Second Field Report from My South Africa Mission

Here is my second "field report" from this mission in the Orthodox Archdiocese of Johannesburg and Pretoria. My apologies to some of you who have seen parts of this before, but if you read on, there are new stories as well. Also, sorry for the delay-- i promised to send them out every month, but the pace is what it is here.

And this is perhaps a bit long, but i hope you'll find it interesting.

But if you don't get all the way through it, please read the next two paragraphs, and see the the bottom of this letter as well, beginning, "NOW OK. ABOUT MY FINANCES".

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At this very moment of writing, i have about $70 to my name. As it turns out, some of you aren't quite as regular with your contributions as I'd hoped. But I am sincerely hoping that those of you who have made pledges, and others as well, might be moved to contribute-- especially on an ongoing basis-- to my support here as the South Africa's only itinerant Orthodox teacher. This is Africa-- the money has to come from outside!

And please, please, please, I beg you-- help with the Uganda Fund. I am already having to let students go, and that means they will not graduate from high school. So *please* help!! I know this letter is late in coming but please try to make these missionary and humanitarian efforts the object of at least one of your collections during this Fast. What other charity can you give to in such a personal manner?

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ok now the news:

My computer was in the shop for almost four weeks, and the day after I got it back, the telephone exchange blew up (!), so getting online has been as difficult and expensive as ever. But hopefully i'll have better service in a few weeks, once they get the exchange building repaired.

It appears the seminary idea has been quietly dropped. There just wasn't enough interest-- to tell the truth, the previous class was not well organized, and three full years was too much to demand for a marginal program. So word got around and there were no applicants. The Archbishop wants me to go around now to parishes and develop teaching programs there. It's going slowly-- but actually, this is a lot closer to my sense of what we need to be doing in Africa-- for as far as seminaries go, the western, academic model, even if it were something we could pull off with our limited personnel and the qualifications of our students, is just not the right approach for missions to what are still mostly villages and ghettos. We need trained priests, but we don't need academics. I'm sure it would be more effective to set up a series of short programs that do demand commitment, but not 3 years' residence. Well, it's not going to happen overnight, but that's the direction we can now be thinking.

One foundation is liturgy. Even the Greeks here aren't used to having daily services or even saturday vespers, although the bishop has asked that the parishes start doing this. So I figure, let's start right here in Yeoville (actually, everybody here says it and spells it "Youville", which i kinda like!), at the chapel of our seminary, which also serves as a parish. So with the blessing of Fr Athanasios, I am trying to ensure that we have vespers every day, at least whenever I'm here, even when he's not and i'm alone. I want to encourage the faithful in this area to come-- but that means we have to have the services for them to come to! But up till now, the idea of "Orthodox worship" that people have is not much more than a half-hour reader's service on sunday morning, so it's all uphill from here. Nonetheless, we're trying, and once in a while, one or two people come-- last friday, we even sang the Akathist in English and French! I'm also trying to stay here on Sundays, though i sometimes have to travel; when I'm here, we celebrate a more or less complete Matins (but we don't always have a priest to serve the liturgy).

Meanwhile I read in the newspaper that the city council is thinking of designating Youville as a place of legalized prostitution. (I'd been wondering why that hotel down the street has all those red lights.) Perhaps we can do something to counter the trend.

Apart from the services, as I mentioned, I teach a class in Brixton now on Wednesday evening, and two classes in Centurion (an hour away) on Thursday afternoon and evening. I'm also working with priests in the immediate area to come up with a schedule for a combined class at one of the nearby parishes on a weekly basis as well. Things are going slowly, as I said. A lot of people say they want to know more about their faith, but when it comes down to it, they're not used to many "extracurricular activities" in church. So... well, there are scheduling conflicts... and so forth.

So I've just started the classes, and so it's too early to tell much about how well they're going, but here's a picture of our first evening in Centurion. It was on the patio of a hotel owned by a local Greek guy:

There were only about 6 people there, but several phoned and said they hadn't heard in time and do plan to come next time. Anyway the group was enthusiastic and engaged, and wanted me to split the class in two so they could come more easily. Which sounds great, but then the second session(s) (this week) was canceled "due to rain", so let's see how this goes.

Sorry i don't have more pictures this time, by the way-- i keep forgetting my camera!

I feel that we need to take a very informal approach at first, to get the questions on the table and to get a sense of where people are at. But beyond that, it looks like we'll be working with Genesis to start out with, which is fitting for Lent. Anyway, some people here are fairly well educated, but none seem to know much at all about their faith.

