What does it mean to be a citizen of planet earth? The past few centuries have been marked by the remarkable acceleration of movement and interaction. People, ideas, money, goods and influence move and collide with exhilarating speed. The most significant feature of the past millennium has been the surge of world population from 600 million people to 6 billion in the last 400 years. This incredible explosion has been accompanied by a revolution of technology that has transformed how we produce, communicate and move ourselves and our goods around the planet. Like a particle accelerator, the resulting crush of relationships across geography, culture, economy, and faith is breaking down the known elements of society and creating new possibilities for both progress and ruin. Will we explode in a supernova of wealth divergence, resource war, "religious" terror, ethnic cleansing, and terracidal consumption? Or will we wield our ever-expanding capacity to produce, exchange, and communicate to bridge the yawning divides, heal the wounds of the past, and build a new global identity that transcends obsolescing notions of parochialism?
It would be inadequate to name the process of acceleration that has brought us to this point "globalization." This seems to be a fuzzy term with lots of baggage that calls up images of rocks being flung through Starbuck's windows in Seattle or vandalized fast-food chains in France. It rather misses the larger depiction of transformation on a global scale. And this transformation, this crush, is drawing to the surface a much larger set of questions about the reach of our social identification and responsibilities. When the most important issues and trends that affect our lives are global, a new set of questions arises. What does civil responsibility look like in a community of 6 billion? How can we nurture the "habits of the heart" in young people so that hope, service, and community become dominant expressions of their lives? How do we raise up leaders who will genuinely wrestle with the tension of what is best for our world community and their responsibility to a local constituency? To explore these questions, we will need a language more capacious than that of economists, which is presently used to discuss and debate globalization. Lest we be left inarticulate to describe the full meaning and impact of this changed world we live in, it would be more useful to be conversant in a robust vernacular drawn from economists, historians, anthropologists, philosophers, priests and poets.
The Krista Foundation for Global Citizenship has sponsored the creation of The Global Citizen to provide a place for an intergenerational exploration of these questions. In particular, we hope to gather together and share specific experiences and reflections from those who are engaging global issues like poverty, race/culture/gender friction, and environmental stress. The majority of our contributors are young Christian activists who have chosen a path of service for the love and hope of humanity and the planet. "Veteran" global citizens, who model ways for living a lifelong ethic of service, have been invited to contribute their experience and wisdom as well.
We hope that this journal finds a home in the retreat closet of the meditative urban peace maker, in the tree lodge of the environmental activist, in the composting latrine of the rural community development volunteer, as well as the desk of the Boston entrepreneur, the briefcase of the unjaded diplomat, the coffee table of the concerned housewife, and the tackle box of the contemplative fly fisher.
