Kingdom of God Series No. 3:

BIBLICAL REFLECTIONS ON LAND
AND
LAND RIGHTS

Biblical Frameworks for
Poor Peoples’
 Theologies.

by
VIV GRIGG
Urban Leadership Foundation

19-66% of the people in Asia’s mega-cities are illegal, living on land not their own -they are known as squatters. They are landless people. 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 created between the urban and rural 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, a little piece of security.

A Crucial Pastoral Issue

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.

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 spiritual leader, 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 leads them to commit murder. This issue of land is one of life and death, and it is one where a faulty theology has led to our non-involvement as evangelicals. That has led to the countless suffering and poverty and death of millions we could have rescued had we but studied the word of God.

A Crucial Church Growth Issue

McGavran tells of the effects of land rights on potential church growth in a situation in Mexico in 1927, when the central government was breaking up the haciendas. The peasants divided into two parties: the agraristas who were ready to fight for land redistribution, and the cristeros who had been persuaded that, since the land had been given to the hacienda owners by the Pope, taking it away from them was stealing and would be punished by God. Cristeros fought to keep feudal lords in power.

The peasants from both parties looked very much the same. All spoke Spanish, counted themselves Roman Catholics, had the same culture... [But] agraristas freed from the control of their feudal lords, thinking of the church of Rome as an ally of their oppressors, and having divided up the land despite the fact that it was given by the Pope, could hear the gospel... Had a movement begun which gave agrarian reform a biblical base and thus enabled agraristas, while remaining ardent agraristas to become Evangelicals, it might have swept the revolutionary ranchos of the plateau (1970:229).

In another story about Puerto Rico he tells of land in some areas which,

Owned by common people is fast gravitating into the hands of the money lenders. The peasant borrows money at 75% interest for a yoke of oxen or a big wedding, intending to pay it back when harvest comes. That year the harvest is poor or he is negligent. By the next year he has twice as much to pay back. Soon he surrenders the land to the money lender. One church took up the cudgels for the peasants, loaned them money at a fair percentage, and reversed the flow of the land. When after this display of social justice, she proclaimed the Gospel, many heard and followed in the Way. Land rights influence church growth. Then too, land-owning Christians make solider churches. Wherever land is disappearing into the control of the city moneylenders, the ability of peasant Christians to support their pastors diminishes. Congregations of renters and sharecroppers differ from those made up of landowners (211-212).

A Crucial Issue for Revival

Our nation of New Zealand has as one cornerstone in its formation a treaty drafted between the leaders of two races, freely entered into by its signatories, a well considered and judicious work. Central to the issues of the treaty were a mutually advantageous 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 of successive Pakeha (the British settlers) governments to effectively uphold and honour this treaty in letter and spirit has been perhaps the most significant factor in a sense of lost dignity and along with this the turning away from the gospel by the Maori people (after 90% had been converted in two people movements).

The wounded soul of that people echoes the words made to Hobson in April 1840:
Our hearts are dark and gloomy from what the Pakeha have told us, they say that the missionaries first came to pave the way for the English who have sent the Governor here, that soldiers will follow and then he will take away our lands.

The battle for the soul of the Maori people is occurring today. And central to it is reconciliation and restitution over injustices about land rights. If the church fails to be central in this process it fails in its duty as the religious leadership of the nation and leaves options open for a return to the old worship of the demonic and to extreme activists. If the church is central in the process of redressing injustice, it may have the privilege of both strengthening the image of God within the soul of the Maori people and of laying the groundwork for the return of the Maori people to serving the living God.

 THE TREATY OF WAITANGI AND LAND

The second article of the English text which is attached to the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 and which was the version signed at Waikato is as follows:

Her Majesty the Queen of England confirms and guarantees to the Chiefs and Tribes of New Zealand and to the respective families and individuals thereof the full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheries and other properties which they may collectively or individually possess so long as it is their wish and desire to retain the same in their possession; but the Chiefs of the United Tribes and the individual Chiefs yield to Her Majesty the exclusive right of Preemption over such lands as the proprietors thereof may be disposed to alienate at such prices as may be agreed upon between the respective Proprietors and persons appointed by Her Majesty to treat with them in that behalf.

The Theological Context

What are the issues? The right to stay, the right to own, the right to sell, the rights of landowners in mega-urban contexts.

In seeking to understand these issues we must oscillate from the realities and traumas of terrible oppression and murder over the land of the poor, to biblical perspectives on the land, the law and the rights of the poor. We will not focus in this paper on the legal issues involved but on biblical factors related to land.

