The ANC and Desmond Tutu

Tony Jackman echoes the thoughts of many when he says Thought Leader -- Tony Jackman: Who turned JZ into Mr Min?:

Hearing the ANC attack Desmond Tutu rings with bewildering irony for any of us who lived through the eighties and the so many occasions when the same voice who now criticises this government lambasted the National Party and then premier PW Botha when they were in government.

He attacked them here and abroad. He attacked them when newspapers in this country could not report his words, his words nevertheless being reported abroad so that we could hear his ringing condemnation of apartheid and its atrocities despite the best efforts of the Nats to quieten us and block our ears and minds to the truth.

The ANC now dares to round on this great man of peace, one of the world’s greatest 20th century voices for what is right and against what is wrong.

But it should come as no surprise. Speaking the truth to power is never popular with the powerful, whether the powerful be PW Botha's National Party or Jacob Zuma's ANC.

Recently some people have been blogging about David Bosch and his book Transforming Mission (see here and here). There are a couple of things Bosch (1991:429f) had to say that are worth reading in the light of what we are seeing now

The problem seems to be that Christians tend to sacralize "the sociological forces of history that are dominant at at any particular time, regarding them as inexorable works of providence and even of redemption" (Knapp 1977:151)... Albert Nolan writes in similar vein about the struggle of the South African people against an oppressive system: "The power of the people that is manifested in the struggle is indeed the power of God... What the system is up against now is not 'flesh and blood' but the almighty power of God."

The situation is further compounded when exponents of contextualization claim a special or privileged knowledge about God's will and declare those who do not agree with them as suffering from "false consciousness". Their own clairvoyance, on the other hand, equips them with the ability to know exactly not only what God's will is, but also what will happen in the future. With reference to South Africa, for instance, Nolan (1988:144; cf 184) avers "that we can be quite sure that our future will not be oppressive and alienating". The one thing that south African's need not fear "is the kind of take-over whereby another group of people simply replaces the present rulers and maintainst the same type of system... That possibility is gone forever."

It seems that Albert Nolan (a Dominican priest) had forgotten what a Roman Catholic liberal historian had said a century or more before: All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Or, as the Psalmist says, "Put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man, for there is no help in them."

Or, as Will D. Campbell and James Y. Holloway said in their book Up top our steeples in politics: What is wrong with us that can be solved by politics is not all that is wrong with us.

Nolan's comment shows why Orthodox theologians have had reservations about Western liberation theologies -- the reverse typology that they apply to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. They see this as a type pointing to a greater liberation in our time, rather than the partial liberation from oppression that we see in the world as being an imperfect reflection of the liberation won by the death and resurrection of Christ (for more on this see Orthodoxy and liberation theology).

Is Black Liberation Theology “Racist”? | The Unbound Movement

Jeremiah Wright is the minister of the church attended by Barack Obama, one of the front-running candidates in the US Presidential elections that will take place in November. Until one of his parishioners decided to run for president, probably few people outside his parish had heard of Jeremiah Wright.

Over the last few weeks, however, he has been catapulted into celebrity status by the news media, and a great deal of publicity has been given to a sermon he preached a few years ago, and some people have reacted with shock and horror to "black liberation theology".

Is Black Liberation Theology “Racist”? | The Unbound Movement:

The style and content of Reverend Wright’s preaching, and the theology that informs it, far from being an aberration, are archetypal examples of the Black church experience. That anyone would find the content and style of Reverend Wright’s sermons shocking only serves to underscore the fact that not only are many white Americans profoundly ignorant of the day to day realities of Black American life, but they are blithely unaware of the roots of their own national history. Out of the 400 some odd years that people of African descent have been present on the American continent, we’ve only been legally free for the last forty, and the fact that we are now legally free is due in large part to the efforts of the preeminent exponent of Black liberation theology, Dr. Martin Luther King. What other kind of theology could a Black church worthy of the name be reasonably expected to have?

Black liberation theology was quite popular in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in academic circles. Some of its exponents, like Alan Boesak, became political activists. But it seems a strange thing to make such a fuss about. Has anyone gone dredging up sermons by the ministers of the churches that other US Presidential candidates belong to?

Three cheers for Mike Huckabee

With all the hoo-ha about Barack Obama's former pastor's sermon (dredged up from five years ago, for crying in a bucket), one of the most sensible comments comes from rival US presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee on Wright: “I probably would, too.” � Monte Asbury’s Blog:

As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say, “That’s a terrible statement,” I grew up in a very segregated South, and I think that you have to cut some slack. And I’m going to be probably the only conservative in America who’s going to say something like this, but I’m just telling you: We’ve got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told, “You have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the bus.” And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had … more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

Whatever happened to Liberation Theology?

