Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Rowan Williams on "Refuge"

In light of the postings on Central Methodist, I thought this reflection might be appropriate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1J3aAe5oOQ

Friday, June 19, 2009

“We are Dying”

J.L. Zwane Memorial Church has Aids.

This Presbyterian congregation runs a series of impressive programmes reaching out to members of the Guguletu community striken or affected by this pandemic. The pandemic has reached staggering proportions in South Africa’s townships, with Guguletu itself having an HIV-positive rate of 29 percent (http://www.thesenumbers.com/faqs.html).

But J.L. Zwane is not interested in statistics; it provides refuge for suffering bodies. Every Sunday during worship there is an Aids presentation, where a member of the church will address the congregation. As Mandisa approached the front of the church on the Sunday we visited, the congregation sang “Never, never give up”—echoing the words embossed on a wall of the sanctuary. Diagnosed in 2001, she didn’t expect to live three years, much less eight. Marginalized by family members, she came to "the Aids church" (as J.L. Zwane is popularly, if not notoriously, known). There she received a warm welcome, medical care, and support from one of the groups established for that purpose. The anti-retrovitrals she’s taking allow her and her three children (all HIV-negative, praise God!) to live a relatively normal life. However, there was a poignancy to Mandisa’s story: her brother—who openly mocked her when she went public with her diagnosis—is himself HIV-positive (actually diagnosed in 1998), and gravely ill.

Calling the church to a reponsible and caring practice is deeply unpopular. Aids remains a silent killer. But the stigma associated with it is nearly as destructive as the disease itself. According to J.L. Zwane’s minister, Rev. Dr. Spiwo Xapile, pastors who dare talk about the issue run the risk of losing their jobs. And having pastors ministering for short amounts of time doesn’t allow the development of a ministry in which space can be created for the discussion of sexuality. It’s a cruel catch-22.

Rev. Xapile himself knows the deadly disease only too well, having lost five family members to Aids.

The Centre has a number of programmes that promote responsible behaviour, and take care of those who have fallen victim to the disease, both directly and indirectly. Each Sunday, public health volunteers come to the church and offer a clinic for those who cannot afford health care (which, with an unemployment rate of 70 percent, is the vast majority of Guguletu’s population). The Centre itself expresses healing in its physical representations, featuring a number of striking works of art on its walls. All this has come about through Rev. Xapile’s vision, a partnership with Stellenbosch University, and the support of overseas donors.

But what was especially challenging was the way the church itself supports grassroots initiatives, including the work of two exceptional women we were privileged to meet.

Priscilla (right) is an elderly woman who has opened her small home to twelve--soon to be fifteen--Aids orphans. When an HIV-positive parent becomes ill, they receive support from the grandparents—most of whom are on a fixed income; when the parents fall to the disease, the children live with the grandparents. Rev. Xapile told our group that there are children in Guguletu who are now being cared for by their third grandparent, the others having died. The children are sometimes simply abandoned, and so Priscilla has taken some of them in.

Nancy, who herself has a sixteen year-old severely handicapped daughter, is taking care of twelve abandoned children who are physically and developmentally challenged.

The public support structures are simply inadequate in Guguletu to meet these kinds of needs. The J.L. Zwane church has organized itself into zones. And members in each track the needs of their community, and initiatives like Priscilla’s and Nancy’s. The church then distributes food parcels to them. A network thus extends through the body of Christ, linking such small spaces where the kingdom of God has taken root.

We ought not romanticize—despite this good work, the challenge remains enormous. Rev. Xapile put it baldly during one of our discussions: “we are dying.” Not they, but we. Aids affects the church as Christ’s suffering body. “By his wounds, we are healed,” said Isaiah. And so as the church suffers with those bearing the social, as well as the physical, effects of the disease, it imparts the healing of Jesus Christ—one face, one body at a time.