In particular, talking about the kingdom of God and life after death, I've discovered that people are astonished at the idea that Christ will return to judge and to rule. Aren't we all just "going to heaven"? What's this about a resurrection and a second coming?? This is a little surprising, in view of the fact that we say every day, "and he will come again in glory to judge the heavens and the earth"-- but of course, so much depends on having the whole story in view, and absolutely nobody has!

I'll be in Mamelodi this coming sunday the 28th of Feb for a kind of glorified Readers' Service and training session-- they don't have a priest in Mamelodi, but the Archbishop has recently ordained some new readers in the diocese, so Deacon Steven has organized for us to meet there (it's a bit of a drive), to conduct the reader's service "in full", and to critique each other in the interests of developing a stronger culture of reader's services, which are necessary everywhere in mission parishes in Africa because of a shortage of priests. There are actually only a few non-Greek (mission) parishes in this Archdiocese, so i'm very interested in going.

During the week, I spend a lot of time talking with various Congolese refugees in the Youville area, beginning with two Congolese guys who have become friends of mine. It really seems i ought to learn French (i can already read it) before i work on isiZulu or seSotho, because in fact I've hardly met any amaZulu or baSotho people here at all-- but I am meeting lots of Congolese all the time, and others. Do you remember in the 1960's a remarkable recording called "Missa Luba"?-- my friends are those people-- the baLuba. (I found the album on the internet and played it for them-- you should have seen the look of delight that came over their faces.) The war that has claimed more lives in the Congo over the past ten years than all of World War II-- and is not even reported in our American newspapers because we're too interested in Congolese uranium and gold, and in coltan for our cellphones-- has chased many, many refugees into this area. A lot of these guys are quite well educated, though you'll find them washing cars here. Two of my friends, for example, are sons of Congolese Orthdox priests-- one a lawyer; the other studied philosophy in the university, and both are chanters here at the Greek(!) parishes. Another was a successful businessman, and if i could get my hands on about $400, i could probably make a decent computer business with him. But we're all very poor here. Anyway, I didn't know it, but there actually is a fairly strong and vibrant Orthodox presence in Congo, because of missionary work being done by Mt Athos.

People come with all kinds of questions-- interestingly, often the same questions, even though they may not have spoken to each other ahead of time. For instance, it seems everyone in Youville was all hot and bothered last week about "666" and certain American and Nigerian television "prophets", and what do i think about that, etc. So, why this sudden universal interest in "666"? And why the interest in *certain* televangelists but not others? I have a sense that i'm part of a conversation that's mostly taking place in the next room, in French and tschiLuba, but a few people are sitting in the doorway listening to what i have to say and relaying it to the others.

I've prepared several flyers for teaching, which are now in circulation not only in the parishes that I've been going to, but also among my Congolese friends, even though they're in English, not French. The first one-- "What the Bible Really Says"-- is my attempt to give a very top-level overview of the whole story in the bible. The paper started as a response to a challenge on the NT Wright discussion list that I participate in (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wrightsaid) to express the message of the Bible in positive terms, rather than emphasizing human sin and guilt and unworthiness. People seem to like it; it was popular on the discussion list, and i've probably distributed close to 100 of them here in South Africa, including 30 copies that one of my friends asked for, for his Congolese friends. You can find a copy on my website, at http://jbburnett.com/theology/theol-bib-narr.html.

The second flyer-- "The Purpose of Christianity"-- might be useful as we discuss "life after death", or maybe with a couple of adjustments, it could be given to people at funerals. I'm still tweaking it though, so it's not on my website yet.

I'm also working on flyers about "666" and the name "Jehovah". And I need to do one on "creation and evolution".

These are all huge subjects, and I'd like to lay some foundations before getting to them, but like it or not, they are the gateway issues, and they're on everybody's mind. In America as well, no? The reason for this is, I think, that the "standard" answers don't make a lot of sense, so they've become sore spots, whichever side of the fence you might prefer to be on. So it's fine for us Orthodox to talk about the Three Persons and the One Nature of God (as if those were the first things to say when we arrive in a new village!), but what everyone really wants to know is, Did we evolve from the monkeys, what does "666" mean, when is the world going to end, and what happens when we die? Talk sense about those things, and you've bought yourself some street cred!

