I am a fan of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show on Comedy Central. Their brand of satire and political commentary appeals to me (even if it is a bit crude sometimes). They pull no punches and have no favourites.

On Monday night, they took a swipe at evangelical Christians who are targeting Mitt Romney’s Mormon beliefs as cultish. They start with an overview of the Republican nomination process thus far. Then they move into their main piece by making fun of Christian beliefs, and although I did squirm a bit, I consoled myself by thinking that their jibes were aimed at a specific version of evangelical Christianity in the USA. But as the clip heads to a conclusion, they target the huge inconsistencies in how Republican Christians in particular are applying their version of the Gospel to life in America, “the 99%” and the divide between rich and poor. This was the best bit for me.

It is a deeply insightful piece of satire, and worth your attention. Watch it below or at The Daily Show website.

PS – if you can’t watch Daily Show videos because they are blocked in your country, let me know in the comments below, and I’ll help you with a work around.

Related posts:

1. Is Evangelical Christianity Having a Great Gay Awakening?

One of the biggest ‘elephants in the room’ for evangelical Christians is why so many of their young people leave the church in their late twenties. There’s no denying this happens. There are too many “used to evangelical Christians” running around. Something must be wrong.

Some people blame the way youth ministry is run. For example, see this hour long documentary produced by a young churchgoer, “Divided“. They have a point, but I don’t buy into their analysis completely.

A new book by David Kinnaman, Barna Group president, provides some more detail. “You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church and Rethinking Church” is an excellent read. The Christian Post reviewed it and provides a summary of the findings (read it here, or a summary below).

This is a problem I have been passionate about for nearly three decades. I continue to be dismayed at how few churches are trying new things in an attempt to reverse nearly a half century of losing young people. This book from Barna provides some clues. What is your church going to do about it?

Study: Why Young Christians Leave the Church

By Jeff Schapiro | Christian Post Reporter, Sep 2011

Nearly three out of every five young Christians disconnect from their churches after the age of 15, but why? A new research study released by the Barna Group points to six different reasons as to why young people aren’t staying in their pews.

The results of this study come from the interviews of teenagers, young adults, youth pastors, senior pastors and parents that were taken over the course of five years.

First, the study says, churches appear to be overprotective. Nearly one-fourth of the 18- to 29-year-olds interviewed said “Christians demonize everything outside of the church” most of the time. Twenty-two percent also said the church ignores real-world problems and 18 percent said that their church was too concerned about the negative impact of movies, music and video games.

Many young adults also feel that their experience of Christianity was shallow. One-third of survey participants felt that “church is boring.” Twenty percent of those who attended as a teenager said that God appeared to be missing from their experience of church.

The study also found many young adults do not like the way churches appear to be against science. Over one-third of young adults said that “Christians are too confident they know all the answers” and one-fourth of them said that “Christianity is anti-science.”

Some also feel that churches are too simple or too judgmental when it comes to issues of sexuality. Seventeen percent of young Christians say they’ve “made mistakes and feel judged in church because of them.” Two out of five young adult Catholics said that the church’s teachings on birth control and sex are “out of date.”

The fifth reason the study gives for such an exodus from churches is many young adults struggle with the exclusivity of Christianity. Twenty-nine percent of young Christians said “churches are afraid of the beliefs of other faiths” and feel they have to choose between their friends and their faith.

The last reason the study gives for young people leaving the church is they feel it is “unfriendly to those who doubt.” Over one-third of young adults said they feel like they can’t ask life’s most pressing questions in church and 23 percent said they had “significant intellectual doubts” about their faith.

David Kinnaman, Barna Group president and author of the book on these findings, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church and Rethinking Church, said part of the problem may be that many churches are geared toward “traditional” young adults.

“But most young adults no longer follow the typical path of leaving home, getting and education, finding a job, getting married and having kids – all before the age of 30,” he said. “These life events are being delayed, reordered, and sometimes pushed completely off the radar among today’s young adults.”

The Barna Update that highlights this study also says that today’s young adults are heavily influenced by the major social, spiritual and technological changes that have occurred in the last quarter century.