Mark’s gospel tells the story of an unnamed women who had been suffering from “an issue of blood” for twelve years (Mark 5:25-34). She came, incognito, to Jesus—pressing her way through the crowd hoping to touch the hem of his garment. This woman’s plight has particular resonance for women in rural South Africa, where menstruation may exclude someone from contact with men, even in church. Reflecting on the way the text is read among the Amawoti of KwaZulu, Beverley Haddad and Maleka Sebeko write:
The women of Amawoti immediately identified with the woman with the hemorrhage in the text. Discussion followed concerning this woman’s situation. However, the woman with the hemorrhage had no name, no relationship, and was known by her illness (v.25). Her situation defined both her name and her personhood. There was speculation as to what might have happened had the woman not revealed herself to Jesus (v.33). The readers felt that Jesus had made it possible by his attitude. He had not regarded the woman as unclean and had affirmed her by healing her (v.29). It was also acknowledged, however, that the woman herself had shown courage and inner strength by taking the initiative. In spite of her circumstances, there was a recognition that she had never given up hope throughout the twelve years. Through the encounter the woman was given the ‘right to talk to Jesus.’ (1)
Contact with the woman would have made Jesus ritually unclean. However, what happens is not that the woman’s uncleanness is passed to him, but his healing power flows from him to her. This story takes on new significance in the context of the “uncleanness” of HIV-Aids. The unnamed come fearfully but courageously to J.L. Zwane, “the Aids church”. But rather than experiencing condemnation by the pure, they participate in the healing present in Jesus Christ.

The lesson of J.L. Zwane Memorial Church is that the body of Jesus Christ has Aids. We who are in communion with J.L. Zwane—which means all Christians who share the Eucharist—also have Aids.

Think about it. Then find a way to act in solidarity.



Note


1. Malika Sibeko and Beverly Haddad, “Reading the Bible With’ Women in Poor and Marginalized Communities in South Africa,” Semeia 78. Reading the Bible as Women: Perspectives from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Ed. Katherine Doob Sakenfeld and Sharon H. Ringe (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997) 87.





Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Mvume Dandala: A Christian In Office

Without question, Mvume Dandala has been one of the most widely respected church leaders in South Africa's recent past. A Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church from 1996 to 2003, and most recently General Secretary of the All Africa Council of Churches, Dandala is best known outside the church for mediating an end to the violence between ANC and Inkatha supporters in Johannesburg's hostels. He is known to be a man of integrity, and of deep holiness.

But this was in a previous phase of his life. As the political culture of South Africa degenerated into cronyism and corruption, a section of ANC members saw an opportunity to break away from the ruling party to form The Congress of the People (COPE). And they approached Dandala to lead the party into the most recent election.

For many, this would have been an immediate career-defining move, and a high promotion. But not for Dandala. The request resulted in a time of soul-searching, prayer, and discernment. He had always agreed with Archbishop Desmond Tutu that the place of a pastor was outside partisan politics--at least in a "normal" situation. And Dandala has always had “a pastor’s heart.” But South Africa was descending into abnormality--at least in terms of its professed democratic vision. So Dandala asked to be released from his position as pastor, effectively laying aside his clerical collar, in order to bear witness as a politician.

As he spoke to our group, I could hear the struggle in his voice. The questions he faced were stark. How could he, a well-respected Bishop, expose himself to abuse as a politician? Would the give-and-take of parliamentary debate, and the often-unsavoury nature of partisanship--corrupt him. But the alternative, in his view, was to perpetuate the idea that party politics was "unholy"--a significant issue given his Methodist theology. Even this calling must be sanctified. So he agreed--and agreed to suspend his credentials with the church. But he remains a Christian fulfilling what he and his spiritual advisors considers a redeployment by God.

But he also had a message for the church from his “new” location. Pastors need to engage in “political education”: shaping members as citizens aware of their responsibilities. They should remain non-partisan, but at the same time passionately informed about the political process.

