The New Globalization: Reclaiming the Lost Ground of our Christian Social Tradition
Richard W Gillett, Pilgrim Press Cleveland 2005, pp.xix + 219, pbk, no price
 
(From the January-March 2007 issue of Crucible, the quarterly Church of England journal of social action.)
 
This book comes with strong commendations from Andrew Davey, Edmund Browning (the former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church) and Ken Leech. I am delighted to join this chorus of praise. Dick Gillett is a retired American Anglican (Episcopal) priest and social activist. He visits Britain from time to time and has written powerful articles for Crucible on organising the low paid in California. Now in his retirement he has written a valuable and accessible account of why American capitalism needs to be, and can be challenged, from the Christian progressive tradition. The strength of the book is very simple, but it is not something many people do well. He surveys the biblical, patristic and medieval tradition right up to such people as F.D. Maurice and William Temple. He then shows how this social tradition can be used to illuminate the dire state of low skilled and poor people in the sixth year of the presidency of George W Bush.
 
George W is of course a self confessed apologist for Almighty God and American businessmen such as the now dead Kenneth Lay. George W called Lay by the affectionate name "Kenny Boy", and Lay rose from being a poor preacher's son to become a millionaire before being convicted of corporate fraud as the head of Enron, the energy company he founded. It eventually grew into the nation's seventh largest company before it collapsed after an accounting scandal. Lay was lucky to die before he was sentenced, yet he maintained his innocence and Christian faith to the very end. He could well have served many years in prison for one of the biggest conspiracies to fraud in American history. Bush attended his memorial service and praised him publicly.
 
This is the world of The New Globalization. It is a harsh and unforgiving world. It is possible to portray globalization more sympathetically than Gillett does, (page 11 onwards) but what is undeniable is that neo-conservatism in the United States, and elsewhere, has caused deepening exploitation for poor people (p.18). Each chapter is written as a parish, or small group, study guide and ends with helpful questions. There are chapters on the Christian social tradition, the growth and decline of industrial mission since 1944, the challenge to poverty by St.Francis, (pp 65-68), Gerrard Winstanley in the English Civil War, F.D. Maurice in the nineteenth century and many others. As the book moves into the modern period it is very useful to have comments from Pope John Paul II (p.103) put alongside the debt crisis. Again and again the strength of the book is Gillett's detailed local knowledge. Thus on p.121 there is a discussion of why Roman Catholic hospitals in Los Angeles from 1999-2001 tried to create union free workplaces. It seems incredible that a Catholic hospital should be so ruthless, but Gillett documents the process, and how church protests eventually defeated this. There are many other examples of greed, exploitation, and reliance on the ideology of neo-conservatism (pp 140-141) to justify why companies acted the way they did.
 
The last three chapters from pages147 to 194 show what Gillett is arguing for. First he advocates public policies to reform global capitalism. There is room for disagreement with some of these ideas (the Tobin tax and local food sovereignty are included in the list, and I would be sceptical of their efficacy) but the overarching strategy is not only commendable, it is imperative. Again the strength of Gillett lies in his detail. He does not simply cite the obvious campaigns to cancel Third World debt, vital though that is, he also knows about a Catholic parish in Nebraska where the parish priest supported Latino workers who were struggling to unionise a meat-packing factory. A homily in support of their union campaign shows how the tradition of F.D.Maurice is alive and well in the United States today. Fair Trade coffee, and anti sweat shop campaigns, all appear. (I liked the sound of the Episcopal fair trade coffee called Bishops Blend!). The book ends with a call to organise, with a list of websites that can support this struggle. Finally, and most of all, Gillett shows the need to reclaim the religious heritage of Christian concern about poverty and exploitation.
 
This is a sobering book. It shows that the mid term US elections, which were such a reaction to the intervention in Iraq, have not resolved the issue of wealth and poverty. Equally the church divide on women bishops and gay rights cannot be allowed to be the only religious story in that country. Very simply, the richest nation on earth has some of the worst conditions for employment, and the direst poverty. There is room for much reflection on how this analysis applies also in Britain. Gillett deserves many thanks for writing a compelling, readable and passionate call to resist, in the name of Christ, the exploitation of our fellow men and women. I hope it is widely read.
 
Peter Sedgwick, St.Michael's College Llandaff