And I believe we can. Talk sense, I mean. The challenge, of course-- here, as everywhere else in the world-- within Orthodoxy and outside of it-- is that our ideas are sorta taken from the Bible and therefore seem "biblical", but they usually aren't related to any sense of what the Bible is actually saying or is about. And to tell the truth, people have little enthusiasm for the Bible itself-- much more fun to speculate on whacky "prophecies". (A greek girl in one of my classes told me she's firmly convinced it's all going to be over in 2012.) Of course we need to challenge that, but just saying "that's not Orthodox" isn't going to work. Yet getting people even to *look* at the Bible is a practically an insurmountable first step. And sadly, it must be admitted that of all the churches, we Orthodox are probably the least informed about what is, after all, "our" Bible!

So in general, my whole work these days is to try to lay with everyone I talk to, a foundation in basic knowledge of the scriptures. People have so many pre*conceptions and mis*conceptions that if we try to talk about sacraments or ethics or liturgy or dogma or anything else before laying such a foundation, we'll have to back up and start all over again-- *after* they've already fit whatever we say into their preconceived "666" scheme!

Some have asked me why I don't just "read the Bible with the fathers". Well, I do-- but in my experience, people fit *the fathers themselves* into non-biblical frameworks as well, and maybe it's even a little easier to do that. So, just because one is reading in a different style is no guarantee that one is reading correctly. The fathers themselves knew the scriptures inside and out, and they tell us there's just no substitute for that. So-- as an elder on Mount Athos told me-- Old and New Testaments every day... and *then* we talk about how Orthodoxy communicates "not just in words only-- but in deed, and in truth" (1Jn 3.18)!

Some ministers from the "bible center" church on the next block-- Congolese and Zimbabweans-- with whom i had contact shortly after i got here, came here the other day to discuss women and the priesthood. Not sure i gave them the answer they were looking for, though.

Well, now that some of my African friends are beginning to get comfortable with me, I am finding, not to my surprise, that many African people really do think of Christianity as the "white man's religion", even though they are Christian themselves. (I was already tapping in to this in Uganda.) This is very serious, and a lot more prevalent than we want to admit. Moreover, history shows that once Christianity here reaches a certain critical mass in Africa, people are quite ready to dismiss the missionaries and turn it into a concoction quite their own. That's not *all* bad!-- and in fact it *needs* to happen in many ways-- but I think the challenge and the dangers are obvious. We have to start addressing that.

For instance, many people, even former seminarians, remain very scared of witchcraft. They insist that they don't "believe" in it-- i think that means, "practice" it-- but they most certainly fear its power. Stories circulate about the powerlessness of the cross-- and to be sure, the sangomas apparently even use crosses and bibles in their rituals. So I enjoy reading stories about how Christians have triumphed over the forces of darkness, but one prays not to be unnecessarily put to the test. On the other hand, one lady told me she is afraid to pick up coins from the ground, because people put bad muti on coins and then leave them around to disturb others maliciously. I told her, tell everyone to bring their accursed coins to me! With faith in Jesus Christ, as far as i'm concerned, one rand = one more fresh tomato! But I didn't know that. It's probably good to make the sign of the cross before picking up coins on the street, where a lot of people discard the 5-cent piece, which you can use only in the big stores.

Others want to know what's so bad about African traditional religion, which is all about respecting the ancestors. Well, it's good to understand the question: every human being receives from his or her ancestors (physical and spiritual) the whole sense of a meaningful universe. This is especially true in stable, traditional societies, and the ancestral guardians of the traditional order are not to be despised! Even we Christians talk about the faith of our "fathers", and although our relationship to the "great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us" differs from the way Africans relate to their ancestors-- we don't need to feed or propitiate them, for example, and they are never capricious or malevolent-- but we do repect and venerate and, in the catholic tradition, we even ask the saints for their own help and guidance, in God. So while Orthodoxy has a broad sense of the "communion (or community) of the saints", answers about African traditional religion, are not really simple. I look forward to further discussions. The issue is much deeper and more common than appearances might lead us outsiders to think.