Dandala’s talk raised a number of important issues for our discussion group (and others who joined us), and had us arguing rather loudly--to the point of being asked to “quiet down” as we were disturbing the sleep of our fellows! Here were some of the issues raised:

1. What is the nature of citizenship for Christians? Are Christians citizens of one city (the New Jerusalem)? Or two?

2. If party political involvement is entered into, what are the norms that govern such involvement for Christians? Is creation, cross, or resurrection most determinative?

3. Should the church always and necessarily understand itself as neutral in its activity during the world? Should it understand this neutrality as “a-political”? “Pre-political”? “Post-political”? “Differently political”? When Mvume Dandala decided to “enter politics”, and set aside his office in the church, what was he doing?

4. How should the teaching office of the church (Bishop) be employed with reference to #1? Is it additional to catechesis? Or part of it?

5. What should be the system of accountability of Christian political office-holders to the church? What are the implications of a president who professes to follow Jesus disobeying his Bishop (George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq comes to mind)? What would the electorate think of a bishop excommunicating a President?

6. Can #5 be addressed positively (i.e. that there is a role for the church) without reinstituting Christendom?

7. Finally, a question asked by one of our members: what can Mvume Dandala do that Rev. Frank Chikane (who was both a pentecostal pastor and Director-General of Thabo Mbeki’s office) could not?

It’s possible to read Dandala’s decision as a form of kenosis, and perhaps even of embracing a form of suffering. And I do think his soul is in danger, given the recent cut-throat practices of South African parliamentarians. But Christians are sometimes called to dangerous and risky service. St. Augustine said that a Christian should not seek office, but neither should he [or she] refuse to serve when called upon. I remain unwilling to make a conclusion—which is probably just as well. But I do commit to keeping the former Rev. Mvume Dandala in my prayers.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

“Like Grass Through Cement”

There’s something uniquely South African about the aesthetic of many important public sites here, in which the materials of the old are used to construct the new. Take the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg (right), which our group visited last Friday. When the Justices discussed the site for the new Court in the mid-1990s, they decided on the old Braamfontein jail, in which the notorious Number Four detention centre stood as a scar on the landscape. In this disciplinary space, both heroic protesters—including Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Luthuli, and Nelson Mandela—and more conventional lawbreakers were incarcerated between 1902 and 1983.

The Court combines African traditional themes with the relics of past suffering. The foyer (below left) contains a large wall built from bricks of the old prison—including a concrete slab displaying the graffiti of the past and one of the old cell doors. Some 150,000 bricks from the old prison were used in building the court. But the foyer also has seats made of tree trunks, pointing to the African tradition of mediating disputes while sitting on stumps under a tree. In fact, the logo of the Court is an umbrella tree, under which can be seen figures representing the tradition of open and transparent judgement. This juxtaposition of ancient, old, and new confronts visitors to the Court from the outset.

The courtroom where hearings take place and judgments are announced is decorated with cowhide, representing the significance of cattle in African traditional society. A large South African flag made of thousands of tiny beads woven together stands to the right of the Justices’ seats. To the left is a window, about half a metre high, but extending for the length of the wall. The Justices can see only feet through that window, with no idea of race, class, or gender—an unusual invocation, I think, of John Rawls’ “veil of neutrality.” The court is open to all, and our group was greatly privileged to hear Deputy Justice Dikgang Mosenke (himself a former political prisoner who had spoken to us earlier in the day) deliver a judgement on a case reminding the Executive (the President) of its obligations to protect South Africans made vulnerable by the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy.

But the most striking thing about the Court is the way it represents the pain, embodies the hopes, and celebrates the gifts of South Africans. Indeed, the space is part memorial, part judiciary, and part art gallery. Walking down the main hallway one sees lined along the walls diverse representations of South Africa’s creativity, a wonderful collection of iconic pieces assembled by Justice Albe Sachs, uniting themes of human rights and cultural diversity.
Perhaps the most moving of these is “The man who sang and the woman who kept silent”, by Judith Mason. Inspired by testimony from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Mason’s tryptich is centred by a complete dress made of blue plastic bags (right). It recalls an anti-Apartheid activist who was captured, stripped naked, tortured, and then marched out to a field to be executed. As she walked, she picked up a discarded shopping back and used it to cover her genitals. When she knelt over her grave, according to the testimony of her executioner, she asked to be permitted to sing “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” (a hymn entitled “God Bless Africa”—the anthem of the liberation movements). She was shot in the back of the head and buried. When the Commission recovered her remains, the plastic bag was still wrapped around her pelvis.