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 three movements to explore in the scriptures related to the land. Each movement has a motif of movement towards a promised land. The first two movements are followed by possession. The third is a movement yet to be fulfilled, a pilgrim people still looking forward to a holy city (following Brueggeman’s approach).

We can track from the exodus with its promise of land, to its possession and management, and mismanagement resulting in its loss. The story repeats itself finding a promise in the midst of exile, then moves to subsequent repossession of the gifted land. Yet the promise remains unfulfilled, and a Messiah lifts our eyes yet higher to another land to possess. Meanwhile we walk as strangers and pilgrims and exiles on the earth awaiting this blessed hope.

Within this threefold movement there is some puzzlement for pilgrim Christians as to how to identify with the Old Testament attitudes to the land. This is surprising since land is the fourth most frequent noun or substantive in the Old Testament (it occurs 2,504 times (Martens 1981:97)). The difficulty is because of the lack of focus on land in the New Testament. A development of themes based on a Kingdom perspective, beginning in Genesis, is helpful to clarify the unity of land themes in both testaments.

Many German theologians have studied the land. Brueggeman has integrated much of this in his study built around themes of landlessness/ landedness, gifted land/grasped land, crucifixion/ resurrection. But these appear to be theologians who know little of the realities and pain of the poor. Hence their questions are not well framed and solutions rather ethereal. New Testament studies owe a debt to two excellent studies: Davies, The Gospel and the Land primarily related to the question of Jewish land and Hengel’s work, Property and Riches in the Early Church.

There is a major literature related to ecology and some related to developmental issues particularly agricultural land reform.

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 Kingship of God and the relationship of that Kingdom 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 squatter land rights.

The land was created good (Genesis 1:4,10,12,18,21,24,31). It was also created fruitful (Gen. 1:12,22,28). It is through this fruitfulness that wealth is created, and continues to grow. The total amount of wealth in the world is not static. Nor is it created by increasing paper money. It has a definite growth rate in proportion to the use of natural resources and their replenishment.

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 the land was cursed (Genesis 3:17-19). Similarly all of God’s covenants with humanity are generally 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, as a community received rights to its land the spiritual environment has been transformed. Men cease gambling and drinking and start investing money into their houses. Women and families gain security and there is a positive thankfulness to God that emerges in the midst of the sound of hammer and concrete mixing.

While God is our final environment, we can only know him in the spatial and temporal forms of his creation (Dyrness 1982:24).

The Maori’s relationship to his land in New Zealand, like 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 had a spiritual dimension. It was turangawaewae, a place to stand, and acknowledgment of identity and status.

These are good things and part of God’s mandate to mankind to manage the earth as his vice-regents. The management of these resources through agriculture and manufacturing also results in industry and banking. We may become rich through the wise use of these resources as God’s managers, but it is God who made them fruitful. This relationship is not one purely of cause and effect but of a personal creator with his creation. Such thinking denies a core value of the materialistic society. 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 (Deuteronomy 8:17,18).

The mystery remains. We are to manage on God’s behalf, but that management is not sufficient for fruitfulness. There is an element of grace, an element of giftedness, an element of undeserved blessing. Similarly we find the land gifted to Israel. It was gifted to satisfy, as a good land, a land of bread and honey, of vineyards and trees, cities and houses, and cisterns of water (Deuteronomy 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.

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 this 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).

Mankind then, is to manage this land and its fruitfulness on God’s behalf. And to manage it for the well-being of their brothers and sisters, for from the outset the cry of “Am I my brother’s keeper?” refuses to remain silent as it echoes from the hills and valleys of history. The land is not independent from issues of social responsibility. It is from the land that his brother’s blood cries out its reply.

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 “resident alien.” It means to be in a place, perhaps for an extended time, to live there and take some roots, but always to be an outsider, never belonging, always without rights, title or voice in decisions that matter (Brueggemann 79).

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 fulfillment of the promise of possession. Abraham could be called the first squatter. For the fulfillment took place by degrees. We find Jacob his son, as he is about to die, asking that his body be carried to the promised land (Genesis 50:5-14), recognizing a promise given yet unfulfilled.

So too for the one billion migrants to the cities of the third world these last thirty years, possession has been by degrees. They too look for a city as a centre 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 of promise.

In their case the promise is not 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?

As such - and it is generally recognized by governments as a basic right for a family to own his 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. But then neither was Abraham’s hope fixed with clear boundaries and his time frame was determined through the dark brooding of a prophetic dream about four hundred years of slavery.

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 squatters. Due to colonial policies of land exploitation, a few families own 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.

