Kingdom Flourishing and Land Rights
WCIU Journal: Urban Leadership Topic
November 3, 2021
Viv Grigg has sought to follow Jesus in the global slums, pioneering communities of faith and love, urban missions, establishing degrees in urban poor missiology (see www.matul.org; www.wciu.edu/matul), and catalyzing global networks. Author of Companion to the Poor, Slum Dwellers’ Theology, Kiwinomics, Sprit of Christ and the Postmodern City, et. al.
by Viv Grigg
Those societies that have clear land rights and simple processes of adjudication most rapidly utilize the wealth base of society and flourish (De Soto, 2002). Ownership is the foundation of some just aspects of Capitalism. Flourishing through capital formation as a normative life process for a disciple is not easily done unless one can buy their own home and land.
But 1.4 billion people in global mega-cities are illegal, living on land not their own - they are known as squatters, favelados, landless people. They are the twice dispossessed, the unflourishing urban poor. First, they have become landless through increased exploitation by the rural rich. For in the process of growing world urbanization, a growing income differential has been increased between the land-owning wealthy, and the poor. Losing even the little land they have in the rural areas, many flock to the cities where they seek another foothold, a small piece of land on which to build a little shack. Since the processes of gaining title can take many years, for a second time they are dispossessed of rights, and identified as illegal. In some countries they are thus non-persons.
Land rights is the fundamental pastoral issue for millions in these cities. Without it they have little hope of ever moving out of their squalor and destitution. With it comes the possibilities of home ownership and the dignity this brings to a man and his wife; of jobs created by such housing development and of children growing up in dignity and health.
These are the people among whom, along with some amazing saints, I have lived for long seasons and worked for 40 years. In our struggles for land for squatters, I began to reflect on my own country, New Zealand and my Maori brothers’ and Pakeha (British) ancestors’ struggles for land.[1] From reflection on these engagements, I lay out below a global theology in the hope it may assist others sharing these struggles.
A Crucial Global Pastoral Issue Precluding Flourishing
I see the splatter of blood on the walls of a community of squatters in which I once lived. Madame Imelda Marcos sent in the marines to move the people off her son-in-law’s land. Two were murdered, seventeen wounded. This tragedy could have been prevented by reasonable talk, responsible consultation, and wise planning for development in this city.
As a missionary living in that slum community, had I been wiser, perhaps I could have had a role to play in laying a long-term web of relationships that would have precluded such bloodshed. Sometimes there are sins of omission that cost lives, making us as guilty as those whose sin lead them to commit such murders. This issue of land is one of life and death.
A Crucial Issue for Cultural-Spiritual Revival
Our nation, New Zealand, has as one cornerstone, a treaty drafted between the leaders of our two early peoples, freely entered into by its signatories. Central to the issues of the treaty w ere a mutual agreement trading overall sovereignty to the land for protection of land rights. The identity and mana of the Maori people is related to the land and hence to this treaty. To the Maori, this treaty was essentially a covenant with spiritual significance, signed in the context of encouragement from spiritual leaders.
The failure to effectively uphold and honour this treaty in letter and spirit has been perhaps the most significant factor in a sense of lost dignity that caused a long turning away from the gospel by the Maori people after 90% had become Christians (Tippett, 1971).
Central to the battle for the soul of the Maori people today is reconciliation and restitution over injustices about land rights. In redressing injustice, is the privilege of both strengthening the image of God within the soul of the Maori people and of laying the groundwork for a return of Maori to serving the living God.
The Theological Context
What are the issues?
The right to stay! The right to own! The right to sell! In seeking to understand these issues we must oscillate from the traumas of oppression and murder over the land of the poor, to biblical perspectives on the land, the law and the rights of the poor. We touch on legal issues but will focus on biblical factors related to land.
For land issues are never non-emotive issues of right and wrong. Land is never just dirt but is always dirt in the context of meanings inherited from historical experience.
