On October 8, 2022, I presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Missiological Society. It was a joint session with the International Society for Frontier Missiology and the paper’s title is, “Caring about Global Governance for the sake of Human Flourishing.” This was an opportunity for me to put on paper some of the material I have been working on for my book on Christian mission and human flourishing. I had already posted a two-part blog post related to this topic (“The New Economy and the SDGs”), but this was the opportunity to ground this project more specifically in mission theology.
In particular, this paper highlights some of the interviews I have been conducting with Christians actually involved in some aspect of global governance. Following John Kirton of the University of Toronto, I have defined global governance as including the plurilateral summit institutions (PSIs like the G7/G8, G20, BRICS); the many United Nations summits on specific subjects, but especially the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Summit on Climate Change, both in 2015; intergovernmental and multilateral agencies like the World Bank and regional ones like the EU, the African Union, etc.; and finally, NGOs, both in the business and development communities, and more broadly, civil society. All are stakeholders trying in one way or another to eradicate poverty and build a more peaceful and just world.