"Like a cancer, economic inequality is metastasizing across the world" - Archbishop Thabo Makgoba's Geneva address

6th Meeting of the Ecumenical Panel on a New International Financial and Economic Architecture (NIFEA)

Archbishop Thabo Makgoba

Opening Prayer and Reflection

John Knox Centre, Geneva

25-27 March 2025

The Ecumenical Panel on NIFEA convened for its 6th meeting to address the growing global economic inequality, climate catastrophe, and explore alternative economic systems in this Jubilee year. This collaborative effort between the World Council of Churches, World Communion of Reformed Churches, Lutheran World Federation, World Methodist Council, and Council for World Mission brings together experts in economics, finance, sociology, and theology to chart a path toward a more just and sustainable economic architecture.

A little over eight years ago, I addressed the ruling Synod of the church which I lead, the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, on my attendance in Hong Kong at the first Ecumenical School on Governance, Economics and Management, an initiative of the organisations you represent here. What is particularly interesting when I look back on my words today is that my reflections were based on the unstated assumption that the new “economy of life” that we were urging at that meeting was something primarily of benefit to the Global South.

I told the Synod that in Hong Kong we were looking at how we could find an alternative to the current global governance of money and financial systems, replacing it with a system that would be less exploitative and would distribute resources and income more equitably. I called on our bishops and our theologians to explore a theology and ecclesiology of generosity—focussing on the Incarnation as hermeneutical conversation of theology and economy, developing if you like a social teaching on the economy.

My objective was for the church to encourage young people in particular to dare to challenge old stereotypes and find new ways of making this ever more complex and fast-paced world into an ethical and sustainable place for all. I wanted new generations of the young in the Global South to become advocates of a new form of global governance and a new economic model, and to seek practical ways to transform the market economy from a self-serving mechanism for elites to one which serves our environment and all the world's people.

To illustrate my argument, I pointed to how the skewed ordering of the South African economy lay at the heart of the political crisis that we faced, and still face in my country. In South Africa, inherited patterns of privilege and wealth which were overwhelmingly associated with one racial group, had created an economy which spat in the face of Gospel values. However, at the time I was speaking, the dominant faction of our post-apartheid ruling party had chosen not to respond to the maldistribution of resources by allocating them for the benefit of the poor. Instead they were directing them to an elite group with links to a small number of politicians and officials. In other words, a new breed of private interests joined the old beneficiaries of apartheid, to capture the public purse and to line their own pockets.

But as I say, my primary focus was on the way in which the skewed allocation of resources affected the Global South. Now when I look back on what I said, and see what is happening in the Global North, it is almost with a sense of shock that I realise that we in the South are not the only victims of the current ordering of the global economy. We now realise that what Desmond Tutu used to call the “so-called ordinary people” – “so-called,” he said “because in my theology, nobody is ordinary, all are created in the image of God” – that average men and women in the world's most powerful and prosperous economies, are just as much victims of the greed of self-serving elites who hold wield economic and political power for their own benefit as the poor in the South.

Of course the global financial crisis of 2008 gave us some warning of this, but it is especially since 2016, when I attended that meeting in Hong Kong, that the devastating consequences of inequality and the hoarding of power and resources for the benefit of a few have become apparent not just to the Global South but to economically developed nations as well. We have seen the rise to power of oligarchs in countries which we imagined were democracies – flawed democracies as they might have been, but democracies which aspired to reflect the views and the interests of all their people.

Across the world, now including Europe and the United States, we see the phenomenon of what we might call the “left-behinds” – those who stand on the margins, watching elites prospering while their standard of living is eroded. We see those people turning toward solutions reflecting economic chauvinism, xenophobic political nationalism, woven in with resurgent racism and even the stirrings of a new kind of fascism. We see our faith perverted and transformed into a narrow Christian nationalism which seeks to demonize “the other”, and whose adherents struggle to accept the teachings of Jesus concerning “turning the other cheek”. And in an age-old pattern, elites – through their dominance of the media and public debate – exploit divisions and divert people's anger so that it targets not those responsible for inequality and injustice, but the vulnerable, the poor and the weak; those even less fortunate than they.Like a cancer, economic inequality is metastasizing across the world

, eating away at our social compacts, threatening to devour our very being, everything that which makes us human. We face, I believe, a kairos moment for humanity.

