This will be my last formal column for the year. As you read this, South Africa is entering the Christmas season. For millions of South Africans, and countless others across the world, this is a time of profound spiritual reflection. For others, it is a pleasant annual cultural interlude. For others still, it may be an interesting expression of a culture not of one’s own. And then for yet others, it may be a pointless, archaic and even foolish celebration of mythology.
Over the last two weeks, a major theme on the Daily Friend has been religion, and its impact on society. The hundreds of comments that this debate has elicited – very welcome indeed, and just what we at this platform seek to encourage – demonstrate just how important an issue it is.
I decided to devote my column to this issue. This is not in the main a response to anything that has been said so far, but to some of the thoughts the exchanges of ideas have prompted in me.
In part, this is personal. I am a Christian – not by any stretch of any imagination a good one, but I was raised in a conventionally observant Anglican household, and converted to Catholicism as an adult. A number of relatives have had vocations in the Church. My religious views, and my interest in this matter, are a product of both my personal background and my personal choice.
It is also intellectual. Religion is deeply interwoven with the human experience. It helps – or claims to help – orient people’s lives. Religious organisations are a key part of the civil society architecture in many if not most countries, even those in which active religiosity is in decline. It is a social force as well as a spiritual one.
What does religion mean for people, for politics and for the world? This is an untidy business, full of ifs, ands and buts. But, for me at any rate, it speaks to something very valuable – both the personal and the intellectual. Let me try and set it out.
Belief
I believe. I can’t put it any better than that. My faith takes as its starting point that I believe there is a God. I cannot prove it rationally – theistic beliefs are fundamentally ‘arational’. Ultimately, one settles on a conclusion that God exists or does not, and my understanding of this is expressed in the Christian faith. So for me, Jesus Christ is the messiah and Saviour. No doubt my socialisation plays a role, but I am also comfortable to say that I have experienced it. This provides no proof of a reality that anyone besides myself (and perhaps fellow believers) would accept, and I neither ask nor expect anyone else to validate my beliefs or to share them.
Many people do not, and these include some whom I like and admire. Over the past few years, my beliefs have been called foolish, stupid, and incomprehensible, as have I for holding them. I would be living a very lonely and isolated life if I had chosen to take offence. No one has a right to have one’s opinions respected, respect being something that one needs to earn, and an honour that others extend. But I am pleased that some of my detractors have stuck around to understand why I believe what, and as, I do.
That religious claims often defy logic is true, and – as someone whose work is based upon making rational arguments – this is a contradiction that I wrestle with. But I can live with it. In response, I’m quite attracted to the words of the Doc in Bryce Courtenay’s novel The Power of One: ‘In this world are very few things made from logic alone. It is illogical for man to be too logical.’
I’ve found my faith to have been an overwhelming positive in my life. It has given me a moral compass and an ethical orientation. I leave the evaluation of how well I live up to this to others.
Morality and ethics are of course possible without religion to underwrite them. I actually once tried to abandon faith (can I claim to be a lapsed atheist?). At the time I felt that it would free me from a lot of pointless anti-intellectual and emotional baggage. I imagine many atheists can identify. It didn’t work for me. That’s where the belief is decisive. Try as I might, I could not shake the notion that God was there, a reality and presence in the world and in my life. As much as atheism might arise from the intellect, from the lack of empirical evidence for the existence of the Divine, for me it went the other way. I couldn’t be an atheist when I felt it proceeded from a faulty premise. Paradoxical, I suppose, and perverse from certain perspectives, but there it is.
I don’t know if it has made my life any easier than it would otherwise have been. My sense is that it has not, although maybe that is the nature of trying to live according to any moral code. It has provided me with a sense of purpose, if not always understanding. A sense of joy, but not always of happiness. This is the nature of things. There is no guarantee in Scripture or in Christian tradition as I understand it that happiness is part of its offering. My late mother cautioned in her ebullient way against trying to ‘get God in a bottle’. To discern the purposes of the Divine is an ongoing pilgrimage. I can accept that.
For better or worse
If religion is a part of human experience, is it a positive or malign one? Perhaps no one has put this into words quite like the iconoclastic writer, the late Christopher Hitchens, whose book on the matter was entitled God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
From this perspective, religion – and specifically Christianity (there seem often to be certain political sensitivities around doing so in respect of other faiths, although Hitchens for one was at least consistent in loathing all religion equally) – is implicated in almost every abuse imaginable, from war, conquest, and oppression to the marginalisation of women, legitimation of slavery and the slave trade and burning people at the stake. And so on.