LAND = DIRT + HISTORY + EMOTION
Land issues can best be studied in the context of five movements in the scriptures related to the land. Each movement has a motif of movement towards a promised land. The first is one of dispossession. The next three movements are followed by possession. The fifth is a movement yet to be fulfilled, a pilgrim people looking forward to a cubic kilometer each of a holy city.[2]
We can track from the loss of a garden to the hard work of farming; to Abraham wandering in search of promised land; from slavery in Egypt; to the exodus with its promise of land; from its possession and management; to immorality and mismanagement resulting in its loss. The story repeats itself, finding a promise of flourishing in the midst of exile; then moves to subsequent repossession of the gifted land and this new season of flourishing. Yet the promise remains unfulfilled, and a Messiah lifts our eyes yet higher to another land to possess and in which to flourish. Meanwhile we walk as strangers and pilgrims and exiles on the earth awaiting this blessed hope.
The Nature of Land
Genesis 1–3 contains the seeds of most of the themes of the scriptures, the philosophical perspectives around which the rest of the scriptures expand. Its first verse begins with both the rule of God and the relationship of his rule to the land. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth… By virtue of God’s creating the land he owns it. Thus, in the first verse in the scriptures we have a fundamental statement as to land rights.
The land was created good (Gen. 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 24, 31). It was also created fruitful (Gen. 1:12, 22, 28). It is through this fruitfulness that real wealth is created, and continues to grow. But this fruitfulness is directly related to the blessing of God. And that blessing is in some mysterious way related to humanity’s obedience to God. Creation was not made independent of humanity. When Adam fell into sin, the land was cursed (Gen. 3:17-19).
Similarly, six out of seven of God’s covenants with humanity are in relationship to the land. The implication is that ministry among the urban poor cannot be effected without attention to the issue of rights to their land—that their knowledge of God is intimately connected with their relationship to the land.
I have seen how, almost overnight in a slum, as the community received rights to its land, the spiritual environment was transformed. Men ceased gambling and drinking and started carrying in concrete blocks to build their houses. Women and families gained security. There was a positive thankfulness to God that emerged in the midst of the sound of hammer and concrete mixing. Many turned to the Lord!!
The Maori relationship to land in New Zealand, as with the relationship of other tribal societies is far more closely akin to this biblical theme than the Pakeha or other Westernized cultures. To the Maori, this land was not just a commercial asset, but has a spiritual dimension. It is turangawaewae, a place to stand, an acknowledgment of identity and status. Wati Longchar (1990) extends these ideas in beautiful exegesis of Naga spirituality related to the land, reflecting the understanding of many first peoples.
These are part of God’s mandate to mankind to manage the earth as his representatives. The management of these primary resources through agriculture and manufacturing also results in secondary industries and banking. We may become rich through the wise use of these resources as God’s managers, but it is God who makes them fruitful. This relationship is not one purely of cause and effect but of a personal creator with his creation. Leviticus 26 is a beautiful chapter showing this interrelationship of God's blessing, mankind’s work, and the fruitfulness of the land. Elsewhere we are commanded to:
Beware lest you say in your heart “my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth. You shall remember the Lord your God for it is he who gives you power to get wealth” (Deut. 8:17,18).
The mystery remains. We are to manage on God’s behalf, but that management is not sufficient for flourishing. There is an element of grace, an element of giftedness, an element of undeserved blessing. It was gifted as a good land, a land of bread and honey, of vineyards and trees, cities and houses, and cisterns of water (Deut. 8: 7-10). This was in contrast with the demanding land of Egypt, the land of effort with no reward, the land of coercion and slavery. The difference was the blessing and grace of God. Flourishing through grace.
This fruitfulness of the land, and its inherent goodness is disordered as a result of the rebellion and fall but there is no evidence that its essential goodness is destroyed (cf. Psalm 19:1). Moreover, creation is not created to stand still, but to develop and grow. In fact, one could say that though creation is good, part of its goodness lies in what it can become, in the process that God has initiated (Dyrness, 1982: 30).
Movement 2: Sojourners and Promised Land
When we meet Israel, it is a nation without land on the way to a promised land. A landless folk and a land of promise. The patriarchs are known as sojourners who are looking for a land. This is the focus of their faith.