                              LAND AS A GIFT

There are differences between Maori and Pakeha concepts of land as a gift between peoples:

MAORI DEFINITION

A Maori gift is sometimes intended to create a continuing relationship and obligation. Emphasis is placed on duty to the donor. The donors interest should always be acknowledged. The local people, descendants of the donors, should be invited to see the results of their gift. It should not be exchanged for something else without consultation with the kin group of the donor.

Under Maori custom, the donors kin group are entitled to ask for the property to be returned if there has been a breach of trust in Maori terms.

 PAKEHA DEFINITION OF GIFTS - CHARITABLE TRUSTS

A charitable trust imposes an obligation on the trustees to fulfil the reason for the gift, to those who established the trust, to the beneficiaries and to the law. Yet the donor could not expect to recover the property. The charitable trust is established by the gift to a general public use. There is no legal necessity to acknowledge the donor’s interest but this can be done. There is no necessity for consultation with the donors kin if consideration is given to selling but this again can be effected. If there is a breach of trust the donor cannot assert the necessity of return of the property.^[1]

The initiative is with God, so we need to encourage our people to fall on their knees before God and seek this blessing. For this they can freely ask since the goodness of such a gift is inherent in his being, in his own creative relationship to mankind and creation, in his purposes for the dignity of man and woman.

Yet such prayer does not mean a passive inactivity concerning obtaining legal rights. There are many factors to be considered as a basis for land rights. These occur in many societies, urban and rural. The Maori define the following:

     Paptipu - right of discovery
     Take tuku - a gift
     Rapatu - right of conquest
     Ahi-ka roa - long occupation
     Take tupuna - kinship ties.

The land is beyond Israel’s power to acquire. The defeats of Kadesh-Barnea and Ai are sufficient evidence of this. This does not mean they sit back and do nothing. Preparations are made, battles are engaged. But it is God who directs and who gives victory. So too the squatters need leadership developed, and need to learn the techniques required for success in the struggles for land rights. But it is God who is the giver of the land.

Israel was not only sojourner, there were long periods where they were landed people. The sojourners become possessors.

God Owns the Land

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 men are only to be God’s tenants on the land (Leviticus 25:23), God’s stewards or managers on his behalf, f 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 (Joshua 13-19). This indicates God’s blessing on both private and family ownership of the land (where we are using ownership in the common sense of the word, recognizing that ultimately God owns the land).

Maori tribal and clan structure is anthropologically in the same category as the Israelites of this period. The land belongs to the tribe (iwi) and was well defined. 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. This differs from the tribal and clan structure of Israel where both communal and family (individual) land rights were recognized. The difference is cultural. The Biblical principles involved are an affirmation of both communal and individual ownership patterns within a tribal or rural society.

It also differs from the Maori understanding when the Pakeha arrived for the concept of land as a commodity which could be exploited through resale 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.

The scriptures are consistently strong on maintenance of legal boundaries. Deuteronomy 19:14 and other passages tell us what many government officials need to learn - never to remove the ancient boundary pegs. If we do Their Redeemer is strong; he will plead their cause against you (Proverbs 23:11). We need to respect private and communal property rights.

Today Pakeha believers in New Zealand need to redress this situation and effect restitution. If you read the Waitangi tribunals introduction to its report on Orakei marae you will find a very excellent analysis of the injustices that occurred to this tribe concerning their land through the last century and adjudication of responsibility, analysis of what restitution is needed and what is practical. This land court awarded the land of 300 people to 13.

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 involves the equivalent of what the land used to mean - resources for economic life for the youth of the tribe. And this has been the conclusion of the Waitangi tribunal.

Limitations to Private Ownership

But 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.

In the Jubilee which occurred every fifty years this 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 Bible teaches both private ownership and related social responsibility. It recognizes both the need for human freedom and the controls that need to be placed on the free exercise of human evil.

Forest lands, oil lands, mining lands among others are so critical to the needs of total societies that absolute rights to these and monopolistic exploitation is not beneficial to the good of the country as a whole. Such monopolies are contrary to the principle of social responsibility.

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 much the squatters need a place of such rest. The psychological stresses of living under plywood and galvanized iron, with rats nightly visiting and garbage uncollected next door cause the poor to cry out for rest. How they need the rest of freedom from harassment by landowners and politicians.

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? 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 50 years of the Jubilee would not be enforcible. And yet it brings up two principles: periodic land reform in third world societies as they seek an equitable redistribution of the imbalances of colonial exploitation. It also indicates the necessity for economic reform within the capitalist system. Continuous economic growth without planned periodic redistribution is not part of God’s program for society.

Related to this jubilee we may infer that canceling 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 of the American civil war. 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.

In the city the production of wealth is built on a different foundation. 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 seen as representative of the fruit of that land, 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.