In South Africa, there was the particular case of the Christian justification for apartheid. (Personally, I was only ever subjected to the Sons of Ham treatise once and that was by a schoolmate, rather than a clergyman or teacher.) This was no small thing. In the late 1980s, I often wondered why people of deep religious conviction who could take a passionate stand on the supposedly malevolent influence of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or were convinced that the European Economic Community would spawn the Antichrist and usher in the End of Days, could be indifferent to the monstrous injustices of South African state policy.
Conversely, though, I would venture that the historical record of religion reflects a great deal to its credit. In the Christian world, the medieval church preserved much classical learning, painstakingly transcribing and illuminating texts. It also established among the first – for Europe at any rate – institutions of higher learning. It was an important patron of art and architecture. This is a contribution that Christian institutions continue to make. And scripture has provided plot lines and archetypes that are part of our artistic and cultural canon. I find the great Biblical classics of cinema – The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, The Greatest Story Ever Told, King of Kings – to be artistic and cultural landmarks of their art form. They have aged well and are wonderful Christmastime viewing.
It is true that Christianity (in its institutional form) and Christians have been complicit in some awful things. Yet it is also true that the same set of beliefs have been used to challenge them. If, for example, the Bible largely assumes the existence of slavery and does not unambiguously condemn it, it also affirms the dignity and value of slaves in the eyes of God. Different interpretations or traditions might flow from this, and in such contexts as the United States before its Civil War, they certainly did.
Religious impulses played a major role in the campaign against both the slave trade and the institution itself. In the first few centuries of the faith, Christian authorities imposed sporadic and unsystematic restrictions on particular forms and aspects of slavery – limits to slaveholding in a given territory, or the sale of Christians to non-Christians, for example. These initial steps typically did not strike at the concept of slavery itself, but presaged measures that did so. The 13th century German legal text, the Sachsenspiegel, condemned slavery as a violation of the notion that humans were made in God’s image. During the early colonisation of the Americas, some Christian clergy raised objections to the treatment (and enslavement) of the aboriginal inhabitants, of which the best known example is A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies by the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas. (Initially, Las Casas promoted the enslavement of Africans to remove the burden from Amerindians, although he later repented of this).
Much of the activism in Europe and the United States that ultimately led to the abolition of slavery took on a distinctly religious flavour too. Sometimes this involved sentiments that would be seen as highly conservative (if not reactionary) today. William Wilberforce, for example, once wrote: ‘God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners.’
Probably the first formal statement in North America on the inherent equality of people and therefore the impermissibility of slavery was authored by a group of Quakers in 1688. This was based on the Biblical injunction, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ This tradition continued to inform the anti-slavery movement as the issue that primed the United States for war.
A tract written by the abolitionist clergyman Charles Beecher in 1855 put it in these words: ‘On every page of the Bible a glorious God of infinite order, purity, justice, benevolence, meekness, and grace, stands revealed against a system of disorder, lust, injustice, selfishness, despotism, and irreligion. Does, then, the Bible uphold Slavery? Nay, verily, it must ever be to that system a consuming fire. Either the system must be consumed, or the fire quenched. Either Slavery or the Bible must be put down.’
One may dispute the empirical truth of Beecher’s words on the content of every page of Scripture, but not, I think, their passionate commitment to the cause of freedom and their fundamental Christian moorings.
Beliefs with universal claims – Christianity in this case – are unreliable instruments for oppression. Where it was used to justify slavery, as in the United States, Christianity was equally used by slavery’s opponents. And it was appropriated by slaves and their descendants too. It’s no surprise that the US Civil Rights movement relied heavily on the resilience of black churches, or that in South Africa, some of the earliest critiques of racism were voiced from churches and their representatives.
Made in the image of God. I’m glad of that.
Dividing lines
Religion creates divisions. This is a legitimate matter of concern that has been voiced with growing stridency in recent decades. The September 11 attacks on the United States threw this into particularly stark relief. Al Qaeda explicitly claimed to represent a politicised Islam that was at war with the non-believers. It welcomed death, while their opponents craved life. How does one respond to that? Would the world not be more peaceful and harmonious if religion and its influences could be excised?