Well, but this is Modern Africa, and the religious challenge is less and less African Traditional Religion as such, than American Pentecostalism, which almost completely defines what people believe and expect from Christ and his church, no matter what church they belong to. We liberally educated Americans just pooh-pooh all that, in rather knee-jerk fashion. But did you know that the Kimbanguists and the African Zionist Pentecostal Church, who are very numerous here but about whom I know nothing, are among the largest religions in the world? People here have little sense of history, or of other possibilities, or knowledge of all the scandals that have beset the American televangelist scene-- so their promises of healing, prosperity, success, and salvation all look pretty good to them. So how can we say, Don't pay any attention to those people, without actually offering something better? Not just another pattern of religion-- but to build up a community where mutual support actually brings about healing, prosperity, and success.... hmmm, not so easy!

Here's an interesting link, by the way, concerning "Religion in a Globalizing World": http://pewforum.org/events/?EventID=136

And finally, a reflection on my visit to the Mall: I continue to be astonished, here, as in America, by the fact that the bookstores don't carry even one single "Christian" book worth reading. Garbage! I haven't seen the Left Behind series on the shelves here, but one lady did tell me that when she's sick etc, she like to read "christian fiction". I suggested she try to work with the psalms a bit (and i can see we're going to need a class on the psalms pretty soon, too). But I mention the bookstores because I've also noticed that the Buddhist sections here are quite serious. (There are no Orthodox books at all, of course-- despite the fact that the malls all seem to be owned by Greeks.) So, what does it say about modern Christian culture that the best we can come up with are lurid "uplifting" romances-- while our competitors are distributing advanced treatises on meditation? According to "the Internet" (heh heh), there are only about 6000 counted buddhists here, which may be why I haven't met any personally, yet-- although Eckankar did offer a seminar in Youville last weekend-- but *somebody* is buying those books. And there is a *huge* buddhist monastery here with *28* black novices and 4 or 5 white ones. So I think we've got some work to do.

Speaking of monasteries, there actually is interest in that aspect of Christianity here: A Zambian who comes by fairly often wants to talk about monasticism. So i show him the websites and talk to him about my experiences in monasteries in America, Sinai, Jerusalem, and Athos, but i don't know quite where to point him. i have visited our two monasteries, of course, but one is basically uninhabited at the moment, and the other (which has one monk) just doesn't seem conducive for his needs either. But maybe the time will come when he and others like him might profitably spend time, or perhaps even set out on the path of monasticism, here or elsewhere in the world. Maybe some of you monastics who receive this will be interested in sharing a little of your "leaven" with us, no?

NOW OK, ABOUT MY FINANCES, AGAIN:

As I said above, at this very moment of writing, i have about $70 to my name. Please, if you pledged, do contribute. This is Africa-- the money has to come from outside!

And please, please, please, I beg you-- help with the Uganda Fund. I am already having to let students go, and that means they will not graduate from high school. So *please* help!! Like i say, where else can you know so personally that your money is going direct to the people who need it. I'll even tell you their names, if you want to know!

For now, there is only one "African Education Fund" bank account for both the Uganda Education Fund and the Johannesburg Seminary Mission. So please make your checks for the African Education Fund, and mark the purpose in the memo line-- Uganda or South Africa.

Best wishes for a fruitful remaining Lent,
from a rainy and cool late summer day in Youville!

John burnett.

For info about how you can help Uganda high school students to graduate, see
this pdf.

For an interview and more info about my South Africa seminary mission,
See my youtube page.

Contact me about contributing, or use the Paypal "Donate" button in the column at the right. Or send checks to--- St Nicholas African Education Fund, 102 Ross Avenue, San Anselmo, CA 94960, (tel. 415 454 0982).

Thanx!

How Do the baSotho Fit In?

So, David Modupi and I got into a discussion here in rainy Johannesburg last night about eating pork. He mentioned that he had once served some pork lungs to friends who belonged to a pentecostal church that didn't believe in eating pork, telling them that they were sheep's lungs. After eating, they went to a meeting at that church, and all of them became very dizzy and ill and had to leave the service. I said it sounded to me like there was something going on in that church connected with pork and witchcraft, but he assured me that it's all about "what you believe".

Well, there's some truth to the idea that belief is powerful, but also i had to object to the idea that the bible is talking about "the power of belief" in that sense. David pointed out that Jesus said if you have faith you can move mountains, but i countered that no, Jesus said if you have faith you can move this mountain— but that the mountain in question is mount zion (see the context at Mt 21.21, Mk 11.23; but see also Mt 17.20, which requires further discussion). "This mountain", which Jesus has just left and which they're looking at from the Mount of Olives, which is the place of eschatological judgment, means the whole corrupt religious system of the chief priests, the scribes, the herodians, and the pharisees, that is being brought to an end.