Mason wrote:
“Sister, a plastic bag may not be the whole armour of God, but you were wrestling with flesh and blood, and against powers, against the rulers of darkness, against spiritual wickedness in sordid places. Your weapons were your silence and a piece of rubbish. Finding that bag and wearing it until you were disinterred is such a frugal, common-sensical, house-wifely thing to do, an ordinary act… At some level you shamed your capturers, and they did not compound their abuse of you by stripping you a second time. Yet they killed you. We only know your story because a sniggering man remembered how brave you were. Memorials to your courage are everywhere; they blow about in the streets and drift on the tide and cling to thorn-bushes. This dress is made from some of them. Hamba kahle. Umkhonto.”

+ + + + +

The same aesthetic is visible in the many “informal settlements” that dot the South African landscape—corrogated metal and cardboard shacks assembled on the outskirts and backyards of townships (left). Here, the very poor take the things cast off by the well-heeled, and use those materials to build dwellings. Old sheets of advertising, found behind some corporate warehouse, become colourful wallpaper. Bits of wire and discarded Coke cans are twisted into intricate sculptures which can be found for sale at the side of South Africa’s highways. While the “briocoleur” is fashionable intellectually in the West (or at least was), bricolage is alive and well here in the South. Indeed, bricolage here is a matter of survival.

Both the Constitutional Court and the random shacks remind me of a song by Bruce Cockburn. Written as an imaginative recollection of an uprising in Pinochet’s Chile in the mid-1980s, Cockburn juxtaposes imagery of “day flowering out of the night”, “shots ringing through smoke and gas”, and the bells of “first mass”.

Santiago Sunrise
See them marching home
See them rising like grass through cement
In the Santiago dawn

+ + + + +

“Like grass through cement”: that’s how the kingdom of God irrupts into the world. Even the Constitution itself—perhaps the most progressive in the world—is a matter of contestation, interpretation, and bricolage. While Romand Coles (citing Sheldon Wolen) argues that constitutions represent the "end" of the democratic struggle (Coles and Hauerwas: 139), the ossification of liberation, one can see the new continually irrupting through South Africa’s, “like grass through cement.” Anthropologists John and Jean Comaroff remind us that while South African has a Constitution instantiating the European ideal of the bounded, bureaucratic nation-state, it is situated within a contest of alternative sovereignties (traditional societies, chiefdoms, religious and other loyalties) which they identify as a “counter-politics” of the “Kingdom of Culture” (Comaroff and Comaroff:446). This is not simply between “citizens” and “subjects”, but within political persons who experience themselves as fractured between multiple sources for the construction of identity (447). The resolution of this tension is not happening in theory, but in the pragmatics of legal negotiation. Thus contextualized, the Court and the Constitution exist alongside “self-defined aggregates of persons [who] seek to open up possibilities for themselves, in pursuit of their passions, principles, ideals, interests.” These name ”a politics of everyday life” (448) where “the modernist sense of ideology gives way to ID-ology, the quest for a collective good, and sometimes goods, sanctioned by, and in the name of, a shared identity.” (447) Ideas of human rights—carefully defined within the Constitution but contested and renegotiated in everyday life become part of the symbolic “bricolage” making up the new South African identity. I think this is a sign of fragile, but real, hope.

