My Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ

At our recent Episcopal Synod at the newly and wonderfully renovated Modderpoort, one of our Bishops spoke about a conference on mission and church growth that he attended in Kenya. He quoted one of the speakers there as saying, "Christianity in Africa is a mile wide, but only an inch deep." Those words struck me with such force that I have little recollection of what else he had to say in his report.

The trial of Jacob Zuma and the events surrounding it, which Archbishop Desmond Tutu described as "the low point of South African democracy," illustrate the truth of this statement. Zuma was not vindicated, as some newspapers trumpeted; far from it. The "not-guilty" verdict was not a statement of innocence, but the consequence of his accuser being discredited. Jacob Zuma may have been found "not-guilty" of the charge of rape, but there is no doubt that he was guilty of adultery. And it would seem, from what he said in court, unconcerned and unrepentant. Far from being the innocent, the former chairperson of our National Moral Regeneration Programme was shown to be deeply in need of moral regeneration himself.

One of the most distressing things for me in the whole process has been the attitude of both Zuma and his supporters. There has been no acknowledgement of sin, no sense of remorse or repentance, and no reflection on what it has said about us and our values, behaviour and attitude towards others. Instead we have seen the ridiculing and demonizing of those who have expressed concern over the incidence of rape and our prevailing attitudes towards women. We have been confronted with political power playing in which Zuma is portrayed not as a person who has done something wrong, but as the innocent victim of a plot against him. The sinner has become the hero, to be supported at any cost - even if it is at the cost of our Christian values. "We don't listen to the 10 Commandments and we don't listen when Christians tell us adultery is wrong," says NUM president Senzeni Zokwana. This, as the Jacob Zuma trial revealed, may well be the truth, but it is a sad commentary on a country in which 85% of its people profess to be Christians.

Christianity in Africa may indeed be a mile wide and an inch deep, but that statement is also equally true of other times and places. Almost a century ago G.K. Chesterton wrote, "The trouble with Christianity is not that it has been tried and been found wanting, but that it has never been tried." Christianity is more often professed than practised. It is, and perhaps always has been, the biblical story of a faithful remnant. And it may just well be that it is in that faithful remnant that both the answer and the way forward lies.

In a wonderful book on Julian of Norwich, Grace Jantzen argues that, in the time of Julian, it was accepted that the anchorite made an important contribution to society even though - indeed, because - she was enclosed and devoted to prayer. She recognises that no such assumption exists today, but argues that its strangeness speaks " . . . a radical otherness to contemporary culture and its values, an otherness urgently needed in this violent and fragmented world?" She goes on to say that the changes necessary for the survival of our world will never come from those who happily live within the present value contours of our world. "Only," she says, "if there are those who devote themselves to thinking otherwise, to finding other thoughts and values and ways of living them out that there can be hope."

I am not suggesting that we should live enclosed lives devoted to prayer (although devotion to prayer and the study of scripture are a key piece of our ordination vows). But we can certainly devote ourselves to building communities of faith that seek the values of the kingdom and explore ways of living it out. What I am suggesting is that we should be gathering around ourselves a small group of faithful people who will encourage each other in a life of faith that stands in radical otherness to the contemporary culture and holds each other accountable for their vision of radical obedience. And it is those small groups of disciples who will be a faithful remnant who will be the agents of radical transformation.

Eugene Peterson comments that, all too often, clergy are little more than chaplains to the culture; serving it and giving it spiritual legitimacy. As we know from our own history, chaplains to the culture all too often end up colluding with injustice. Instead of giving our people the strength to cope, we need to be giving them the desire to change. We need to be priests of the kingdom living kingdom lives rather than chaplains to the culture. Only as we grow communities devoted to God and to each other in radical obedience can we remain faithful to our calling. Only in such communities of prayer and action will we know resurrection life - the life of the one who comes to make all things new.

May the power of Pentecost fall afresh on you.

+ Brian

(Do you want to see related pages, the whole site or the non-frames Sitemap?)