David then said, doesn't the Bible say we must not eat pork? (I was surprised that he was able to go directly to the passage in Deuteronomy where it talks about this.) He asserted that "all people" have the same rules as in Deuteronomy— he read the list of unclean animals, and said nobody eats those. I pointed out of course that most peoples do in fact eat pork and that he himself has eaten rabbit. So then he said, still, there are traditional religious strictures in most african tribes about eating pork (that's actually not true as far as i'm aware, but it might be more or less true here in SA), so this law has to mean everybody. Well, i could see he was drowning, so i waved back. And then he told me that especially among practitioners of the Sangoma religion, they don't eat pork— it has something to do with their charms and spells. That's interesing; Sangoma is big around here, and some african pentecostal churches are rather syncretist, so this suggests that I may be right in my assessment of what happened to him and his friends at that church. He said that anyway, witchcraft works for those who practice it because they believe in it.

Well, we need to look at what "faith" is, in the Bible. It's not a power to work miracles, but an assent to what God is doing in the world. So I had to break the news to him, that OT law was not written for us but only for the Jews. This blew his mind, especially as he had never heard of the Torah and had no idea about its purpose or the purpose of those laws. (David, by the way, has been through our previous catachetical seminary program here, which i think we may safely surmise was not all that demanding.) Anyway, I suppose like many christians, especially here in Africa, the bible is to be taken literally and every word of it applies directly— except the parts you don't like, of course— but it's a kind of rule book, and not in any way a specific story with its own specific shape and intent, its own characters (who are not necessarily you), and so forth. No, the rules are meant for YOU, not for the people in the story; and whatever stories there are, are for your "edification".

So I pointed out to him that Genesis 1-11 basically describes the problem of "the wound that is man", as one of our hymns strikingly expresses it, and that Genesis 12 through Revelation 22 then gives God's answer to the problem. And God's answer to the problem of man is not a special set of rules we have to keep, like not eating pork, but a master plan, and that the Bible is the story of what God is doing in the world to implement his plan: God chose Abraham because he wanted to restore the blessing he originally gave to Adam, which Adam lost. That's what "faith", in the bible, is all about— not the power to work miracles, but to trust God and walk with him as he works through the execution of his plan. Abraham was the beach head, and Moses and the Jews and Sinai and the Law came later in the story— that God gave the Law to the Jews "alone among all the nations" so that he could lead and train them as his "special people", in order that eventually he might bring forth from them the Anointed One who was finally going to fulfill the promise he had given to Abraham, to restore the blessing of Adam to "all the nations": "In your seed shall all nations will be blessed".

I then showed him that the entire NT was about how the blessing of Abraham had in fact finally been poured out on the gentiles (nations) through Christ. I pointed to the big struggle in Acts that began with the conversion of Cornelius and culminated in the apostolic council in Jerusalem, with its decision not to bind the gentiles to the Torah; I showed how, especially in Galatians and Romans, but also in Mark etc, that salvation in Jesus the Messiah did not entail having to get circumcised, keep Torah, or become Jews; and so forth.

(It would be useful to have Norbert Lohfink's book Israel and the Nations handy, especially when i start telling this story to my seminary students, to show that this was already the point of view of the prophets and the psalms— that the nations would come to Zion, but not as Jews; they would bring tribute to the God of Israel, but in their own right.)

In other words, we can eat pork, no problem— but more importantly, we need to step up to a new and better understanding of what the bible is all about.

Well, that's a little hard to swallow. David, of course, is extremely bright and was certainly getting what I was saying, but it was definitely blowing his mind. Because if what i am saying is right— well, there are many churches here, including my own (which is his as well), but nobody is actually telling the actual story in the actual bible. He has never, ever, heard this before. (Neither, of course, had the parish where i preached yesterday morning about Mark 1.1). So he will need to process the implications over time, and I will certainly have to work hard on filling in the story. But he is already asking how, if what i say is true, the baSotho (his tribe) fit in, if the Old Testament is not meant for everyone.

And that's the right question.

I just hope I can pull this off.

For Uganda education or South Africa seminary mission support, send checks to

St Nicholas African Education Fund
102 Ross Avenue
San Anselmo, CA 94960
415 454 0982

You can also use the Paypal "Donate" button in the right-hand column on this page.

See my youtube page for an interview of me talking about my Orthodox seminary mission here in South Africa.