+ + + + +

There’s a theological lesson here. After all, as Charles Mathewes reminds us, we live "during the world"—that time from the ascension of Christ to his second coming. The fact that South Africa decided not to start anew (contrast Washington D.C., which was built on an eradication, a levelling of space into which romanticized symbols of ancient Rome were imported) but using and reusing the material and symbolic resources of the old reminds us that we still live in media res. And "during the world", history is a site of contestation, deconstruction, and reconstruction. Yet we also see signs of a longing for a true novum, a true “new heavens and new earth”, in which our relations are governed by love, and our lives stretch forth to the God who fills all things. As long as South Africa remains in media res, there is hope.

References

Cockburn, Bruce. World of Wonders. True North Records TN-66, 1986.

Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff. “Reflections on Liberalism, Policulturalism, and ID-Ology: Citizenship and Difference in South Africa.” Social Identities 9.4 (2003): 445–73.

Coles, Romand, and Stanley Hauerwas. Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary. Theopolitical Visions. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2007.

Mathewes, Charles T. A Theology of Public Life. Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge UP, 2007.

http://concourt.artvault.co.za/overview.php

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Enfolded in a Warm Blanket of Singing and Dancing

As we approached the township of Tembisa, the change in scenary was jarring. We’d passed the sprawling developments on the outskirts of Johannesburg, illustrated with bulletin boards praising progress and promising a glowing future life (the streets of “Egoli” paved with gold). But there was not much of that visible here. The same matchbox houses we saw in Soweto, with the occasional more luxurious dwelling, alongside shacks of corrugated metal built from the cast-offs of the elite.

Like other South African townships, Tembisa was built for Africans who had been “removed” from white areas in and around Johannesburg. Established as a township in 1957, Tembisa (from a Zulu word meaning “promise”) was one of the flashpoints of anti-apartheid “unrest” at the height of state repression. Also as in other townships, criminal gangs such as the notorious “Toasters” and “Section 12”, established themselves. But Tembisa is also a bustling area which as many as one million South Africans call home. Most of them are formally unemployed, though the “informal” sector is alive and well.

We pulled up beside the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (left), a smallish church building at a busy intersection (the noise of cars frantically hooting would form the counterpoint for our worship). The EPC is a small denomination, with historic ties to the Swiss missionaries that evangelized and educated Africans from the mid-nineteenth century. The pastor, Rev. Wilson Rambau, greeted us warmly outside. As we filed into the church, we found a simple sanctuary, with benches for pews, a communion table, and a pulpit. There was neither piano nor organ. A plaque behind the communion table bore greetings from the mayor of Hartford, Connecticut. We would later learn its significance.

We took our place in the choir seats and watched the congregation enter a few at a time. The church was not full during the service, though as Tinyiko Maluleke explained to us there had been a service the day before and consequently some would have stayed home.

The service began with a greeting—and a special welcome to our group. The first hymn was announced, and members paged through worn, dog-eared hymnals and service books. There were not enough for our group, and the service was in Tsonga and Shangaan (two of South Africa’s eleven official languages). But that didn’t seem matter. Strangely I found myself able to follow along quite well with the spirit of the worship.

And what spirit (or Spirit) there was! As the congregation raised their voices in that characteristic polyphonic, four part harmony, I felt myself enfolded as if wrapped in a warm blanket. There was a welcome familiarity. I was back in Africa, and Africa was holding out her arms. Soon the announcement of hymns became redundant, and people sang spontaneously—or so it seemed—in that wonderful African “call and response” way. Choir after choir got up to sing, and we soon learned that there was no need for accompaniment.

And then it was our turn. We’d rehearsed Amazing Grace the night before, and delivered a quite competent rendition, I thought, which was received appreciatively. The pastor called Bob Evans forward, who gave greetings on our behalf and explained the purpose of our visit to South Africa. He called on Rev. Christopher Byaruhanga, one of our members, to present our gift to the congregation—a beautiful batak cloth from his native Uganda. The response of the church leadership was deeply moving. An elder named Victor Nesangane came forward and promised that the church would take care of the cloth, and that if we returned in ten years time we would still find it in good condition. The significance of this should not be underestimated, given the xenophobia that had enveloped South Africa just a year ago. The fact that something from the other side of the Limpopo would have a permanent dwelling place amongst this people is deeply important.