Up to 1994 many Christian groups in South Africa were in the forefront of the struggle against apartheid. Some took an interest in Liberation Theology and used some of the ideas of Liberation Theology as a spur to action in the struggle against apartheid.

But since 1994 these very same Christian bodies seem to have lost their way. There seems to be a lack of cohesive vision, and I've sometimes wondered whether we actually need a common enemy to give it to us. Is it easier to unite around a common enemy than a common Lord?

I was reminded of this when I read a blog post in which Mike's Bursell muses about: Liberation theology -- challenging

I've just been reading Gorringe, who cites Segundo talking about the bottom line commitment for liberation theology is the option for the poor. I think the thing I'm trying to come to terms with is that although I absolutely accept the enormous inequalities - unchristian inequalities - that riddle our society, and the impact that has on the poorest in society, I'm not sure that I'm ready to take on board what seems to be the central tenet of liberation theology: that our first and foremost task must always be the reconstituting of society in such a way as to alleviate - and remove - economic poverty.

And that in turn reminded me of what a friend of mine, Shirley Davies, used to say back in the 1960s -- that when South Africa solved the problem of the black and the white, it would come face to face with the real problem: the problem of the haves and the have-nots.

And that has in fact happened, as can be seen, for example, in the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement, and the harassing of the homeless by the police and government officials. Of 1500 homeless people and refugees arrested recently at the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg only 15 were eventually charged with being illegal immigrants. As in the bad old days of pass raids, most of those arrested were not allowed to fetch their documents to show that they were in the country legally.

I've written about liberation theology before, in Christianity - North and South, and Orthodoxy and liberation theology, so I will try not to repeat too much of what I have said before here.

In 1994 we had our first democratic and nonracial elections, and it was a vast improvement on what went before. We have free and democratic political institutions and a start was made on the dismantling of apartheid.

But though there was a lot of political rhetoric about the poor, and jobs, and things like that, very little was actually done. The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) which was supposed to deal with some of these problems was abandoned within a year. Instead there was "Black Economic Empowerment" (BEE), which might more accurately be described as Black Elite Enrichment. It was a preferential option for the rich. My wife worked for a BEE company for a while, and met many people, both in the company and those it did business with, whose sole motivation appeared to be greed. They didn't just want to be rich, they wanted to be inordinately and excessively rich. And in part that is because we live in a society that espouses and accepts those values. This is not unique to South Africa. But it is something to think about when we talk of "moral regeneration".

Before 1994 a lot of money flowed in to South Africa to NGOs, both faith-based and secular, that were involved in trying to improve the lot of the poor. After 1994 such funding went to the government. That might have been a good thing, if the government had followed through on the RDP, but it didn't. It abandoned the RDP.

Back in the 1970s some Christian groups in Zululand were anxious to do something about community development. They brought in a community development expert, Milton Rosner, who told them that they were dreaming -- nothing smaller than a government could do community development. But since the government was more interested in destroying communities than developing them, then if the churches wanted to do something they needed to pool their resources. "We must work ecumenically and not denominationally" became the mantra (overlooking a better slogan, that might have sounded a warning, "Small is beautiful").

So the Anglican Church's Zululand Diocesan Health and Welfare Association (known as HelWel or Zisizeni for short) became the Zululand Churches Health and Welfare Association. But because everyone's responsibility is no one's responsibility it became administratively top-heavy, and consumed more and more resources to achieve less and less development.

Better to remember that "small is beautiful", and we should work denominationally rather than ecumenically. Could an ecumenical bureaucracy provide shelter for 1500 homeless people as the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg has done? I very much doubt it.

All this has little to do with the often convoluted expressions of liberation theology, which are often even more abstract and difficult to understand than other forms of theology. But one of the things that most exponents of liberation theology did manage to convey was that practice (or praxis, as they called it) was more important than the obscure theories.

So when the Christian groups in South Africa lost their way and became rudderless and directionless at the end of apartheid, perhaps one of the things they could have done (and could still do) would be to pick up the RDP, which the government dropped, and run with it. Have a look at the ANC's document on Reconstruction and development -- there's a lot of good stuff in it -- and see what can be applied.

But it would be important to learn from the mistakes of the past. We should work denominationally, not ecumenically. Ecumenical bodies, like councils of churches, should play a coordinating role, rather than being involved in micromanagement of projects. That should be done by their member churches. Bureaucratic centralisation should be avoided at all costs.

But perhaps even more important is what one of the earliest advocates of liberation theology, Dom Helder Camara of Brazil, advocated. We must conscientizar the masses. Later that was translated into English as "conscientise", along with a lot of other obscure jargon.

But the conscientising and moral regeneration must begin at home. Before we can achieve anything we must convince our church members that greed is not a Christian value.