Thanx!

What We Preach These Days

Before communion at church last Sunday, the priest urged people to prepare more seriously and not to come to communion if they're unprepared— "So let's work on this"— communion may harm us if we're not worthy— and "its the preparation that makes us worthy." This "affects our whole life and our eternal life..."

Hmmm... well i'm not sure that reading some prayers and fasting a bit "makes us worthy" of the divine and intemerate Communion. Still, i know what he means, and his infelicitous way of putting the matter gives me no excuse; he's right about my need to deal more carefully with what I'm doing when i approach the Chalice. But— "affects our eternal life"? I suspect that's not quite the right issue.

To be sure, St Paul does say about "eating and drinking unworthily", "this is why many of you are weak and sickly, and many have fallen asleep [i.e., died]" (1 Co 11.27-30). But is his point really that— if i'm not properly "prepared", i might get sick and die? Or is there a more positive point which we must also remember, that to eat and drink is to join in the covenant cut in the Messiah's own flesh and blood, and to enter, here and now, into the God's reign (βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ)— into 'Godspace' as we might say, here and now? When Ananias and Sapphira dropped dead (Acts 5), was it just because they lied to a holy man, or because they had done something critically, fundamentally opposed to the power of God's reign, which was breaking into the world, making clear, in and through the Church, what his judgment on human iniquity and dishonesty was, as he established a new community, a new Israel, which was, and was to be the world's salvation?

Well I'm not really expecting much about entering, much less being, the reign of Christ in this world, nothing about "as in the sky, even on the ground" (ὣς ἐν οὐρανῷ, καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς), as Jesus really prayed; not here, not this particular sunday, not this venue. Really, we're quite content with the way things are in this world. At least they're pretty tolerable, here in America anyway. So the message is that a few prayers and a little fasting will "make us worthy" of this thing that will "give us eternal life" when we die, but make us sick or condemn us if we aren't worthy. That's the point. And death and even unworthy-communion-caused illness both seem pretty far off (though threatening, to be sure)— so it comes as little surprise that people don't quite find time to make these "preparations".

I think about this a lot. What does it mean, what would it mean, to 'enter the reign of God' or the 'reign of heaven' or 'Godspace' (the place where God rules) in a place like Africa, where murder is common, vigilante justice is often swift and brutal, corruption is all-pervasive, and poverty, disease, war, and misery so pandemic? Does it mean that we need to organize a group of people to say certain prayers before they go to communion? What would a community of people whose "citizenship is in Godspace" (Ph 3.20) be like? Would they just be another group of people waiting for "heaven when we die"— and in our Orthodox case, maybe even soundly anathematizing and mocking everyone else as having the wrong basis for thinking they'll make it too?

"Our citizenship is in the skies", St Paul wrote to the Philippians (3.20), "from which we also await as savior Jesus, lord and messiah"— ἡμῶν γὰρ τὸ πολίτευμα ἐν οὐρανοῖς ὑπάρχει, ἐξ οὗ καὶ σωτῆρα ἀπεκδεχόμεθα κύριον Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν. Is he saying, "we belong to another world"? Or is he saying that right here and right now, we are subjects of a real king, Jesus, the Lord, whereas all these Caesars that everyone admires and fears are a total sham? Is he talking about going to a "better place" when we die, or is he proclaming Jesus as Lord, right in the face of Rome, America, Museveni, Mugabe, Bush, Obama, Mao, and all the rest? What would it be, then, to speak of communion, and preparation for communion, in terms of what God wants his world to be, and therefore wants his church to be, in the world?

Anyway, after church (yes, this is still a narrative about all the amazing things that happened to me last sunday) I went to the senior sunday school class. The class met at Caputo's, a deli across the street. Everybody got their sandwiches— many were already halfway done before we were finally all together and stood up and said the Lord's Prayer together (not facing in any direction, but in a circle) as grace 'before' our meal.

Well it seems completely irrelevant, doesn't it, that i even noticed the direction we were facing. After all, facing east when we pray— which St Basil reports as one of the most ancient and firm traditions of the Christian religion— has been in our time pretty much forgotten. Culturally, we're all protestants now, so why shouldn't we pray our individualistic prayers, together, facing each other, affirming our 'community'? In our disoriented state, i'm probably lucky we didn't hold hands! (which, by the way, came via neo-pentecostalism in the 70's from the occult séance origins of the Azusa Street Revival.)