But it was the response of the congregation that took us aback. They broke into song, left their seats, and danced up the aisle of the church toward the front. We found ourselves dancing too—and soon we joined the congregation circling the front of the church. It was quite a sight to see—all of us academics shaking our limbs and moving our feet in joy and praise!

Everything else followed in rapid succession. A sermon, prayers, and benediction. The service ended with the offering—people coming forward, dancing, as they placed their tithes in the baskets on the communion table. It was announced that a “small finger lunch” had been prepared for us—something neither we nor the sisters at the retreat house back in Johannesburg had known about. We could not, however, refuse. As it turned out, the “finger lunch” included massive bowls of potato, carrot, and bean salads, beets, and chicken pieces.

Actually, we should not have been surprised. For we’ve found nothing but generosity among the poor here. But this is an especially generous congregation. Let me return to that plaque behind the communion table. On one of his first visits to the EPC in Tembisa, members of the congregation expressed surprise to Bob that there were poor people in America. Bob, who is based in Connecticut, spoke to them about Hartford, the second poorest city in the U.S. The congregation immediately responded by taking a special collection “for the homeless of Hartford”. The grand sum of $35.00 was raised. Later, theological ethicist Donald Shriver would write, “I discovered the meaning of stewardship and commitment in Tembisa.”

We did too, that day. We learned a generosity not seen in the bureaucratic spaces of Parliament, nor the polished halls of the Constitutional Court. It was among God’s people, gathered in the name of Jesus, that we found—and I apologize for sounding romanticistic—a true wealth, the streets paved with gold anticipating the communion of the New Jerusalem. That city, unlike Egoli, has neither temples nor townships. For there, all gather to share the wealth of Yahweh.

That is the true "promise" of Tembisa.

Reference

Shriver Jr., D.W. 1992. “A night in Tembisa.” Christian Century 109, no. 18: 535. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed June 11, 2009).




Monday, June 08, 2009

Update on Central Methodist

The following evening (after our visit), as the same throng was moving toward the church, a waste management truck under contract to the City of Johannesburg drove past them and sprayed them with sewer water. The case is under investigation.

From “Fashionable Church” to “Den of Iniquity”

The place resembled a train station. People were seated on rows of wooden benches, mounds of blankets, with heaps of clothes and bags next to them. Some blankets, spread on the floor, were makeshift beds, taking up the interior of the church. Inside the chapel, more people were lying on the floor. Even the pulpit was occupied. Several women prepared to go to sleep under the pulpit.

So begins an account of the “once fashionable Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg. Our group visited this “den of iniquity” (as the article went on to call it) on June 4, and were greatly privileged to be addressed by Bishop Paul Verryn, whose commitment to the gospel has transformed this church from respectibility to notoriety, giving refuge to 3,200 mostly Zimbabweans fleeing the regime of Robert Mugabe. In so doing, he has brought the principalities and powers to bear on this historic church in Johannesburg’s Central Business District.


As our group entered the building, we immediately realized this was no ordinary church.
Informal traders lined the paths leading to the entrance, while inside the cries of infants could be heard throughout. The awning that sheltered the windows was covered in drying laundry, and as we sat in the sanctuary the sight of clothes flapping in the breeze silhouetted against the stained glass conveying stories from the life of Jesus. No ordinary church indeed. Central Methodist is probably the only church in the world that has resident representatives of Medicines Sans Frontiers. And it’s also probably the only church in the world where every step one takes—in corridors, doorways, and Sunday School rooms—represented space for a bed. Anyway, we waited… and waited for Verryn, who finally emerged breathlessly from his office. This time there had “only been ten people” waiting for him on his arrival at the church. He asked that space be cleared for us in the chapel, and we sat in rapt attention as he spoke (pic on right).