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. And 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?” and “In what way can that meaning be related to just and equitable earnings and distribution of wealth?”

The answer 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.

The questions are necessary questions for societies other than Israel that have many 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 (that we are not to Lord it over each other, that kings were not a class above the people but representatives of the people and God’s representative to the people), and the sociological reality that cities apparently exist by exploitation and inequality. Even 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 commitment of God against class structure (inherent in James’ teaching for example), coupled with his commitment to urbanization per se, 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.  

The opposite is generally the case. We can go back to the 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 dulls the memory of the voice of God that has led hem to this land and gifted it to them. The covenant that is part of the gifting is 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 got richer, the poor got 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. Harlotry and shedding of blood defile the land (Leviticus 19:29; Numbers 35:29ff). Blessing follows obedience, cursing and deportation follows disobedience (Deuteronomy 28). The gift, the tenancy agreement had conditions then and for the poor today the conditions remain.

The Prophets and their Critique of Land Ownership

Into this arena step the prophets with bold denunciation of those who trample on the poor to acquire more and more property:

     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 (Isaiah 6:8).

     They covet fields, and seize them;
          and houses and take them away;
     they oppress a man and his house,
          a man and his inheritance (Micah 2:2).

It is from these kind of prophetic statements that we find an emotive imperative for defending the squatters against the exploitation and attacks of the upper class. Some of the various methods utilized by landowners to drive people from the land were discussed in a seminar in Bangkok:

a.  Owners declare they need the land, then resort to mean tactics like canceling the rent privileges which they had previously accorded the low-income people, or they change the existing contract so that this could be used against the people occupying the land.

b.  The landowners order the people off the land, but the people are obstinate and refuse to go. According to law the landowners have the right to order these people out but resorting to litigation could cause them many problems in time and money. They therefore pay these people a minimum compensation in exchange for return of the land. If the people still insist on staying, then the owners could resort to demolition of the houses.

c. The landowners cannot see eye to eye with the people so they bring them to court.

d. Those who fight eviction orders and obstinately stick to the land could be reported to the police and detained. To avoid prosecution they have to leave the land.

e.  Usually the land owners do not follow the law. They may use gang protection and at times police protection when they have to confront these slum communities to demolish their homes. Every one who objects is liable to get hurt or be arrested by the police.

f.  In Bangkok the most popular method among land owners is arson. It is the easiest (Building Together Association l984:l7).

The prophets both denounce such acts and cry out for men of God who would protect these poor. They denounce creditors who foreclosed mortgaged houses and fields, and high officials who confiscated more crown lands than the king had given them, exorbitant interest rates on loans which led to quick and cruel foreclosure, resulting in self-enslavement and enclosure of property (Deuteronomy 24:6; Exodus 22:25).

The prophets denounced those who refused to care for the poor, the widows, the orphans, the sojourner, the Levite - all of whom did not possess land. In a peasant society a man without land is subject to poverty for it is the land that produces wealth. Thus the landless must be cared for, and the poor must be protected from those who would make them yet poorer by stealing (legally of course), their land. Today, owing to destruction of farmlands, warfare, overpopulation, and the tentacles of urbanization and stratification as they reach out to exploit the countryside, there is a growing class of hundreds of millions of permanently dispossessed, landless people. Though our vision may only be concretized in that holy city, we must struggle for a reallocation of the land to these poor.

The extent of land ownership makes for the extent of justice in a society. Though this is defined in the scriptures in the context of a peasant society and rural land holdings it is not inaccurate to restate this for the urban societies of today. In an urban context the extent of injustice within a city is proportional to the number of people who rent homes or rooms.

This statement implies something about the nature of urban land. It implies the right to housing. The effort to bring this to pass conflicts however with the utilization of land in the city as a commodity. Land is seen to have an intrinsic value not for its fruitfulness (as in agrarian societies), nor for housing but for its usefulness to the production of wealth through industry.

  Thus one role of leadership within a society is to make ways for equitable distribution of land and ownership. Yet within the framework of the specializations of production and distribution and their implication for land values that are endemic to the modern mega-city.

However this has not generally been the attitude towards squatters. Some typical perspectives and reasonable answers are:

a. Comment: The people are illegal.

Answer: The cause of the housing shortage and land rights problem does not lie with the people but is inherent in the urbanization process i.e. don’t blame the people. Government has to take responsibility for the effects of urbanization.

b. Comment: These communities are a blight on the city and the cause of much crime.

Answer: True, therefore upgrading of their conditions is needed.

c. Comment: The people in the slums are not legal and hence not citizen’s of the city. e.g. in Bangkok there is no schooling for children from homes that are not registered.

