An address delivered at the Bread for the World conference:
"Agricultural Biotechnology: Can it Reduce Hunger in Africa?"

Copied from Seattle Theology & Ministry Review
School of Theology & Ministry, Seattle University, Vol. 2, 2002

A Christian Ethical Framework
by Cynthia Moe-Lobeda

Jesus, quoting his scriptures, said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. ... You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Mk. 12:30-31). I long have pondered what on earth this means in our time and place. Today it well may include: "You shall dedicate yourself to reducing hunger on this good Earth:’ I am honored to have some small part in this gathering of people working to do so. Thank you.

I was asked to address, from a Christian ethical perspective, the concern of this gathering: agricultural biotechnology in relationship to reducing hunger in Africa. I will offer a Christian ethical framework for assessing agricultural biotechnology and the tremendous possibilities and pitfalls attached to it as they relate to reducing hunger in Africa. The ethical terrain is multi-dimensional and requires a complex map. We will simply sketch its contours, and then focus on a few key parts that may be most useful in our work together.

Before beginning, we situate the terrain in three different senses. First, I suggest to you the overall task of Christian ethics in light of the questions at hand. Christian ethics asks: "Who are we, how are we to perceive our world, and how are we to live in it because of God’s boundless love for creation and presence with and in it, especially as God is seen in Jesus Christ, witnessed to by communities of believers throughout time, and experienced yet today in the Spirit? To examine from a Christian ethical perspective, then, is to hold in one breath two things: 1) the mystery of God’s unquenchable love for each and every one of us and for all of creation, and 2) the complex developments, dangers, and promises associated with agricultural biotech as it relates to hunger in Africa.

Second, there is no singular Christian perspective on these issues. Third, Christian ethics does not negate other religious ethics, or claim to be superior to them. In fact, in addressing the life and death issues facing humanity today, it is my firm conviction that Earth’s people must call upon all of the great faith traditions, in order to plumb their depths for moral wisdom, guidance, and power to forge just and sustainable ways of life.

With that backdrop offered, let us move on to a framework or map for approaching the issues at hand. I suggest to you the following dimensions of that map: (1) scope of Christian ethics; (2) guidelines for moral inquiry; (3) the descriptive question; and (4) the normative question.

We address each in turn.

THE SCOPE OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS

I beg you to toss out the all too pervasive notion that certain issues related to ag biotech are ethical concerns. To the contrary, all of the issues regarding ag biotech in relationship to hunger in Africa are ethical issues. Something is a Christian ethical issue if it calls us to consider the difference between what is and what ought be in light of God’s love for and presence with creation. That is, ethics does not look at a certain set of concerns, but rather at all concerns through that lens. So the challenge in these few minutes is not to identify certain issues as moral, but rather to map a way of approaching the vast arena of issues related to ag biotech and Africa as Christian ethical issues.

GUIDELINES FOR MORAL INQUIRY

First, stay away from absolutizing biotechnology as either all good or all bad; avoid concluding that it will either feed the world or ruin it. Allow for moral ambiguity, that strange and often uncomfortable balance between moral uncer-tainty and the need to take a stand. Allow for provisional answers. Practice the humility that says, I do not know the full answer, but at this time I must conclude that "X" is or is not morally viable.

Second, stay away from universalizing. Just because something is morally good or bad in one context does not make it necessarily so in another. The implications should be obvious. For example: While a particular area of biotech research might be deemed moral in a country with adequate research safety standards, that same research may not be moral where those standards are not in place. A particular ag biotech development with positive impact on large-scale agriculture in the West might not have that positive impact on subsistence farmers in Africa whose margins are thin. We may not uproot a moral judgment from one place and replant it in another, without accounting for the contextual difference.

Next, don’t absolutize personal experience. It is poor moral reasoning to say, "biotech must be bad because it harmed Uncle Fred, or good because it saved Aunt Betty’s life." Fourthly and truly important, maintain a critical rather than positivist perspective. By "critical" I do not mean "critical of:’ Rather I mean critical in the sense of questioning moral judgments based on an assumption that something is normal, natural, or inevitable. People often argue that some aspect of biotechnology is immoral because it is not "natural," or is moral simply because it is inevitable. Challenge these bases. They are deceptive and mystifying. People throughout history have used "natural," "normal," or "inevitable" to justify human constructs that served the interests of those maintaining the constructs. (We need think no further than slavery or the subordination of women.)

