Our world: Awry, Mad, F’ed, Haunted

Jione Havea ponders the task of finding language for the state of our world.

---

It is difficult for me to find one word that appropriately describes the state of our world. Conflicts and wars jam our world – wars with weapons, wars with words and ideologies, and tariff-wars that weaponize the fruits of the land and of the sea, and the widgets of human labour. Wars are destroying lives and livelihoods, minds and worldviews, and upturning lands and waters that once were symbols of independence and goodwill – in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean, and the Caribbean. Has our world gone awry?

Some world, society, and church leaders are denying – with words, decisions, and actions – the obvious: climate change is real, Earth (land, sea, sky) is exhausted, life is at risk, due in a large part to human decisions and actions.

Many years back, governments of nations that were leading in the research on the sources of energy decided to use coal and oil – which pumped tons and tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – instead of wind and solar energies. This decision was made despite scientists (like Svante Arrhenius in Europe, around 1896) showing that carbon dioxide was making the world warmer, and this was harmful to the ecosystem. The climate crisis is a civilization crisis. Has our world gone mad?

Closer to home for me, the evidence is clearly stated in a newspaper clipping from 1912 (in the Braidwood Dispatch and Mining Journal), informing readers that burning coal unites with oxygen and adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, acting as a blanket for the planet.

We are only one century away from 1912, and the effect is already considerable. And despite the evidence, and the alternatives, governments continue to fund the carbon civilization. Scientists have shown convincing evidence to the causes and effects of the climate crisis, but so many people are too proud to change their ways (and too stupid to change their minds?). The climate crisis is a human crisis. In other words, we the human-kind are sacrificing the animal-, plant- and Other-kinds at the altars of capitalism. Has our world gone mad?

Governments are flexing their muscles, building physical and ideological walls, and withdrawing their presence from and support for inter-national collaborations. US President Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement marches in the same spirit as the UK Brexit, started by PM Cameron and finished off by PM Johnson. I name the US and UK leaders, but they were supported by a majority of the voters. And since USA and UK are champions of democracy, everyone in both (is)lands is responsible – including they who did not vote. Is our world f’ed?

Before US President Trump announced his aim to kill ‘woke’ (which promoted DEI – diversity, equity, and inclusion) in the USA (March 2025), we saw comparable specters of racism closer to home in Oceania. On 14 October 2023, Australia voted against the Voice Referendum, which was proposed in the interests of the Indigenous peoples (see here). On the same day, in Aotearoa New Zealand, the National Party won the election and formed government with the ACT New Zealand party and New Zealand First Party. Since then, Māori (indigenous people of the land) and non-white minorities are facing the wrath of the racist agreements between National and ACT when they set the current government (e.g., see here and here). Is our world f’ed?

I ask rhetorical questions to emphasize that our world is in trouble; our world is haunted by the impacts of destructive human decisions and actions. In and for our world, therefore, liberating actions and liberating theologies are needed.

Haunting Questions of Liberation Theology (published this month) comes from and with the awareness that our world is haunted by ravenous humans who grab for more and more power and wealth. From different parts of our world, the contributors to this book look at our awry, mad, f’ed and haunted world through some of the questions that haunt liberating theologies, theologians, and activists.

Image: a clipping from Braidwood Dispatch and Mining Journal (New South Wales: 1888–1954) Wednesday 17 July 1912, p. 4

---

Jione Havea is a Methodist pastor from Tonga, senior research fellow in religious and Moana studies at Trinity Methodist Theological College (Aotearoa New Zealand) and adjunct professor in biblical and cultural studies at Charles Sturt University (Australia).

Haunting Questions of Liberation Theology is published this month and can be ordered here (with 20% off all pre-orders in April 2025).