Sojourner is a technical word usually described as a resident alien. It means to be in a place, perhaps for an extended time, to live there and take some roots, not illegal, but to be an outsider, never belonging, always without full rights, title or voice in decisions that matter (Brueggemann 1977, 79). A refugee has lost rights. A sojourner has chosen to leave rights to one land en route to another.
Abraham, renowned because of always looking for a city yet only seeing it afar off, finds a land, sojourns in it, but dwells content that he has an heir to bring about the fulfilment of the promise of possession. Abraham could be called the first squatter. The fulfilment took place by degrees.
So too, for the one billion migrants to the cities of the third world these last ten years, and a billion the decade before that, possession has been by degrees. They too look for a city as a center of hope, and little by little find their foothold, often content to know that though they themselves dwell in miserable poverty, their children will possess the land, the city of promise.
In their case, the promise is not a covenant from God. Or is it? Is there inherent within the nature of the God-man-land relationship a fundamental law that all men are entitled to a plot of land for a house? Is it inherent within the nature of man's relationship to man, woman’s relationship to woman, that some land be apportioned for every person and their basic needs be catered for?
It is generally recognized by governments as a basic right for a family to own (have tenure of) their own piece of land for a home and be able to obtain the basic necessities of life. As such, might we not say it is promised by God? Not promised with exact boundaries and area and geographical precision, nor with a “now” time frame. Neither was Abraham’s hope fixed with clear boundaries. His time frame was determined through the dark brooding of a prophetic dream about four hundred years of slavery (Gen. 15:13). The hope of Abraham was not based on any right he had to the land. Other tribes already had laid claim to it. The land would be his because it was gifted by God to him. Thirty-nine times in Deuteronomy assertions about the land as gift occur (Martens 1981,102).
So too for the urban poor. Due to colonial policies of land exploitation in most countries, a few families own much of the land in each city. Any change in this legalized oppression will only appear to the poor that the Lord has given them the land as a gift. The initiative is with God, so we need to encourage our people to fall on their knees before God and seek this blessing.
Yet such prayer does not mean a passive inactivity concerning obtaining legal rights. There are many human factors to be considered in the struggle for land rights. These occur in many societies, urban and rural. The land is beyond Israel’s power to acquire. The defeats of Kadesh-Barnea and Ai (Josh. 7:4 ) are sufficient evidence of this. This does not mean we are to sit back and do nothing. Preparations are made, battles are engaged. But it is God who directs and gives victory. So too squatters and slum dwellers and favelados need leadership developed, and training in the techniques in the struggles for land rights.
Movement 3: Ownership and Management of the Land
Israel was not only sojourner, there were long periods where they were landed people. The sojourners become possessors. Before their entrance into the land, Moses pauses and gives instructions about the land. Many of the principles related to the land are given in the teaching on the Jubilee in Leviticus 25:8-34.
In the midst of it, we find that God owns the land. Hence we are only to be God’s tenants on the land, God’s stewards or managers on his behalf, free to share in the fruits of his crops but answerable to him. He is the title-holder.
Private, Family, Clan, and Tribal Ownership
Joshua apportions to each clan and each family of Israelites a portion of land, a family inheritance (Josh. 13–19). This indicates God’s blessing on both private and family/clan/tribal ownership of the land.
Maori tribal and clan structure is anthropologically similar to that of the Israelites of this period. The land belongs to the tribe (iwi). There was no such thing as unused, ownerless land, merely different forms of land use. The hapu (sub-tribe, clan), the whanau (extended family) and the individual might have hereditary rights to its use, but ownership was ultimately vested in the iwi. The Biblical principles involved are an affirmation of both communal and individual ownership patterns within a tribal or rural society.