Dan Smith, pastor of Momentum Christian Church in Cleveland, Ohio, told The Christian Post in an email that the six points “resonate” with him.

“I feel like part of God’s calling on my life is to reach those 85 percent (made-up stat) who want to connect with God … but don’t feel like the typical church is helping with that,” he said.

“Most of our church is made up of 20s, 30s, and 40s – younger people – because our leaders have the same mindset as some of the younger people do – we won’t tolerate inauthenicity ‘on stage,’ trite answers, anti-scientific discussion, etc. As Scripture says, we believe that if Jesus is lifted up, young people should also be drawn to him … so we try to lift him up in a way they can participate.”

Instead of overreacting to these statistics (by gearing churches specifically toward young people) or remaining indifferent to them, Kinnaman suggests that churches should cultivate “intergenerational relationships” within their congregations.

“In many churches, this means changing the metaphor from simply passing the baton to the next generation to a more functional, biblical picture of a body – that is, the entire community of faith, across the entire lifespan, working together to fulfill God’s purposes.”

Source: Christian Post

Related posts:

1. Generations @ Church
2. Welcome new readers – a quick intro to the conversation thus far
3. Church is not the end, it’s the means

Looking through my news feed this morning, my eye was drawn to a story from Brazil. This past weekend, over 100,000 people joined a march in Rio de Janeiro in protest at religious intolerance. So far, so good. Religious intolerance is a “bad thing” and it’s important to have a free society so that we can practice our beliefs without fear or intimidation.

But then I read further and realised that the protestors were protesting AGAINST Christians. Apparently, evangelical Christians in Brazil are seen as the cause of persecution of especially Afro-Brazilian religious groups.

You can read the story here.

This story disturbed me. Why did so many people feel the need to protest against my faith? You don’t have to deny your own faith, nor do you need to believe that all faiths are equal in order to realise that there is a problem when that many people say there is a problem. Is this the Christianity that Jesus would want to be associated with? A Christianity characterised by exclusion, demonisation, persecution and intolerance? I can’t believe that.

Tolerance of other people’s religions and faiths is something we need to learn how to do as Christians. Maybe the starting point for the right attitude in this regard is to ask whether God is more concerned that we are right (in what we think/believe) or that we are loving (in what we do). It’s not a choice between the two, of course. But which is the appropriate starting point for engagement with the world? What do Jesus’ actions tell us about his starting point for engagement?

No related posts.

There is much to be afraid of these days. It seems that many people – too many people – are afraid of terror and terrorism. Maybe they have a good reason to be – just look at what happened in Oslo last week, or what is happening across the Middle East everyday. For those with religious inclinations, it seems that one of the antidotes to this fear is to retreat further into religious fundamentalism and extremism. The attitude is very much: “We are right and you are wrong”, leading to “You’re either for us or against us”. Unfortunately, whenever this happens it leads to even more problems, and ultimately even more reasons for fear.

A systems framework that I find helpful is Spiral Dynamics, which attempts to identify various worldviews and chart them in a progression. It seems to me that many people are trapped in the ‘Blue’ (or ‘Amber’ according to Ken Wilber’s formulation) meme/level, which is about the us versus them approach to dealing with issues. It also frequently is associated with a ‘might is right’ approach, where terror is fought with force. (PS, for an excellent book on Christian leadership using systems theory, read “Systems Sensitive Leadership” – buy it at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com)

Sadly, in the midst of this fear, we have somehow come to revere the people who wage the wars. There is a myth that we might not agree with the war leaders, but we should still support the soldiers. In certain circumstances that might be right, but I think it might also just serves to deepen the fear. This is exactly the opposite of the effect it is supposed to have. The country with biggest army is supposed to feel safest, is it not?

