Page - 42 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 2:1

42 | www.limina-graz.eu Introduction: Challenges to a Shared Vision of Humanity The world recently celebrated the seventieth anniversary of the United Na- tions Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That Declaration was an at- tempt to help create a universal order of law that would counter the dis- asters peoples and nations suffered and that had just been overcome after the Second World War. The institutions of the United Nations, and efforts at forming other multilateral associations that followed, created a network that was intended to foster greater solidarity among peoples and nations, both to prevent global catastrophes such as the Second World War, and to advance the betterment of humankind as a whole. Seventy years on, many of those associations appear to be unraveling. Soli- darity among nations is being replaced in many areas by harsh national- isms, driven by populist and demagogic impulses that diminish both those who embrace such approaches, and those whom they seek to demonize and exclude. Getting to the root of this inward turning and reasserting of bor- ders and exclusion is particularly urgent as the world also experiences the consequences of climate change coming to a crucial tipping point. Address- ing potential ecological disaster requires an even greater solidarity among peoples than perhaps anything humankind has ever experienced. In search of responses to the challenges of greater fragmentation and ex- clusivity that continue to gain momentum, concerned people are seeking to identify the causes of such fissures in human interaction and, more im- portantly, identify resources that can address what feeds the legitimate fears and imagined phobias that fuel these impulses. Theologians have a special responsibility to bring the resources of Christian faith to this dis- cussion, especially their experience in engaging diverse peoples and ex- pressions of faith throughout a two-millennia history and in a worldwide Church today. This article attempts to sketch in very broad lines some of the factors that have shaped this quest for a shared vision of a united humanity and contri- butions that Christian theology can make. As a preliminary sketch, its pur- pose is to demarcate in some measure the major features that a discourse of a shared humanity might have as an impulse toward a renewed effort, both to challenge and situate the acrimonious discourse now happening in robert J. schreiter | Globalization and Plural theologies Efforts to foster greater solidarity among peoples and nations are being replaced, in many areas, by harsh nationalism.