Finally, fruitful moral deliberation engages different levels of moral discourse, and distinguishes between them. Consider at least two: what I call gut level and disciplined. By the former I mean that at times it is tremendously important to express a gut-level response. Yet, to substitute this for disciplined ethical reflection is dangerous. Visceral or heart-felt responses of awe, gratitude, grief, and anger will lead the way to faithful moral discernment. If wed to disciplined thea-ethical reflection, they guide the intellect and open channels of compassion and moral power. Rage, grief, gratitude, and awe open space to live toward a world in which none go hungry. As taught by Beverly Harrison, "We should never make light of our power to rage.... It is the root of the power to love." (Cite: Beverly Wildung Harrison, "The Power of Anger in the Work of Love," in Making the Connections:Essays in Fen2inisr Social Ethics, ed. by CarolS. Rohb (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985) 21.)

These then are a few guidelines for engaging in fruitful Christian ethical deliberation about the hotly contested and morally weighted concerns of agricultural biotechnology as help or hindrance in reducing hunger in Africa. Let us move on.

SIX QUESTIONS

I suggest to you six questions that constitute ethical consideration. We then will focus on the first two.

1. What is the case and why? (What is going on and why?)

2. ‘What ought be the case, and what moral norms help us make that determina-tion?

3. What could be? What are alternatives?

4. What forces disable our moral power to move toward "what ought be?"

5. What are sources of moral-spiritual power to counter those forces? How are we empowered in our path toward living as we determine we ought?

6. Practically, what are we to do in order to live toward what ought be? To what practical steps are we called in terms of lifestyle, public policy’, social systems,
and belief systems?


THE DESCRIPTIVE QUESTION

"What is going on? What, in fact and in detail, is the case?" This is perhaps the most important and controversial question in ethical deliberation! It demands that we see economic, technical, scientific, and political realities clearly and honestly in order to assess their moral viability and the relative moral viability of alternatives. What we see and refuse to see, and how we see are morally loaded, bearing upon whether we choose life-saving or life-thwarting actions. If we are blind to the realities that maintain injustice; our passion and power for justice-making love may be squelched before it is born. Facing social realities entails cutting through blinders that hinder our vision, so that the capacity to see "what could be" is not strangled by the inability to see "what is." In the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus queries: "Have you eyes but do not see?" If Christian people are called to "see~’ then what are keys to seeing more clearly? What questions enable us to see what is going on and why? Consider just a few:

What are the power dynamics at play? Who has determinative influence in decisions that impact who has the necessities for life with dignity?

• Who benefits and who loses?

• Whose voices are not heard, whose perspectives not accounted for? Whose lives, struggles and knowledge are erased in our deliberations? Whose voices are missing from the table? Christian ethical reflection on any situation is fatally flawed if that reflection does not begin with—and otherwise privi-lege—the cries, claims, and constructive proposals of people whose survival, dignity, or basic human rights are threatened in the situation.

• What are the historical roots of the situation?


THE NORMATIVE QUESTION

Having touched on the descriptive question, we turn to the normative: What ought we do regarding agricultural biotechnology according to moral consider-ations? This is the question most commonly associated with ethics. It suggests identifying an overall moral mandate or cali, and then identifying norms (standards) by which we may discern if a particular practice or policy is consistent with that overall call.

I propose to you that from a Christian perspective the overall moral mandate is defined by Jesus: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself?’ Together with love for God, there is, Jesus says "no greater commandment" than this (Mk. 12:31). In the words of Christian ethicist, Daniel Maguire: "The whole thrust of the Israelite religion, the religion of Jesus, is toward the recovery of the broken human capacity to love." "It is the biblical view that being moral is loving well. This wild idea was at the heart of the moral revolution of Israel" and of Jesus as a part of it. (Cite: Daniel C. Maguire, The Moral Core of Judaism and Christianity (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1993) p. 208 and p. 211.)

Easy enough said. Yet with this claim, questions abound. Who is my neighbor? What does love mean, in the context of agricultural biotechnology and the myriad public policies, private activities, and moral dilemmas related to it? I offer a few insights. My "neighbor:’ in the biblical sense, is whomever my life touches. Given the realities of globalization that link us in intricate webs of interaction, my "neighbor" is global. As for "love," the weak of heart had best turn away. The call to love as a biblical notion—not as Hallmark card notion—is a stunning and radical call, impacting every dimension of life. It led to death by torture for Jesus and for countless of his followers in the ages since. Many in this room, I would guess, know some of those martyrs.

To love, in the biblical sense, includes—but is not limited to—orienting every aspect of life around the well-being of people who are marginalized, impover-ished, or otherwise vulnerable to those in positions of power. We are to love as God loves. Scripture teaches that, when applied to people who are hungry, love does not mean only alleviating hunger; it means also challenging political and economic arrangements that cause hunger. Where injustice exists, then, biblical neighbor-love entails seeking to undo it. That is, the biblical norm of neighbor-love includes the norm of justice.