I knew Verryn only by reputation, though I’d had strong memories of his testimony before the TRC in the “Mandela United Football Club” hearings back in 1997. There he spoke tearfully of his inability to protect 13-year-old Stompie Sepei—in whose murder Winnie Mandela was implicated. Verryn had been pastor to the Mandelas in Soweto at a time when whites were as forbidden to live in that sprawling black township as blacks were from living in white Johannesburg. His credentials as an anti-apartheid icon were even then incontestable, officiating as he had at the funerals of activists during his first charge in the highly politicized Eastern Cape, and then as a pastor in the politicized hotbed of Soweto during the height of the liberation struggle. The poor have never been “pictures” to Verryn. He has lived and worked in their midst for his entire ministry. Opening the doors of Central Methodist to the poor is an action in basic continuity with his life story.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. With thousands sleeping in such close promixity, and fearing anxiously for their lives outside the church, it’s not surprising to hear that “every conceivable social problem happens in this building.” Indeed, the residents of Central Methodist represent a microcosm of humanity-in-exile. Rules have been formulated in order to faciliate peaceable living together: no drinking (two alcohol-related murders have occurred), smoking, fighting, stealing, and no sex outside of marriage. These don’t represent an arbitrary moral code, but rather the minimal conditions under which conflict and violence can be curbed. Community leaders, who also addressed our group, are appointed to ensure these rules are followed. A strict curfew is observed, after which the church doors are closed and a worship meeting takes place.

But this is no ordinary worship meeting in such an extraordinary church. It’s a time for gathering and organizing. Announcements concerning employment opportunities are made (the church functions as an informal job agency) and other matters concerning the life of the community are addressed. Once a week, this meeting takes the form of a service of healing. The most recent of these featured an explosion of energy as dancers dramatizing the pain of the Aids pandemic encircled the communion table—as Verryn said, the exact place where Aids should be addressed. Part of the healing of this ecumenical, “African orthodox” church, according to a community leader named Ambrose is the social networking in which displaced people are incorporated into a body social.

Recalling his experience during the years of apartheid, Verryn confesses to a mistrust of police. And indeed this has been borne out—not only in the daily harrassment and arbitrary arrest of migrants (legal or not), but in police raids on the church itself. One particularly brutal event took place in January, 2008. Some 1,500 refugees were arrested in a raid on the church. The Bishop himself was dragged backwards down the stairs as police searched for weapons and contraband, finding none. “In searching for criminals,” he said, “they became criminals.” And this was publically demonstrated. For Verryn had already alerted the world media, and the events were broadcast all over the world the next day, causing serious embarrassment to the state. Ambrose said that the community tries to work with the police, though time after time the police will be called on to arrest troublemakers who disrupt the life of the community, only to find them being released and returned to make more mischief. Indeed it seems that there are agents provocateurs that have infiltrated the community. This calls for constant vigilance, but also names the vulnerability of life at Central Methodist.

But it’s not only the police and other authorities that Verryn indicts. It’s the South African nation, of which 80 percent claim to be Christians. If this seems harsh, one must remember that four months after the January raids, and in spite of his warnings, xenophobic violence was spreading across the country, leaving 100 dead in its wake, and countless thousands homeless and unemployed. According to the recent report of the South African Migration Project, “South Africa exhibits its levels of intolerance and hostility to outsiders unlike virtually anything seen in other parts of the world.” Despite holding arguably the most progressive constitution in the world, and representing an international icon of peaceful transition and racial reconciliation, “with the exception of treatment for Aids, at least two-thirds of South Africans still feel that irregular migrants to the country should be extended no rights or protections.” Ironically, while the world was marvelling at South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, xenophobic attitudes were hardening, and when these attitudes turned into action, “xenophobic thugs discovered they could act with virtual impunity.” In my experience, South Africans had always lived with a strong sense of exceptionalism (“are you going to see Africa while you’re here?” was a question sometimes asked of me when I lived in Cape Town). “Nation-building”, it seems, had only exacerbated the sense of “us” against “them”, spreading that exceptionalism across racial divides. On the basis of its research, the report concludes damningly: “xenophobia and hostility to (particularly) Africans is not the preserve of a lunatic fringe but represents the convictions of the majority of citizens. When one journalist wrote recently that ‘we are all guilty’, he was speaking truth to power.”