Those who serve in militaries around the world are given almost reverential adoration. Now I can understand this (sort of) if those people were conscripted into the military – in other words, if they had no choice about it. And I understand that they face physical danger in their work, which is (notionally at least) to protect their compatriots ‘back home’. But when young men and women make a career choice to join the military, they are doing no more or less than anyone else choosing a career that might be beneficial for their country (including, say, a farmer, a teacher, a nurse or public servant). And they have chosen to do a job that they know will lead them into war – it’s not a surprise, and we should not feel sorry for them. (For the record, in case you think I don’t know what I’m talking about, I was conscripted and saw active duty. I also attended nearly 50 military funerals during that time. This is not an uninformed opinion.)

Brian McLaren, author of “A New Kind of Christianity” wrote an excellent piece on his blog today about “How We Feel Safe …“. He asks whether we feel safer because we’re in control, because we have a big military, because we are at war? He has a point. The anecdotal evidence would say, “No, we don’t feel safer”. But that doesn’t seem to stop the wars in the name of safety (or ‘freedom’).

And then we need to consider the attitudes of the general populations of ‘The West’ towards Islam. This is where the perceived threat is coming from: “Muslim extremists”. The wars to which we send our soldiers are supposedly to stop these muslim extremists from bringing their terror to our shores. But is this story actually true?

Here’s just a quick test to help you judge your own perceptions and bias: The European Union’s 2010 Terrorism Situation and Trend Report has just been released for 2010, and has some fascinating findings. How many terror attacks do you think occurred in 2009 and 2010 in Europe? Of those totals, how many do you think were “Islamist”? Take a moment to ponder these statistics before looking at the answers below.

The report showed that on 2009 there were 294 terror attacks committed in Europe. Only one of those was conducted by Islamists. That’s a third of one percent.

In 2010 there were 249 terror attacks in Europe. Only three of those attacks were carried out by Islamist terrorists. That’s about one percent.

If you’re interested, most of the terror attacks were by separatist groups or anarchists.

(Thanks to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria for pointing me to this report).

How safe are you? What are you afraid of? Are our militaries helping you to be safer? How then should we live?

No related posts.

Desmond Tutu, the irrepressible retired Anglican Bishop from South Africa, is one of my favourite people of all time. His speeches are some of the best in history, and always delivered with verve, humour and passion. He is a remarkable man, and I have had the privilege of meeting him a few times and listening to him speak live.

A collection of his speeches and writings – especially his most controversial ones – has just been published (with two different sub titles, confusingly): “and other provocations” or “speaking truths in times of crisis” (Buy it at Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com or Kalahari.net).

The Huffington Post provided an extended extract. You can read it here, or below. I have highlighted my favourite bit. It’s from the speech that book is named for: God is not a Christian. What a profound thought.

God Is Not a Christian

This talk comes from a forum in Britain, where Tutu addressed leaders of different faiths during a mission to the city of Birmingham in 1989.

They tell the story of a drunk who crossed the street and accosted a pedestrian, asking him, “I shay, which ish the other shide of the shtreet?” The pedestrian, somewhat nonplussed, replied, “That side, of course!” The drunk said, “Shtrange. When I wash on that shide, they shaid it wash thish shide.” Where the other side of the street is depends on where we are. Our perspective differs with our context, the things that have helped to form us; and religion is one of the most potent of these formative influences, helping to determine how and what we apprehend of reality and how we operate in our own specific context.

My first point seems overwhelmingly simple: that the accidents of birth and geography determine to a very large extent to what faith we belong. The chances are very great that if you were born in Pakistan you are a Muslim, or a Hindu if you happened to be born in India, or a Shintoist if it is Japan, and a Christian if you were born in Italy. I don’t know what significant fact can be drawn from this — perhaps that we should not succumb too easily to the temptation to exclusiveness and dogmatic claims to a monopoly of the truth of our particular faith. You could so easily have been an adherent of the faith that you are now denigrating, but for the fact that you were born here rather than there.

My second point is this: not to insult the adherents of other faiths by suggesting, as sometimes has happened, that for instance when you are a Christian the adherents of other faiths are really Christians without knowing it. We must acknowledge them for who they are in all their integrity, with their conscientiously held beliefs; we must welcome them and respect them as who they are and walk reverently on what is their holy ground, taking off our shoes, metaphorically and literally. We must hold to our particular and peculiar beliefs tenaciously, not pretending that all religions are the same, for they are patently not the same. We must be ready to learn from one another, not claiming that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God.