Trapped in apartheid - South African churches

I've just been reading Charles Villa-Vicencio's book Trapped in apartheid. It was published in 1988, so it's now nearly 20 years old, so it is rather late to be reading it for the first time. It's about another world, another aeon, and yet it was a time I lived through, and so some some of it seems familiar.

At this distance, Villa-Vicencio's book must inevitably be read as a historical document. It is about what he calls "the English-speaking Churches" in South Africa, and their response to apartheid. The term "English-speaking Churches" itself has a strangely anachronistic feel. The "English-speaking Churches" are the Anglican (Church of the Province of Southern Africa), Methodist (Methodist Church of Southern Africa), Presbyterian, and Congregational (United Congregational Church in Southern Africa). In all of them, the majority of members are not English speaking, though the proceedings at their main administrative meetings were usually conducted in English -- but so were those of other denominations, like the Baptists and the Assemblies of God and the Roman Catholics. What these four have in common is that they are all members of the Church Unity Commission, which has been seeking to unite them for the past 50 years or more.

What strikes me most strongly, reading the book at this distance in time, is how extraordinarily narrow it is. In tracing the response of these four denominations to apartheid, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, Villa-Vicencio ignores huge chunks of Christian experience, and gives a thoroughly distorted picture. I suppose part of the problem lies in his approach and methodology. He is writing from a sociotheological point of view. In one chapter he gives a historical suvey of the response of these churches to apartheid, but it is actually full of a-historical generalities that beg the question. It gives a sociological explanation for these denominations being "trapped in apartheid", but very little historical evidence, beyond mere assertion, that they were actually trapped in apartheid.

That is not to say I necessarily disagree with his main thesis -- I believe they were, to some extent, trapped in apartheid, but if the church history of that period is to be written, it will be very different from the partial picture painted by Villa-Vicencio. These comments of mine are perhaps the opposite of Villa-Vicencio's. His are full of broad sociological generalisations, mine are full of personal anecdotes. But narrative theology is all the rage, or at least it was ten years ago.

On reading Charles Villa-Vicencio's Trapped in apartheid I realise that two of the events in 1985 that he makes a great deal of hardly affected me at all at the time, and more or less passed me by. These were the Kairos document and A call to prayer for an end to unjust rule. I had heard of the Kairos document, but it hardly impinged on my consciousness at the time. I don't recall hearing of the Call to prayer until I read his book.

Villa-Vicencio bases his main critique of the "English-speaking churches" on the Kairos document, and he said that their response to apartheid was "protest without resistance". He examines it in three main areas: the response to Bantu Education, the armed struggle, and the campaign for disinvestment and economic sanctions.

Villa-Vicencio was rather scathing about the response of academics to the Kairos document, but I suspect that it was mainly academics who made it known and kept it alive. If university theology faculties had not given their students assignments and exam questions on the Kairos document over the next ten years or so, very few people would have heard of it.

Villa-Vicencio devotes a single paragraph to the Message to the people of South Africa, issued in 1968, noting that it "rejected apartheid as a pseudo-gospel, anticipating the 1982 'Apartheid is a Heresy' resolution of the WARC by fourteen years."

I believe that The Message to the people of South Africa had a far greater impact on "the English-speaking churches" than the Kairos document. It was preceded by a conference on pseudogospels, and one of the points made at the conference was that a pseudogospel is far worse than a heresy. It therefore went far beyond the resolution of the WARC (World Alliance of Reformed Churches) in its rejection of apartheid on theological grounds. It noted that a heresy is a wrong doctrine, or an incorrect formulation of a teaching on the Christian faith. While it might be technically in error, however, some heretical formulations could remain quite close to the dynamics of the true gospel. A pseudogospel, however, is a false offer of salvation, and is therefore much worse than a mere heresy.

I believe the "Message" had a greater impact than the Kairos document for several reasons. First, its formulation was a far more public thing, and involved a greater number of people. It was issued jointly by the South African Council of Churches (SACC) and the Christian Institute, both influential bodies among "the English-speaking churches". The Kairos document was drawn up by a small group, and signed by a few more people, and issued in the name of a group of individuals who, while they might be respected, did not necessarily speak for any group.

Secondly, the "Message"marked a significant development in public Christian responses to apartheid. Most of the earlier criticisms of apartheid from Christian groups had been directed at the implementation rather than the ideology. In its implementation it caused injustice and unnecessary suffering. There was the implication that it would be all right if only it were humanely applied. If there was any criticism of the principles of apartheid, it was (as Villa-Vicencio points out) from a fairly general liberal point of view rather than a specifically theological one. The "Message" emphasised that not only was apartheid wrong in practice, but it was wrong in principle. It was not merely the implementation, but the ideology, that was so utterly opposed to the Christian faith as to be not merely a heresy, but a false gospel.