That Maori understanding when the Pakeha arrived, faced a shock in the concept of land as a commodity which could be alienated through resale. This was new to the Maori. With the exception of the speculative purchases just before 1840, Maori land had usually been alienated to secure the benefits of the Pakeha presence… It was clear however that Maori accepted the concept of total alienation of land rights through sale only after considerable experience (Orange 1987, 115). The Titles Court of 1862 and the Maori Land Court Act of 1865 in New Zealand essentially violated these principles. The court was bound by a statute to name no more than ten owners to a piece of land, with the result that the rest were dispossessed by ten. It took away the authority of the elders so that decision-making was in the hands of the courts and lawyers.
Maori and Pakeha believers in New Zealand have been involved in redressing this situation and effecting restitution. But it was only when they succeeded in getting the Government to create processes of reconciliation that significant restitution has occurred. Only the government had the authority under God, to set up the legal processes identifying the grievances, repenting on behalf of our nation - government officials going tribe by tribe, asking for forgiveness—and seeking restitution. If you read the Waitangi tribunal’s introduction to its report (1987) on the Orakei marae (a Maori tribal meeting house) you will find an excellent analysis of the injustices that occurred to the one tribe concerning their land through the last century and adjudication of responsibility, and what restitution is needed and practical.
Restitution in most situations in life cannot be exact, for acts of evil carry consequences that are irreversible. Time moves on. Restitution needs to be symbolic. And real, in terms of present economic realities which for the Orakei marae involved the equivalent of what the land used to mean—resources for economic life for the youth of the tribe. For another tribe in the Waikato, it meant construction of a University.
Limitations to Private Ownership
God is not a capitalist, nor is he a communist. Ownership is not unlimited nor absolute. Nor is ownership to be invested in the state alone. Private ownership has validity but it is bounded by the needs of others to use the earth’s resources. The Bible recognizes both the need for human freedom and the controls that need to be placed on the free exercise of human evil.
In the Jubilee, which occurred every fifty years, land was to be given freely back to these original owners so that the development of social classes through a few men gaining control of much property could not occur. God does not want society to be polarized into rich landowners and landless peasants, where “the rich get richer” and “the poor get poorer.”
The Lord gave the command that the land lie fallow every seventh year. This is an initial principle that has been interpolated into the theory of ecology. Exploitation and destruction of lands and foliage is a violation of our roles as “stewards” and “managers.” This “rest” is also talked of when they were considering entering the promised land. it was to be a land of promised rest. Rest from harassment, from enemies, from sojourning, a place called home, a place of physical security. How squatters need a place of such rest! The psychological stresses of living under plywood and galvanized iron, with rats nightly visiting cause my poor neighbors to cry out for rest in Manila. How they need the rest of freedom from harassment by landowners and politicians in the prostitution rooms of Kolkata.
Religious priests also were to have their own home and a plot of land sufficient for family food but not fields. This was in the context of God being their possession. The implication is that pastors and missionaries today while looking to God to provide their needs are within the framework of scriptures to look to God for a modest home also.
But are we correct to blithely apply these principles to our day? We need to interpret exercising the principles of dynamic equivalence. What differences in the practices outlined here are demanded today as we interpret the scriptures into a mega-urban society in secular semi-capitalist states? Certainly, the fifty years of the Jubilee would not be enforceable. And yet if we move from a specific legislation to seek the dynamic equivalent, it brings up two principles: periodic land reform in majority world societies as they seek an equitable redistribution of the imbalances of colonial exploitation. Secondly continuous economic growth without planned periodic redistribution is not part of God’s program for society.
Related to this Jubilee, we may infer that cancelling of debts and liberating slaves are both insufficient acts in agrarian contexts if they are not correlated with return of land - the means of production of wealth. Perhaps this was part of the failure after the American civil war. Redistribution was ineffectively implemented. It appears that any revolutionary government must immediately move to land reform as its primary act of governance, if justice fought for is to be seen done.
Urban Land
The scriptures also deal with this reality. Urban land is treated differently in the Jubilee to rural land. Notice Moses’ clear differentiation between agricultural lands and urban land. Houses within cities were not to be subject to redistribution. After a year during which they could be redeemed, they could then be sold in perpetuity. The meaning of land in the city is clearly different to the meaning of land in the countryside. For in the country, the land is representative of its fruit, and measured in worth according to the number of crops before the next Jubilee. The land in the city had no such relationship per se to the production of wealth. (Some friends consider small business to be the equivalent of the fruit in citylandia).