We should in humility and joyfulness acknowledge that the supernatural and divine reality we all worship in some form or other transcends all our particular categories of thought and imagining, and that because the divine — however named, however apprehended or conceived — is infinite and we are forever finite, we shall never comprehend the divine completely. So we should seek to share all insights we can and be ready to learn, for instance, from the techniques of the spiritual life that are available in religions other than our own. It is interesting that most religions have a transcendent reference point, a mysterium tremendum, that comes to be known by deigning to reveal itself, himself, herself, to humanity; that the transcendent reality is compassionate and concerned; that human beings are creatures of this supreme, supra mundane reality in some way, with a high destiny that hopes for an everlasting life lived in close association with the divine, either as absorbed without distinction between creature and creator, between the divine and human, or in a wonderful intimacy which still retains the distinctions between these two orders of reality.

When we read the classics of the various religions in matters of prayer, meditation, and mysticism, we find substantial convergence, and that is something to rejoice at. We have enough that conspires to separate us; let us celebrate that which unites us, that which we share in common.

Surely it is good to know that God (in the Christian tradition) created us all (not just Christians) in his image, thus investing us all with infinite worth, and that it was with all humankind that God entered into a covenant relationship, depicted in the covenant with Noah when God promised he would not destroy his creation again with water. Surely we can rejoice that the eternal word, the Logos of God, enlightens everyone — not just Christians, but everyone who comes into the world; that what we call the Spirit of God is not a Christian preserve, for the Spirit of God existed long before there were Christians, inspiring and nurturing women and men in the ways of holiness, bringing them to fruition, bringing to fruition what was best in all. We do scant justice and honor to our God if we want, for instance, to deny that Mahatma Gandhi was a truly great soul, a holy man who walked closely with God. Our God would be too small if he was not also the God of Gandhi: if God is one, as we believe, then he is the only God of all his people, whether they acknowledge him as such or not. God does not need us to protect him. Many of us perhaps need to have our notion of God deepened and expanded. It is often said, half in jest, that God created man in his own image and man has returned the compliment, saddling God with his own narrow prejudices and exclusivity, foibles and temperamental quirks. God remains God, whether God has worshippers or not.

This mission in Birmingham to which I have been invited is a Christian celebration, and we will make our claims for Christ as unique and as the Savior of the world, hoping that we will live out our beliefs in such a way that they help to commend our faith effectively. Our conduct far too often contradicts our profession, however. We are supposed to proclaim the God of love, but we have been guilty as Christians of sowing hatred and suspicion; we commend the one whom we call the Prince of Peace, and yet as Christians we have fought more wars than we care to remember. We have claimed to be a fellowship of compassion and caring and sharing, but as Christians we often sanctify sociopolitical systems that belie this, where the rich grow ever richer and the poor grow ever poorer, where we seem to sanctify a furious competitiveness, ruthless as can only be appropriate to the jungle.

Source: Huffington Post

Related posts:

1. The marks of a genuine Christian – reflections on a sermon
2. I am a social justice Christian
3. Welcome new readers – a quick intro to the conversation thus far

I don’t think we should. I think this is a moment to show the world how different Christian faith is – and what a difference Christ makes in the world. By the way, I don’t think the world is a safer place tonight. At least in the near future it’s just got a little bit scarier – especially since I am planning four trips to the USA in the next six weeks.

Two articles published today in Christianity Today helped me to think through this issue a bit more thoroughly, and I recommend them to you.

Firstly, Gideon Strauss, CEO of the Center for Public Justice, argues that “Yes, Justice Has Been Done in the Killing of Osama bin Laden”, but our response as Christians must be marked by knowledge of our own depravity. Read his article here.

His points are Biblical and theological. Proverbs 24:17 says: “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles.” And Ezekiel 18:23: “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?”