In August 1993, the then Archbishop Desmond Tutu delivered an early contribution to the church debate which preceded the landmark Jubilee 2000 campaign, the campaign which, taken up by wider civil society, is credited with cancellation of more than $100 billion dollars of debt owed by 35 of the world's poorest countries.¹ Delivering an address on “Kairos and the Jubilee Year in Uppsala” in Sweden, Archbishop Tutu unpacked the theology underlying the concept of Jubilee. He began by pointing out that “the Jubilee year described in Leviticus 25 propounds theology that—like all good theology should do—has profound implications for how we should order our political, economic, social relations.”

Noting how the world's churches had successfully campaigned to end apartheid, he urged the ecumenical community to “invest as much passion and zeal in calling for the cancellation of the foreign debt” as we had for the campaign against apartheid. “This,” he declared, “is the new moral issue to which we must be committed.” Archbishop Tutu's successor, and my predecessor, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, went on to campaign for the cancellation of debt as part of the Jubilee 2000 campaign.

In similar vein, over the last decade I have campaigned in South Africa for the old struggle—the struggle against apartheid—to be replaced by what I call “the New Struggle”, a struggle for the promises of democracy to be realised. Now, as the ecumenical community grapples with the implications of the scandalous gap between the rich and the poor, and with a world increasingly characterised by growing xenophobia, racism and authoritarianism, we need to launch a new struggle, one of a different kind, an international campaign for the reform of financial and economic governance.

If all are to have life, and to have life in abundance, as Jesus taught, we have a shared responsibility—across the regions of the world, across political divisions, across cultural and religious diversity, and across economic and social differences—to transform the global economic order into one which serves the interests of all and thus guarantees a future for the coming generations.

The challenges we face on a global, regional and local level are similar and related: poverty and inequality; rapid technological changes; protection of the environment and natural resources; interfaith and inter-cultural cooperation; strengthening democracy and social justice; addressing the causes of migration and displacement. Through dialogue and conversations with leading religious, political, business and civil society leaders, we must strive to foster better understanding of the complexity of the challenges we face, strengthen mutual cooperation and trust and facilitate common action through partnerships.

As Pope Francis has so bluntly and eloquently stated: “As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or for that matter, to any problems.”

And the justice that we need to work for includes climate justice: we have to be good stewards of the whole of creation by working to mitigate the effect of climate change, not least for the sake of the poor and marginalised. Again, I quote Pope Francis, this time on the link between ending poverty and working for climate justice: “We are not faced with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather one complex crisis which is both social and environmental,” and “There can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself.”

Allow me to end this reflection and continue our day's discussions with the following prayer:

Let us pray:

Creating, liberating, healing and sustaining source of all that is,

Thank you for your love and your trust in us, enabling us to embody your attributes of justice-making, earth-relishing love and to steadfastly commit to transform injustice into ways of living that nourish dignity and freedom from oppression.

Heal and transform the pain of those suffering unrelentness bombardment in Gaza, as well as victims of conflict in the Occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Yemen, South Sudan, Sudan, the Sahel, Mozambique, the DR Congo, Ukraine and Russia.

Grant our global political leaders compassion and empathy and empower all leaders, including those in faith communities, to bring healing to the wounded, relief to those who suffer and comfort to all who mourn.

As we gather today, we pray that you will lead our discussions help us find ways to motivate all those involved in current conflicts to work for justice and lasting peace amongst your people.

Living God, in times of crisis throughout the ages, we have prayed to you for the peaceful, negotiated settlement of conflicts, and you have granted our petitions.

We have prayed for freedom for the oppressed and marginalised, and you have answered our prayers.

Now, when people are again dying violently each day in our communities,

When people die as a result of a lack of clean water and nourishing food,

We pray for unity and collegiality as we seek your guidance and wisdom in addressing the challenges we face.

May the needs of those on the margins be at the heart of our engagements and explorations;

May the interests of power and politics take second place to those of peace, stability and prosperity.

Guide and support all who work for peace,

Strengthen the agency of people of goodwill,

And bless us with your presence among us.

For you live and reign, one God, world without end.

Amen.

1https://www.advocacyinternational.co.uk/featured-project/jubilee-2000