Critics of religion can point justifiably to the role it has played in sparking or aggravating conflicts. The default example is the Crusades (I tend to bristle when someone mentions these, since invariably the speaker knows nothing about them). The Protestant Reformation was followed by two hundred years of conflict which history remembers as the Wars of Religion – although in fairness, religious quarrels were but one factor among many. There have been any number of other conflicts where religion has contributed to identity and allegiance, as in Northern Ireland in the late 20th Century, or the Balkans as Yugoslavia collapsed. And in one 2017 analysis of thirteen conflicts in Africa, all but three were held to have some religious dimension.
There are no easy answers to this. The sense that one is fulfilling a divinely sanctioned mission can be a powerful motivator to take up the sword, and a powerful reason to refuse to compromise.
But that being said, religious bodies have been prominent in seeking an end to conflicts in such places as Angola, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan. ‘Blessed be the peacemakers’, as Scripture says. Religious institutions, it must not be forgotten, are often the only significant non-governmental presences, and the only trusted indigenous ones, in badly damaged societies. They have also been important voices pressing for democratisation and for the respect of human rights, As the South Africa theologian Professor John de Gruchy has argued: ‘In much of sub-Saharan Africa, the principles of unity, democracy and self-government were developed in the church long before they were even dreamed of in the state.’
South Africa tells an interesting story. David Welsh in his magisterial The Rise and Fall of Apartheid posed the question as to whether South Africa’s religious elites had restrained the worst possibilities of violence (through preaching love and reconciliation), or whether they had contributed to it (through the certainty that theirs was a sanctified cause). He offers no clear answer, and neither can I.
However, when the stalemate of the 1980s closed in and negotiations started, the shared Christian faith of most of the broad population (imperfect though it certainly was) was a very rare unifying factor at a time when South Africa had a desperate need of unity. I well remember reading an interview with Albertina Sisulu in which she declared that whatever had gone before, ‘we are Christians’ and there would be no ethic of revenge. I have frequently encountered this sentiment from others – ordinary, decent people who lived through the tribulations of the time and chose the path of love and redemption as they went into the future. ‘It made sense to us,’ said one gentleman who grew up in Johannesburg’s townships of the 1970s, and was no stranger to racist abuse.
I wonder how things might have progressed had this not been the case. It is not a comforting thought.
Christianity and liberalism
In 2000, I had the good fortune to attend a two-week seminar at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation’s academy in Germany. An eclectic mix of young people (remember when I could say that!), mostly from newly emergent democracies discussed and argued matters of significance to us as liberals. At one point a young man from Russia declared that it was impossible to be a liberal and a Christian. The latter simply held too many outmoded and prejudiced ideas, and needed to be replaced with a new secular consciousness.
It’s an argument that I hear from time to time. I disagree.
As a Christian, I do not equate my faith with any secular ideology. This is a mistake made by religious people of all political persuasions. But it is possible to measure compatibility between religious and political views.
The liberal outlook is not hostile to Christianity. Indeed, I would argue that the two have been connected since the former’s outset. Historian Dr Joseph Loconte argues that the liberal project proceeded as a response to the abuses of established Christendom at the time. Liberalism was intended to create a more just society based on freedom and the exercise of conscience without which true, robust faith could not exist. John Locke wrote in A Letter Concerning Toleration: ‘If the Gospel and the apostles may be credited, no man can be a Christian without charity and without that faith which works, not by force, but by love.’
This was intrinsic to a key liberal demand, the separation of church and state. If conscience is a matter to be exercised by individuals, the state has no business dictating it – especially concerning one’s relationship with one’s deity.
Writing in the 1920s, Ludwig von Mises put this well: ‘Happiness and contentment do not depend on food, clothing, and shelter, but, above all, on what a man cherishes within himself. It is not from a disdain of spiritual goods that liberalism concerns itself exclusively with man’s material well-being, but from a conviction that what is highest and deepest in man cannot be touched by any outward regulation.’
I would add that liberalism’s emphasis on the primacy of the individual is entirely in line with the Christian conception that each person, as an individual, is a bearer of morality and is accountable to God for his or her choices. The concept, in other words, of free will. Indeed, the freedom to choose one’s moral path makes true morality possible. I’d further suggest that Christianity can benefit when it is challenged and questioned, and Christians are thus enjoined to reflect on and understand the complexities of the faith, and to live it accordingly.
The Institute of Race Relations itself stands partly in that Christian liberal tradition. Clergymen have been prominent among its supporters. In 1964, Archbishop Denis Hurley, a two-term president of the Institute, delivered the Alfred and Winifred Hoernlé lecture, aptly entitled Apartheid: a Crisis of the Christian Conscience. It is a wonderful meeting of the Christian and liberal worldviews, in the face of a deep political and moral crisis. It is worth quoting:
‘Apartheid is a challenge to every Christian worthy of the name to see the whole South African situation in the light of the law of love, to realise that the salvation in which we believe includes deliverance from everything that is mean and unworthy and restrictive, everything that unlawfully hinders the full flowering of a God-given capacity, its contribution to the human treasury and its enrichment of the universe.’