He understands that we have a desire for retribution, and acknowledges that God understands this (see Psalm 137). “But beyond this immediate response, understandable as it is, I believe it is necessary for Christians to pause, and to consider the death of Osama bin Laden within the deeper perspective of human sin and divine grace. In the end, no death should give us pleasure…. Our best next response, I believe, to the news of Osama bin Laden’s death, after we have sought our own hearts for the wickedness that resides in all of us, and have thanked God for his amazing grace that has rescued us from our own evil, is to join President Obama on May 5, this year’s National Day of Prayer, ‘in giving thanks for the many blessings we enjoy’ and ‘in asking God for guidance, mercy, and protection for our nation.’ And perhaps we can add a prayer for our enemies, that God may win them to himself and in his own good time bring into the relations between this nation and those who now seek her destruction some foretaste of the just peace of his world to come.”

But an even more profound response was written by Michael Horton, Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary, CA. He titled it: “The Death of Osama bin Laden: What Kind of Justice Has Been Done?” The news should again remind us of the difference between the City of Man and the City of God. You can read it here, or an extended extract below.

The Death of Osama bin Laden: What Kind of Justice Has Been Done?

The news should again remind us of the difference between the City of Man and the City of God.
Michael Horton, Christianity Today, 1 May 2011

Understandably, news of Osama bin Laden’s demise at the hands of U. S. Navy Seals provoked cries of celebration. The mastermind of terror, even against civilians (indeed, against fellow Muslims) has been brought to justice. But what kind of justice?

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, President George W. Bush authorized “Operation Infinite Justice.” Especially after his comment that “this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while,” however, the mission was renamed “Operation Enduring Freedom.” Reportedly, the name-change was due at least in part to the concern raised by Muslims that only God can execute “infinite justice.” One would have hoped that the change had been provoked instead by Christian reaction.

Islam, of course, is not just a religion; it’s a cultural and even geo-political reality. As such, its strict adherents excoriate co-religionists like Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im who call for an “Islamic Reformation” that would make jihad into a spiritual struggle rather than an armed military conflict.

Unfortunately, Christianity has had a long and complicated history of its own on this score. On one hand, the fourth-century theologian Augustine responded to the sacking of Rome with a detailed scriptural argument for two cities: the City of Man and the City of God. Each city has its own origins, ends, and means. As citizens of both kingdoms, every believer is called to recognize the difference between them. Compared with the City of God, the City of Man is hardly a true commonwealth. It cannot ensure ultimate peace, security, justice, and love. Nevertheless, Augustine argues, it can still be considered a commonwealth in a limited, provisional, and penultimate sense. Out of these reflections (especially in the City of God) there arose a legacy of just war theory and a Christian realism about the legitimacy and limitation of human societies in this time between the times.

Nevertheless, the Middle Ages gave rise to a fusion of Christ and culture known as “Christendom.” In the name of Christendom, kings and their knights rode off to crusades with papal blessing, as David and the hosts of Yahweh redivivus, cleansing the Holy Land of infidels.

In spite of its own contradictions in practice, the magisterial Reformation sought to distinguish between the kingdom of Christ, which conquers by Word and Spirit, and the kingdoms of this age that are given the divine authority to defend temporal justice. Drawing on the New Testament and church fathers, especially Augustine, the reformers realized that there was no theocracy in the new covenant; all nation-states were “secular” in the sense of being common rather than holy. With no holy land, there can be no holy war. Only just wars, based on natural law.

But ideas like “Christendom” die hard. We saw that with the memorial service after 9/11. Held in a building popularly known as the “National Cathedral,” with military honor guards processing and the strains of “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” announcements of a resolve to secure infinite justice in an open-ended “crusade” provided fodder for Islamic extremists in their effort to replay ancient battles. A romantic patriotism has always seethed beneath the professed separation of church and state, as in the famous “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Written by a Unitarian, the hymn confuses Union victory with Christ’s final judgment. Something very close to “infinite justice.”

