Globalization, the Spirit of Christianity and Intercultural Dialogues

Abstract

Globalization, as an historical process of border-crossing that is unfolding human desire, human universalizability and interconnectedness more fully on the globe as a whole, is bringing new challenges to all peoples and cultures of the world. The new challenges can be dealt with only in a spirit of original generosity that goes to many others to dialogue with them, so as to obtain mutual enrichment instead of conflict. The strategy of mutual strangification is taken to be the viable strategy of intercultural dialogue today. This paper argues that Christianity is a religion of original generosity and strangification par excellence. On its historical level, Christianity has always related to strangers, right from its foundation by Jesus Christ, to St. Paul’s evangelization of the gentiles, till it has become a world religion, and it has been moving into foreign lands to become one of their cultural components and then to bring them to God. On its doctrinal level, God is love and generosity. God’s act of creation is His act of strangification and generosity in an absolute original initiative.