A possibility of redemption?
I came to the rudiments of my understanding of both politics and religion in the maelstrom of the 1980s. For many, it was a time of rigid moral certainty combined all too often with extremely poor moral thinking. For some, it was tempting to focus on the supernatural and esoteric side of faith, and avoid the pressing questions raised by the mounting crisis. For others, it was easy to be incensed by the injustices, misgovernance and violence of apartheid, and for that reason easy to be seduced by the poisoned chalices held by some of its opponents.
This has been a challenge that churches as institutions, and the faith that they ought to embody, have faced repeatedly. In the 20th century, some churches found common ground with fascist and nativist movements which seemed to have the vitality to confront the challenges of the time. Later, many would see in communist and national liberation movements kindred ideologues who would deal with societal injustices. Each group – to the extent that they held true to any of the tenets of their faith (not least the ‘law of love’) – would be betrayed.
For South Africa in the 1980s, the issue was what would follow the inevitable collapse of apartheid. The mainline Protestant churches, through the South African Council of Churches, went too far in committing themselves to the United Democratic Front and the African National Congress. The effective alignment with any political movement is a doubtful move for a religious body – especially in a country which aspired to being a democracy – but the ANC’s links with communism were a matter of grave concern.
Communism is intrinsically and irretrievably hostile to Christianity, and to religion in general. This is shown in its blood-soaked history – persecution of the church being a reasonably constant element of Communist rule – but also in its own worldview. Journalist Rupert Shortt, in his book Christianophobia, remarks perceptively that Communism is defined by a ‘denial of alternative sources of authority’. As a self-proclaimed ‘scientific’ worldview, it makes a claim to absolute truth.
Archbishop Hurley was a rare example of a prominent cleric who challenged it. Criticised for refusing to march beneath a South African Communist Party flag, he wrote: ‘The track record of Communism is almost 100 percent a tale of totalitarian suppression of social, political, economic and religious freedom… In regard to those who have made great sacrifices under the banner of Communism, I have no less admiration than your correspondents for their courage. I just regret that in their anger and frustration they adopted an ideology so destructive of freedom and human rights.’
Many of the churches failed to see this in the 1980s. Many, I believe, fail to see it now. The macro-agenda of the African National Congress, the National Democratic Revolution, seeks a sort of hegemony over society that should concern us all. Yet there remains a curious commitment to the ANC, a view of the party as a natural leader that may be appealed to, but not rejected.
Some months ago, in the wake of the Covid-19 procurement scandal, a video began circulating on social media. In it, Methodist bishop Gary Rivas quoted from the Book of Daniel to criticise President Cyril Ramaphosa’s response: ‘You have been measured, you have been weighed, and you have been found wanting.’
The scandal was a particular low point for South Africa, ethically and practically, embodying a remarkable degree of venality and callousness. Outrage and condemnation were warranted. Yet all Bishop Rivas could find it in himself to do was to plead with the President to lead, and to do those things that he been reluctant to do. South Africans, meanwhile, would in return pray for him, pay their taxes, and exercise probity themselves – whistleblowing on the corrupt and not paying bribes.
Accountability
Completely absent was any sense that free citizens of a constitutional democracy actually have considerable power to demand accountability. The election next year would be a prime opportunity. I see in this an echo of the words in Proverbs: ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish.’
In Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton has his protagonist contemplating the circumstances in which he found himself and his community: ‘Kumalo began to pray regularly in his church for the restoration of Ndotsheni. But he knew that was not enough. Somewhere down here on earth men must come together, think something, do something.’
Just so. It is a challenge to Christians to discern what must be done – morally and practically – and to act for meaningful, positive change; to believe, to have faith and to act, with regard to one’s duties to God and to one’s fellow human beings. This is to seek redemption in its most profound sense: not merely forgiveness or even atonement, but to embark on a new and rejuvenated way of being, to seek it both within ourselves and within the broader society.
I am inspired by the simple yet powerful words of Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural address. ‘With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.’
These are good words, redemptive words, for the Christmastime of such a challenging year, for they call to seek God’s guidance, while accepting earthly responsibilities.
May each of you be blessed.
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