Cultures are the most dangerous when they invoke holy texts for their defense of holy land through holy war. However, Christians have no biblical basis for doing this in the first place. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus clearly abrogated the ceremonial and civil law that God had given uniquely to the nation of Israel. Now is the era of common grace and common land, obeying rulers—even pagan ones—and living under constitutions other than the one that God gave through Moses. As Paul reminds us in Romans 13, secular rulers are given the power of the temporal sword—finite justice—while the gospel conquers in the power of the Spirit through that Word “above all earthly pow’rs.”

What does all of this mean for our response to the news about the most notorious terrorist in recent history?

First, it means that we can rejoice that even in this present evil age, God’s common grace and common justice are being displayed through secular authorities…. Yet the divine wrath that rulers execute is temporal and finite rather than eternal and infinite. Such justice is never so pure that it is unmingled with injustice, never so final that it satisfies God’s eternal law. In view of the image of God stamped on every person, justice must always be tempered by love. Commenting on Genesis 9:6, John Calvin reminded us that we cannot hate even our most perverse enemies, because of the image of God in them….

Second, it means that we cannot rejoice in the death of the wicked any more than does God (Ezek. 18:23). We may take satisfaction that temporal justice has been served, but Christians should display a sober restraint…. [Christ] calls us to pray for our enemies, even for those who persecute us (Matt. 5:44). This is the day of salvation, calling sinners to repent and believe the gospel. We may delight in the temporal justice shown to evildoers, but leave the final justice to God.

….

So as we take satisfaction in the honorable service of U.S. forces in bringing a terrorist to justice in the court of the temporal city, let us never dare to confuse this with “the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10). In our response, let us use this opportunity to display to our non-Christian neighbors the radical contrasts between the biblical view of God, humanity, redemption, and the last judgment, and the religious and secularist distortions—even those that profess to be Christian.

Michael Horton is J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary in Escondido, California, and author of The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way. “Speaking Out” is Christianity Today’s guest opinion column and (unlike an editorial) does not necessarily represent the opinion of the publication.

Related posts:

1. The death penalty – pause for thought
2. A deeper consciousness: What Knut’s death might teach us about the life choices facing us soon

The campaign is aimed at raising awareness of the fact that a quarter of the world’s population – 1.4 billion people – go to bed hungry every night. They survive on the equivalent of £ 1 per day. That’s for everything: food, clothes, medicine, transport, entertainment and education of their children.

In order to raise funds to fight extreme poverty, thousands of people around the world are going to try and live on less than £ 1 of food and drink for five days next week. I am doing so starting next Saturday, for five days. This is the “Live Below the Line” challenge. Please would you consider sponsoring me, even if it’s just a few pounds (or dollars, or rands, or euros). It’s easy to do at my special campaign website. You can also leave me a message of support, and show your concern for the world’s poor.

And that’s why I think the slogan is so brilliant. If we don’t do anything, who will? And if we don’t do it now, then when? It’s about Just Us For All.

The campaign is organised by the Global Poverty Project, a charity that aims to see the eradication of extreme poverty in one generation. I volunteer as a presenter of their awesome multimedia presentation, “1.4 Billion Reasons”. You can request a presentation at your office, your school, your home or church – click here to do so.

You can also watch a video of the promotional work that Hollywood superstar, Hugh Jackman, has done as a celebrity sponsor of the campaign. He was superb on Monday night. He’s joined the cause. Why don’t you?

Hugh Jackman calls for thousands to Live Below the Line from Nick Allardice on Vimeo.

No related posts.

This post was originally written on 15 January 2009, on the previous version of my blog

The Times (UK) published a thought-provoking article last week, by an avowed atheist who is often critical of organised religion and Christianity. Yet, his thoughts on what is needed in Africa are refreshing and exciting for those of us who believe there is a different way of being and doing Christian in the world today.

This is worth a read. The original is online here.

As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God

Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa’s biggest problem – the crushing passivity of the people’s mindset
by Matthew Parris

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it’s Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding – as you can – the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It’s a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn’t fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world – a directness in their dealings with others – that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.