So too for the Maori people today, they cannot go back to the old times for history has urbanized. The meaning of the land has changed. The treaty left the relationships between the races open to continual growth and development. The question for our day thus becomes, “What is the meaning of land in the city? In what way can that meaning be related to just and equitable earnings and distribution of wealth?”
The scriptures are consistently strong on maintenance of legal boundaries. Deuteronomy 19:14 and other passages tell us never to remove the ancient boundary pegs. But the answer above does not necessarily coincide with legal definitions of land rights. Legality does not mean morality. We stand before a set of higher laws than the laws of nations, made often by rich elites with entrenched interests in maintaining control of land. The question is one of justice with equity not just of legality. Thus they become questions of ethics, morality, theology, public space… This leaves space for negotiation within cities on land tenure issues.
The questions are also necessary questions for societies other than Israel that have migrant populations. Migration does not lend itself to the static allocation of land demonstrated in the early agrarian days of Israel. Increasing movement and ethnic interrelationships require different definitions and uses of land.
A further troublesome issue when we consider this issue of social equity in regard to use of urban land is the conflict between the clarity within the scriptures of God’s commitment to relative equality between men, men and women (that we are not to lord it over each other, that kings were not a class above the people but representatives of the people, God’s representative to the people); and the sociological reality that cities apparently exist by exploitation and inequality.[3]
But while the story of the glory of the Kingdom under Solomon is an illustration of the rapid stratification of society as a correlate of urbanization, the same scriptures question this very process. The commitment of God against class structure (inherent in Samuel’s scepticism about kings, and James’ teaching for example), coupled with his commitment to urbanization as the direction of history would indicate that urbanization without stratification is a possibility and a worthy goal. Social equality is not a realistic possibility in a city unless the majority of people can freely own their own homes. Economic justice, social justice and accessible land rights are inextricably linked to godliness, to bringing righteousness into urbanization.
We can go back to these scriptures to see a case study in injustice that is echoed throughout the earth. The land of promise soon became the land of problem. Guaranteed satiation dulled the memory of the voice of God that has led them to this land and gifted it to them. The covenant that was part of the gifting was soon forgotten. Kings and the upper class soon turned it into a land of oppression and slavery as predicted by the prophet Samuel. Israel tried frantically to hold on to the land against outside enemies. As the society developed into a commercial urban society under the hands of Solomon and his sons, the jubilee was evidently not maintained. The rich became richer; the poor became poorer. It became a coercive society where:
The ones who have made it, the ones who control the machinery of governance are the ones who need not so vigorously obey. They are the ones who can fix tickets or prices as needed, the ones before whom the judge blinks and the revenue officer winks (cf. Micah 3:11). It is the landless poor and disadvantaged who are subject to exacting legal claims of careful money management, precise work performance, careful devotion to all social jots and tittles, not only the last hired, and first fired but first suspected and last acquitted (Brueggemann, 1977).
The people soon forgot that fulfilled covenantal responsibility is integral to land tenure. Sleeping around and shedding of blood defile the land (Lev. 19:29; Num. 35:29ff). Blessing follows obedience, cursing and deportation follows disobedience (Deut. 28). The gift, the tenancy agreement, had conditions then; and for the poor today.
The Prophetic Critique of Unjust Land Owners
Into this arena step the prophets with bold denunciation of those who trample the poor:
Woe to those who join house to house,
who add field to field,
until there is no more room,
and you are made to dwell alone
in the midst of the land (Isa. 6:8).
These prophetic statements create an imperative for defending squatters against the bulldozers of dispossession sent by the upper class. The prophets both denounce such acts and cry out for men of God who would protect. They denounce creditors who foreclose mortgaged houses and fields; high officials who confiscate more crown lands than the king had given them; exorbitant interest rates on loans which lead to quick and cruel foreclosure (Deut. 24: 6; Ex 22: 25).