The third thing is perhaps the most important, and is something that deserves further analysis. It supports Villa-Vicencio's conclusion, but an analysis of it may give a better reason for why "the English-speaking chruches" failed to move from protest to resistance. This third thing was that the publication of the Message was followed by several meetings at which the formation of "obedience to God" groups was discussed. These groups would be centres of Christian resistance, and the nucleus of a confessing church. The idea never really took off, however, mainly because of the reluctance of the Christian Institute, which had been attacked by the Dutch Reformed Churches as a schismatic new denomination. Bishop Bill Burnett, the General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, said that because of his position he could not lead such a movement, but if nobody else tried to get it going, he might consider doing so.

Eleven years later, in 1979, Bill Burnett was the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, and thus president of the Anglican Provincial Synod, and he threw down the gauntlet of a similar challenge to the Synod meeting in Grahamstown. This too is not mentionewd by Villa-Vicencio, but goes right to the heart of his contention, and if it is to be analysed historically then Burnett's two challenges should be considered.

There was a rather long and waffling motion being debated by the Synod about the permits that the government required the church to apply for. Bill Burnett spoke from the chair, saying that he disliked having to apply for permits, but he thought it was part of his role in keeping the institutional church going. He was quite prepared to see the institutional church die, and if that was what synod really wanted him to do, he would do it. It was a challenge to the synod to "think sect", based on the same kind of thinking as in the earlier "Obedience to God" movement. It was a challenge to the synod to move beyond passing resolutions, and to actually act on its principles. The synod failed to meet the challenge, and Bill Burnett retired before the next one met.

The press picked it up, and if the synod had not resolved to play it safe, it might have been a very different story. There was no resolution to this effect that was minuted. Burnett's direct challenge was met by embarrassed silence and evasion; and at that moment the synod, black members as well as white, showed itself to be indeed trapped in apartheid. Burnett had opened to door a chink, but the church did not want to escape from the trap.

There are a few other things, not mentioned by Villa-Vicencio, that may possibly have played a role in the response of "the English-speaking churches".

One was the charismatic renewal movement, which swept through "the English-speaking churches" in the 1970s and 1980s.It actually started among black Anglicans in the 1940s, but did not have a significant impact on whites in these churches until the lat 1960s and early 1970s. Villa-Vicencio fails to mention it at all, and infact there has been very little study of it by church historians.

An event that also had a considerable effect on "the English-speaking churches" was the South African Christian Leadership Assembly (SACLA) in 1979. This was a gathering of some 5000 people, mainly from "the English-speaking churches" in Pretoria. As far as I know its effects have not been studied, and Villa-Vicencio ignored it.

Another thing ignored by Villa-Vicencio is the National Initiative for Reconciliation, which appeared on the scene about the same time as the Kairos document (and for a while the South African government confused the two). It was a response to apartheid; though it differed from the approach of the Kairos document, it probably involved a larger number of people. Villia-Vicencio's book would have been more complete, and perhaps more convincing, if he had compared them.

And finally, an anecdote.

According to Villa-Vicencio, there was a Call for prayer against unjust rule on 16 June 1985. I never heard of it. The 16th June 1985 was a Sunday, and at that time I was an Anglican. The Revd Alphaeus Ndebele and I had been licenced as assistant priests in the parish of St Francis, Mamelodi East. The reason for this was that we were involved in an outreach mission in KwaNdebele, the newest "homeland" and resettlement area, and that the priest at St Francis, David Aphane, had started. We were there because the parish was seen by the diocese as a base for mission and outreach.

That was not how the parish saw it, however. That Sunday the parish annual vestry meeting was held after the service. The parish council was reelected en bloc. The churchwarden announced that Alphaeus Ndebele and I had been sent there because their priest had just been given extra duties as an archdeacon, so we were there to "help in the parish" because of that. Nothing could have been further from his mind than outreach in KwaNdebele. And the Call for prayer to end unjust rule didn't even appear on the radar screen.

St Francis was in a black township where there was quite a lot of resistance at that time, and several people were shot at one gathering. But this impinged hardly at all on the parish and its vestry meeting.

The story of "the English-speaking churches" being trapped in apartheid is a lot more complex and nuanced than Villa-Vicencio seems to think.

Orthodoxy and Liberation Theology

When I posted my response to the quiz on theological worldviews in my LiveJournal, I pointed out that quite a lot of theological worldviews were missing from the list, including Orthodoxy and Liberation theology.

Someone asked for my views on Liberation Theology, and so I decided to put an article I had written on the subject some years ago on the web. If anyone is interested, it is Orthodoxy and Liberation Theology.

Comments are welcome, either on the message forum linked to the article, or here.

Technorati tags: Orthodox theology, Orthodoxy, Church and State, political theology, prophetic witness, liberation theology