But anyway— so much for the oriented community of the Church. What kind of sunday school shall we have?

Well, we sat down to finish our sandwiches and begin the lesson. Our body language was awkward, though roughly circular, some people stuck behind the teachers, no attention to 'dialogic space', and there lots of ambient noise (muzak, kitchen noise, talk). I came expecting something more conducive to vital discussion, but... well, it might not be altogether impossible, and anyway, here we are.

They're reading Fr John Mack's Ascending the Heights (SVS). Dreadful, frightening book, as far as i can tell, life-hating, narrow, rigid, oppressive, deeply protestant— and basically avoiding St John's points, in the guise of making a very good and entertaining and profound writer "palatable for moderns". Instead of teaching young adults how to chew good meat, we challenge them with more bad pablum. But apparently, Mack's efforts weren't working very well, because Emily started by offering bribes to get the kids to read the lesson during the week— Starbuck's® certificates, something... anything. Not much interest. So... ok, on to Lesson 3, Climacus on "Exile":

"Don't be attached to anything. Don't keep bad friends. But really, don't be attached to good friends either. The world is a trap. Think about your eternal salvation!"

Ah... "eternal salvation": there it is again. But sorry, that's really Mack, not Climacus.

Well i wonder what teenagers actually care about death and eternity? Oh, yes, well, maybe they do— especially as a preternatural issue like, "What happens when we die?"— but they're certainly not consciously "mortal" yet, so it can't be an issue on that level! And anyway, in my experience, what happens after death just isn't all that exciting to people who are just about to really get serious about sucking the juicy peach of life. Except as a preternatural issue. But that's not really where i might start.

Well, Bob started by saying that St John Climacus was a monk writing for monks and therefore this stuff didn't really apply to us— it's ok for us to want and to enjoy the better things in life. (Didn't I say that we're really quite content with the way things are in this world?) We just can't let those things control us. Well, we all know that already, don't we, and so the question must have popped into at least a few minds besides mine: WHAT'S THE POINT OF EVEN BOTHERING WITH THIS TEXT IF IT DOESN'T APPLY TO US, THEN??!!

Well, the kids then took turns reading one paragraph each. One might criticize the pedagogical method, but i'll leave that aside, except to note that many of these kids are honors students, and so the pedagogy might be another indication of the whole nexus of issues i'm trying to surface. But anyway, when they get to the part about not keeping friends who can drag you down, Bob and Emily harrangue them for about 10 nonstop minutes each, about how they need to keep away from their friends whose values are opposed to theirs. After a few minutes it dawns on me what the harrangue is about: "Oh yeah. Drugs.... Do these kids do drugs?? Really??"

I look around and think they very likely don't. The kids politely check out.

Emily then jumps in with a long and somewhat nervous narrative (I think she knows she's losing them) about how she used to work in an office with a boss, a Mormon bishop, who drank heavily on the job and actually was an atheist. He took it upon himself to challenge her faith all the time with "scientific facts" and "bible contradictions". She spoke as if the guy was making sense to her but she just didn't know enough to respond, so she just kept insisting to him that she "just believed", and to us that she "remained strong" and "kept her faith". So we "just have to keep believing" and not listen when people challenge us. But she was so relieved to see him go, because he really wore her down and it's like that with bad friends. So you have to "remain strong" and "just believe" and avoid people who might really challenge your faith.

Bob said, When people challenge your faith, don't just trust your own ideas! Get the answers! Talk to someone who knows what the answers are. Talk to the priest. The answers are out there! I got the impression that you could get a specific, individual A to any Q you might ask. But it seemed kind of mysterious. On what basis might you assert any of these "answers"? Because an expert says so? Do we "believe" stuff because some kind of sanctified authority tells us?

It takes effort to break in to the harrangue for a moment— the speakers are on a roll— but I manage to do it because i am curious about the kids' actual experience of their friends etc. They open up a little. Clearly, they have ideas and are willing to talk about them if given a chance. They say one reason they hang out with friends who might use drugs (really, only pot) is that those friends tended to be people who were more alive somehow, more questioning, not just going along with society. I wanted to talk more about what being "alive" is— i mean, i really want to know what they think, because i suspect it's really interesting— but Bob breaks in with another 5-minute harrangue about choosing your friends wisely and not letting them drag you into drugs. "Bad friends can pull you down, so be careful who you choose for friends... show me your friends and I can show you who you are... so be sure to pick the 'right people' for your friends— people who have good values. Don't give in to drugs."