The extent of land ownership makes for the extent of justice in a society. In an urban context the extent of injustice within a city is often proportional to the number of people who rent homes or rooms. This statement implies the right to housing. These conflict however, with urban land as a commodity. Equitable distribution of land and ownership has to be done within the framework of the specializations of production and distribution and their implication for land values that are endemic to the modern mega-city. We need to engage in urban economic theology related to urban geography, and urban planning.[4]
Movement 4: Exile
The Loss of a Land
The prophets denounced the Sabbath-less society as it reduces the nation to a smoothly functioning machine and thus its people to cogs within that machine. The machine raises a producer—consumer consciousness that denies the image of God as the core of a person’s being. The Sabbath, on the other hand, sets limits to our most frantic efforts to manage life—it is a way of remembering that we are the creature, not the ruler.
In judgment on these sins of Sabbath-breaking, of injustice, he takes away their land, the symbol of the covenant. The great themes of the exile relate to the loss of the land, and a question of despair echoes through their songs and laments: “Does loss of the covenanted land mean loss of the God of the covenant?” It too is the cry of the dispossessed postmodern generation, our children.
Return from Exile
But wait, there is a promise of a renewed covenant that they will return to the land. And beyond the covenant are glimpses of a far greater covenant, and of a city to be seen only with the faith of their forefather Abraham.
In the fulfilled return from exile the new covenant concerning the land is made (Neh. 9:36-38). It is in this thrill of return to the promised land that we can best relate to the task of working for squatter land rights in the two thirds world, for migrant housing, for expansion of low-income housing in New Zealand. Nehemiah is perhaps the best model for mobilizing a people to action (and used by Alinsky in generating the discipline of Community Organization). His experience and that of Ezra and the other prophets of this period deal with the fears, the uncertainties, the group dynamics, the leadership skills needed as people dispossessed of their rural land seek to possess unused urban areas.
Movement 5: Jesus and the Future Land
With Jesus’ mission, a dramatic new relation to the land is evident.[5]
A major issue for theologians is the lack of continuity of the Old Testament with issues of land in the New Testament. The Old Testament covenant regarding the land of Israel is now superseded with a new covenant which looks forward to a new land of promise that is not bounded by ethnic concerns - a land for every tribe and people and tongue. The themes of the exodus and exile are reiterated with renewed vigor. Yet there is continuity, as believers find themselves as pilgrim people living by a promise, looking forward to a heavenly city whose builder and maker is God. In the process many are encouraged to follow the master who chose to have no place to lay his head in order that he might proclaim this far-off country. Yet others are commanded to live quietly, develop their small businesses, alleviate the sufferings of others, and earn respect (1 Thess. 4: 11-12).
Does this mean a loss of commitment to the principles of management and social responsibility in the Old Covenant? Not in the least. The old was not abrogated. It was fulfilled and expanded to include the nations of the earth in fuller realization. Precisely because we are exiles and pilgrims with no possessions of our own we are able to help the dispossessed to gain their possessions. In our looking towards a future Kingdom, we are eager to pray and act towards that Kingdom being manifest in every way within the societies of earth. And that future Kingdom comes with a promise of a home—squatters and migrants and dispossessed understand.
Flourishing in 2021: Preventing a Landless Future?
We must go forward to that promise. This article began with conversations between scriptures and land rights and were not too complicated to imagine when New Zealand was a reasonably isolated sovereign nation. But as more than $23 billion of the nation’s government assets have been sold off over the last decades (New Zealand Treasury 2014), applying the same principles to the internationalization process is significantly more complex. As a small nation our survival has to do, like Israel of those days, with surviving the forces of the world’s empires. While we are busy rectifying the effects of British colonialism, meanwhile under international law, successive governments have sold our forests and electricity (made from the water of our land) to American corporations.