Central Methodist also speaks truth to power. Its actions of radical hospitality and countercultural welcome earn the ire of police, media, and the public. Its neighbours are not happy. This doesn’t phase Verryn, who notes that the church should discriminate against the well-off, and consequently “ought always to be arguing with lawyers.” Neither do the numerous death threats he receives daunt him. Verryn is simply engaged in performing the gospel story, remapping and remaking space to welcome and include vulnerable outsiders. A “round peg” no longer “fitting into” the “square hole” role given it by society, the church has become radically visible—and vulnerable. But this only reminds us of what the church is called, in every locality, to be.

South African theologian Neville Richardson, reflecting on the example of Central Methodist Church, invokes two important theologians: Stanley Hauerwas and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. From Hauerwas: “The kingdom of love initiated by Jesus is also the kingdom of love which is most clearly embodied in the Christian obligation to be hospitable. We are a community on principle ready to share our meal with the stranger. Moreover we must be a people who have hospitable selves—we must be ready to be stretched by what we know not.” Bonhoeffer might ”glimpse [in this “religionless Christianity”] an almost unrecognizable church, a church that exists not only for itself, but for others, a witness to Christ the man for others, the crucified Christ—Christ existing as community today.”

As we filed out of Central Methodist Church, the sun had gone down, and we were meeting throngs of people moving toward the church. Their day’s work (or day’s looking for work) done, they were preparing to settle in for the long night. But in that night, the light of Jesus Christ was shining. And they were returning, in the best—temporary—sense of the word, home.

Works Cited

Hauerwas, Stanley. The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Social Ethics. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1983.
“Place of Worship Now Den of Iniquity.” The Star (Johannesburg) 2006, June 20 2006: 15.
Richardson, Neville. “Sanctorum Communio in a Time of Reconstruction? Theological Pointers for the Church in South Africa.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 127 (Mar 2007): 96–115.
South African Migration Project. The Perfect Storm: The Realities of Xenophobia in Contemporary South Africa. Res. rept. Series ed Jonathan Crush. Migration Policy Series no. 50. Cape Town; Kingston: IDASA; Southern African Research Centre, Queens University, 2008.

Sunday, June 07, 2009

Public Theology: The South African Experience

Some of you may know that I won the lottery a few months back--along with 18 or so others (see pic below for a snapshop of our first meeting) from across Africa and North America--with an all-expenses paid trip to South Africa to study Public Theology. The seminar is sponsored by the Nagel Centre at Calvin College, and facilitated by Bob and Alice Evans of the Plowshares Institute. The idea is to bring scholars together to learn from South Africa's experiments with connecting Christian faith to nation-building and democratic transformation.

The next few blogs reflect on my experience with the team, and on the new, NEW South Africa (post-Mbeki). Most readers of my blog will know that I lived in South Africa for most of the 1990s, completing my doctoral studies under John de Gruchy at the University of Cape Town. Our travels will begin in Johannesburg and end in the Cape, at Volmoed, a retreat centre where de Gruchy is currently theologian-in-residence.

Our group will also be facilitated by Tinyiko Maluleke, one of the most exciting of the new generation of South African black theologians. We will visit churches, the Constitutional Court, memorial sites, NGOs, and other places. I'm excited about what we'll learn and discuss--but also cautious as there's always the temptation to turn the church, and theology, into a servant of a particular political/ideological agenda. And even with the best intentions, there's also the temptation to think that the Kingdom of God "is within our grasp, as long as we have hands to clasp" (with apologies to Dr. Seuss). No: the kingdom is always coming, and always gift.

Stay tuned for more!