Answer: Usually this is dispelled by elections when people are needed by politicians and hence have to get registered.

Beyond prophetic critique and defense of the people there are practical approaches that need to be developed by governments and towards which we, as Christians, need to work with men of goodwill in these various cities. Traditional government responses over the last three decades have followed the following patterns largely influenced by philosophies successively generated by the UN:

a. The first was large-scale eviction processes and relocation outside of the cities (problem: their work is in the city where they soon return leaving broken families and forcing many women into prostitution).

b. The next approach was housing estates (problem: they are beyond the financial resources of the poor so they end up rented to middle class people).

c. Over time two relatively more just and practical solutions have emerged based on the convictions that squatters are people entitled to land at a price they can afford and to other basic amenities. Existing areas are upgraded with sites and services programs, thus maintaining the social structures, giving the people legal status, permanence and improving the physical conditions of the community.

d. Land is surveyed and services put in before communities form.

These last two are relatively just responses that honour the principles of good management of land for the people, on behalf of God and are based on a concept of an equitable sharing of wealth.

The Sabbath and the land are quite closely intertwined in the Old Testament covenants. The prophets denounced the breaking of the Sabbath - for a Sabbathless society 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, of loss of role before him, before other men and before the land, 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 land of covenant mean loss of the God of the covenant?

 Return from Exile

Even in this process there is 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 return from exile the new covenant concerning the land is made (Nehemiah 9:36-38). This covenant is now based on a new moral management of the land.

It is this thrill of return to the promised land that we can best relate to the task of working for squatter land rights. Nehemiah is perhaps the best model for mobilizing a people to action. 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.

Perhaps at this point we could isolate some significant Christian ways of involvement in dealing with squatter land rights.

1. The first priority is to decrease the violence inherent both in the poverty itself and in the confrontations that can occur. There needs to be a constant seeking for peace, a peace that ultimately grows out of justice.

2. Community organization is a particularly skillful process. An early step within it is education as to the legal issues. This helps to overcome slum-dwellers’ fears of confronting authorities. Techniques of peaceful yet effective confrontation have to be taught using the power of the people against the power of class.

3. Another step, unlike those proposed by more confrontive and Marxist oriented groups, is careful development of mutual trust between Non Government Organizations (NGO’s), government organizations, and people’s leadership.

4. Many avenues for working for changes in laws need to be explored.

5. Provision of programs to house the poor are needed. I was a stranger and you took me in, is talking about housing the homeless.

But even in the return to the land there is no dramatic development in the Israelites walk with God. So finally prophecy ceases from the land. The land waits. Creation awaits the coming of the Word and in his new promise waits even longer for the fulfillment of time.

Jesus and the Land

With Jesus’ mission, a dramatic new relation to the land is evident.

A major issue for theologians is the lack of continuity of the old Testament issues of land in the New Testament. It is a theme hardly talked about. Yet it is there. The Old Testament covenant regarding the land of Israel is now superceded 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. Again 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.

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 possession. 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 replete with a promise of a home - something every squatter understands.

We must go forward to that promise. And in the process we must bring to fulfillment the promises of God to the poor. Promises that wherever the kingdom flourishes they will possess the land that is their birthright stolen during colonialization. Land that can only be returned as a gift from God. In the process we may frequently fail but always because our eyes are fixed on a future kingdom, we are free to bring hope, free to proclaim a more glorious home - one not built with hands, one that will not disappear or fade away. Let us go on to proclaim that hope in the midst of sharing in the struggles of our people, the poor.

REFERENCES

Berry, Wendell
1981 The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural. North Point Press, San Francisco.

Brueggemann, Walter
1977 The Land. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

Building Together Association
1984 Seminar Report on: The Right to Stay: The Poor, the Land and the Law in Asian Cities. Centre for Housing, National Housing Authority, Bangkok.

Crofts, A.M., O.P.
1948 Property and Poverty. Irish Rosary Office.

Davies, William
1974 The Gospel and the Land. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Dusilek, Darci
1987 “Land - More Than Just Plain Ground.” In Together, April-June 1987, World Vision International.

Dyrness, William
1982 Let the Earth Rejoice. Manila, Philippines: Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture.

Glasser, Arthur
1986 The Kingdom and Mission. Fuller Theological Seminary course syllabus.

Hengel, Martin
1974 Property and Riches in the Early Church. Philadelphia: Fortress Press

Martens, Elmer
1981 God’s Design: A Focus on Old Testament Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.

 McGavran, Donald A.
1970 Understanding Church Growth. Eerdmans.

Orange, Claudia
1987 The Treaty of Waitangi, Allen and Unwin, Port Nicholson Press.