We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers – in some ways less so – but more open.

This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man’s place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.

There’s long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.

I don’t follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety – fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things – strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won’t take the initiative, won’t take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds – at the very moment of passing into the new – that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it’s there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It’s… well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary’s further explanation – that nobody else had climbed it – would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I’ve just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I’m afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

Related posts:

1. One African Postcolonial Theology: The Imperative to Differ

This post was originally written on 10 June 2009, on the previous version of my blog

I was recently sent an article from the Associated Baptist Press (ABP, USA), entitled: “Baptists urged to consider risks of ‘majoritarian faith’”, by David Wilkinson. It is a news article about a recent lecture by Baptist historian Doug Weaver, speaking at the Baptist History and Heritage Society annual meeting.

His main point was that Baptists (and by inference, other Reformed Protestants) were shaped and formed as persecuted, minority groups. Now, they are majority, mainstream groups, and are in danger (I’d say they have already) lost their distinctiveness and compromised their values. In particular, he is concerned that Baptists have abandoned their belief in religious liberty (and in liberty in general).

While Baptists proudly point to religious liberty and church-state separation as their distinctive contributions to American history, Weaver said, contemporary Baptist heirs to that tradition may find it difficult to relate to their 17th-century forebears, who were part of a persecuted minority of dissenters to official state-supported denominations.

“We are used to being a part of the majority. We are the Bible Belt, maybe even the buckle of that belt. We are Baptists, the largest body of Protestants in the United States,” Weaver, a religion professor at Baylor University, said. “We have climbed the ladder of success numerically, socially and intellectually. We have an air of respectability. We are the majority; hear us roar.”

In contrast, he noted, it was the persecuted minority groups – the Anabaptists, Baptists and Quakers – that “pushed the Christian world in the 16th and 17th centuries to face the music and hear cries for complete religious liberty.”

Ironically, he added, many of those dissenters who fled to America to escape persecution in Europe soon used that hard-won freedom to persecute those in the New World who did not share their religious views.

Weaver said John Leland, the famous 18th-century Baptist advocate of religious freedom, noted that whenever you try to force a union between church and state in order to create a Christian nation, you have created a monster that denies liberty of conscience to anyone who dares to be different.

Weaver challenged American Christians to re-read their Bibles from the perspective of a religious minority group. From Moses and the Exodus to Daniel in the lion’s den to the teachings of Jesus to accounts of the early church, the Bible is filled with examples of the persecuted minority, he said.

“Can we hear Bible passages in the way that persecuted minorities have heard them when they talk about freedom? Can we read Bible passages like persecuted minorities would when they were being denied religious freedom by the government or by a majority group that was defining how free they can be?” he asked.

“I wonder who really understands the implications of freedom,” he added. “Those people who don’t have it and desperately want it, or those people who are threatened that they might lose control of it?”

The Bible and church history call 21st-century Baptists to “look in the mirror of our ‘majoritarian faith’ and see its risks,” Weaver said. Among those risks are that:

– “We cease to affirm religious liberty for all because we are now the majority.”

– “We fear losing our status as a majority faith in an ever-increasing[ly] pluralistic world, so our response is to assert oppressive control only majorities can pull off.”

– “We now become [like] the colonial Puritans and think that freedom is only for us and should be defined by us.”

– “We hide behind the rhetoric of being a Christian nation to justify religious favoritism toward our majority viewpoint,” forgetting that “Baptists’ forefathers and foremothers were persecuted by so-called national churches.”

– “We abandon — even denigrate — the separation of church and state that we desperately cried for when we were a minority faith in our infant years.”

– “We forget that freedom is a gift from God and not ours to withhold.”

Source: ABP, June 8, 2009

Related posts:

1. Engaging with Islam – with an agenda of peace, reconciliation and truth seeking
2. Liberal politics, freedom and the role of Christianity in Britain
3. Reflections on Christmas and Christianity in the USA

Related posts:

1. Christians, homosexuals and B&Bs
2. Study: Why Young Christians Leave the Church