The next empire to rise is now that of a militarized Mainland China. Their buying of land globally has, like the previous empires, been like a tsunami. Migrants arrive on our doorsteps unannounced with bags of $600,000. “We will buy your house—cash!!” Forbidden to export great quantities of money from China (so where did they get this money?), unable to speak English (so clearly not residents as required by law), they have taken over most of the auctions, pushing up the prices of homes by about $300,000 above normative values in Auckland. They often fly out the next day. The government has tried to limit the damage—unsuccessfully, as was the case of limiting damage from both former British and American colonialism. We are very good friends of the Chinese—and the Americans, and the British—but empires have power and accumulate money. Our democracy that prizes equality is symbolized by the Kiwi, our national symbol—a wingless, flightless, nocturnal bird without any feathers—but it is facing an Eagle and a Dragon.
Then in 2021, a new global phenomenon occurred with COVID. In the processes the global banks dropped their interest rates. Property prices spiraled upwards out of control as money was cheap. In the past, banks were local, prices were set locally. Now globalization of land purchasing is set by global bank pricing. This same effect of rapid housing price escalation has happened in New Zealand, Singapore, the US, Britain. A generation of our Kiwi children—Pakeha, Maori, Samoan, Tongan, migrants—will be unlikely to ever own their own homes. The millennials see no flourishing future. It feels like our boat will be swamped by this new tsunami of competing empires and multinationals. We sing “God Defend New Zealand” and he has answered and kept out COVID, but now we must pray and work so we will survive a more insidious disease of land expropriation. With God’s help we will survive the Lion, the Eagle, the Dragon, this silent virus in the room, and the global land grabbing investors and banks—and our people will flourish.
__________
Perhaps your nation feels the same!! The struggle is unending! Flourishing seems distant! But the Biblical principles remain, sources of values and motivation to seek land justice, till he comes!! Kia Kaha! (Be Strong in the battle!)
References
Brueggemann, Walter. 1977. The Land. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
Davies, William. 1974. The Gospel and the Land. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dyrness, William. 1982. Let the Earth Rejoice. Manila, Philippines: Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture.
De Soto, Hernando. 2002. The Other Path. Basic Books.
Grigg, Viv. 2018. Kiwinomics. Auckland: Urban Leadership Foundation.
Hengel, Martin. 1974. Property and Riches in the Early Church. Philadelphia: Fortress.
Longchar, Wati. 1996. Dancing with the Land: Significance of Land for Doing Tribal Theology. Doing Theology with Tribal Resources. Vol 3.
Martens, Elmer. 1981. God’s Design: A Focus on Old Testament Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker.
McGavran, Donald A. 1970. Understanding Church Growth. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Orange, Claudia. 1987. The Treaty of Waitangi, Allen and Unwin, Port Nicholson Press.
Tippett, Alan. 1971. People Movements in Southern Polynesia. Chicago: Moody Bible Institute.
Waitangi Tribunal. 1987. Report of The Waitangi Tribunal on The Orakei Claim (Wai-9). https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/WT/wt_DOC_68494556/ReportonOrakeiW.pdf.
Wright, Christopher. 1999. Theology and Ethics of the Land. Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies, 16: 3, 81-88.
End Notes
[1] This article is a revised version of chapter 7 in Kiwinomics (2016). A Power Point presentation may be accessed at: https://www.slideshare.net/vivgrigg/5009-theology-of-land-and-land-rights
[2] Over thirty years of teaching on a theology of land rights, I have reworked Brueggemann’s approach of three movements in this classic, The Land (1977). Brueggemann integrated themes of landlessness/landedness, gifted land/grasped land, crucifixion/ resurrection. New Testament studies owe a debt to Davies, The Gospel and the Land, primarily related to the question of Jewish land (which I have no intention of addressing here), and to Hengel’s work, Property and Riches in the Early Church. Chris Wright’s explorations (1990) are currently popular.
[3] We discuss this at length in the MA in Transformational Urban Leadership course TUL540 Social Science Theories of the City (www.matul.org; www.wciu.edu/matul ).
[4] The MATUL course on Advocacy and Land Rights initiates such engagement. A course on a Theology of Urban Planning is in discussion. www.wciu.edu/matul
[5] The issue of the restoration of Israel and the land disputes in Palestine is outside the mandate of this study. Others have debated this well, presenting opposing views (McDowell et. al., 2014).