society."
In conclusion, I would like to argue that Ecumenical social ethics with the revision of the Niebuhrian ethics of responsibility through reinforcing Christian character formation as a global citizen as well as being more conscious of the core of the Gospel, "taking the side with the least " would paly a more constructive role for making peace in the context of the accelerated globalization.