So it is with the mandate to love in that sense that we consider agricultural biotech and its relationship to hunger in Africa. The ethical question becomes, "What practices and policies regarding ag biotech will embody - that kind of love?" The problem deepens. I-low are we to decide what practices and policies cohere with justice-making neighbor-love? We identify norms by which to discern. I suggest to you a set of Christian ethical norms relevant here.

The first norm is correspondence. The solution must correspond to the problem. This norm weighs in against applying biotech answers to problems caused by political-economic power relations. For example: Where people are hungry because of international policies that result in "dumping," or because profits are being expatriated from Africa, or because the people do not have the resources to buy food that is available, then genetically modified seeds are not likely to solve the problem. This does not say that agricultural biotechnology is wrong, but it does cast suspicion on moves that treat political-economic problems as genetic deficiencies.

The second norm: democracy rather than concentrated power is normative for Christian ethics. That is, whatever corrodes democracy is suspect from a Christian ethical perspective. "Democracy" implies "rule by the many" rather than by the few. Democracy exists where the demos (people) have kratia (power or authority)—m terms of capacities and resources—to participate with relative equality and liberty in decision-making regarding the terms of their life in common. Participation and accountability are conditions of democracy. Accord-ing to this norm, moves in agricultural biotech research, development, and application are morally viable to the extent that people who stand to lose as a result of them (often small scale farmers and other end-users) participate substantively in decision-making, monitoring, and risk assessment. Likewise, the norm of democracy would cast question on ag biotech moves that strengthen highly concentrated centers of power, be they political or economic.

A third norm: ecological sustainability. All of us depend for life upon the regenerative health of Earth’s life systems. The crisis of hunger and poverty is now linked irrefutably to the crisis of the Earth. One implication of this norm for biotechnology is that all risk analysis must include ecological implications, especially for economically impoverished countries. What dismantles the long- term regenerative capacity of bio-regions, for the sake of short-term gains, especially if those gains are not for the people of that region, is morally unacceptable. If indeed, as many biologists now claim, ecological sustainability requires preservation of genetic diversity, then preservation of genetic diversity also becomes a norm. That opens, as we all know, a world of controversy.

The fourth norm is food security at the household level. This norm demands that we ask,
"Will a move in agricultural biotech increase food security for African people at the household level? Will the move strengthen or threaten the long-term viability of small-holding farmers? If communities’ food self-reliance is the rule of food security at the household level, will a particular move contribute to communal self-reliance or undermine it?"

A fifth norm is sufficiency. For people of economic privilege, this is a tough norm. The Bible is replete with condemnations of material excess when it is a way of life (although not as an occasional celebration). Sufficiency says that all people have the right to what is necessary for life with dignity, but that none have the right to more than enough if it means undermining the well-being of economi-cally vulnerable people. Sufficiency questions innovations in agricultural biotech that are driven by maximizing profit for a few, if those innovations also undermine the well-being of impoverished African small-scale farmers or consumers. This norm comes into play in controversial patent issues. ‘Whose benefit will a patent serve? What policies regarding patents will uphold the norm of sufficiency?

The sixth norm is justice. "Justice is the love language of the Bible. To practice Sedaqah, (steadfast love), you secure justice for the poor."5 We read in Deuteronomy: "Justice, and justice only, you shall pursue so that you may live" (Deut. 16:20). Probably none here would disagree that justice is central to love. The harder question, of course, is, "What does justice mean vis-a-vis ag biotech?" It means at least that the excess of some shall not deprive others of what they need for life with dignity. To illustrate implications: The justice norm would call for questioning the production of a seed strain that yields more, if it also requires resources that subsistence farmers often do not have (i.e. expensive external inputs and favorable agricultural environments), thus increasing yield for large-scale agriculture only and lowering prices for small-holding farmers. The justice norm asks: Would a given move maintain or dismantle the sins of class privilege, race privilege, or gender privilege? If the former, the move is suspect.

These six norms help determine whether or not a development in ag biotech coheres with the mandate of justice-making neighbor-love, a moral mandate governing every aspect of life from biblical perspective. The norms serve as standards by which to assess the moral viability of varied agricultural biotechno-logical possibilities as they stand in relationship to hunger in Africa.

It is my hope that this skeletal framework might be useful as you deliberate questions of life and death import regarding what will liberate a continent from the horrors of hunger.