Meanwhile the kids finish their meatball sandwiches and start checking their watches.

As they come to the end of the chapter, i am really feeling squirmy in the noisy and unconducive venue, and as i watch the moment passing, I desperately want to say that the topic of "Exile" is deeper than it might seem from this book, or that Fr Mack might at least have missed a few points, that this is really worth giving some attention to. So i break in again and mention that Exile is perhaps THE Big Topic of the Bible as a whole— Adam is exiled from Eden, Israel from the Land, and all of us from true Life, and that's what the Bible addresses. But i let it go because the kids aren't making eye contact and just want to get out of there.

Another brief harrangue from the teachers about choosing your friends and it's over. Without prayer or singing, of course.

John Climacus's chapter, by the way, deals not with bad friends who drag you down, so much as with finding a wise man to whom you can disclose your way, and friends who will support and compete with you in virtue. This is mentioned in a final quote at the tail end of Mack's unit, but it was passed over by the class, who by that point were already "done". I tried to point to that paragraph, but got no response, so i dropped it.

Afterwards, one kid (Paul) thanked me for coming. Well that was nice, though I felt he was just doing a bit of political schmoozing, since mostly i'd just sat there and listened. But hey, he's handed me an opportunity to connect, and i want to take it!

Tell me, I said, what did you think of today's class?

He said it was boring and didn't make sense and really, they were tired of being lectured.

I said, Yah, and i'm really sad for you guys. What do you think. Are you going to be Orthodox in 5 years?

He said firmly, Yes.

I said, But why on earth? You just said they're not even making sense!

He responded instantly, firmly, without blinking: Culture.

I was actually a bit surprised. He really seems to have thought about it and come up with that answer as his best and only.

"But really? Is it really making any sense?" I asked.

"No not really. That's why I'm questioning even that", he said, motioning towards the church. "They're not saying anything there either."

Ah, the ability to see both sides of an issue!

I insisted that my friend Jeni and her daughter Katina, who was in the class, come to coffee with me afterwards. Jeni also is a sunday school teacher. I asked them how it's going. They say it's always the same here. The other priest was telling them in their bible study the other day that they owed a DEBT to Jesus who had PAID THE PRICE for them. Jeni just saw this as an attempt to control people through guilt— and you get a nice pat on the back if you're good. Katina thought it was weird how this chapter on Exile suddenly turned into this whole lecture on drugs. Drugs (pot) are common enough in school, but these kids aren't making "those choices", and lecturing them about it wouldn't do them any good if they were. I said, Well, I tried to talk about Exile a bit, but you kids were pretty checked out by that point. Katina said, "No but what you were saying was kind of interesting, actually."

Jeni told me that there actually are a couple of kids who seem to have connected with Orthodoxy and even love to debate mormons. That's a local sport here in Salt Lake, and a kind of indicator that you've begun thinking about things on your own. The mormons actually provide a great service in that respect, because they're so obnoxious and dominant that intellectual and spiritual independence, or even just teenage rebellion, can often take the form of real engagement with Orthodox Christianity here in Salt Lake.

But there's a lot of work to do, leading kids to the resources, giving them the floorplan. Jeni has been working with her 7th graders, trying to connect stories in the Bible with what we do in church, etc— to show that it's all interrelated. I plead for learning to tell the whole story of the Bible, but of course i am never sure how much even she really understands my point because nobody, just nobody in the church is teaching the Bible as the story of Israel per se, or how Israel is important in God's scheme of salvation. "Salvation" means going to heaven when you die, and the Bible is a bundle of divergent, unrelated stories that God gave us to allegorize as universal moral tales that will help us to be good persons who will, in fact, go to heaven. When we die. As i've said before, Israel is buried and forgotten— along with what the New Testament is talking about, which is the impact of the Messiah, now!

Well, actually Jeni is doing a great job. It's just that, in general the teachers all need support and more training, and many of them a lot more than she does. So I suggest to her that what we really need throughout the church are good teacher training courses. Of course I'm talking air because i'm going away, but if enough people say it, i figure it might eventually happen, so i go around saying it anyway. We really need to develop a better program. I even mention that, although i'm going away, i could offer some kind of a seminar while i'm here, like the 'Whole Bible in One Day Workshop' i organized in my parish last summer. She said she thought it would really be great, but that it wouldn't be received by the other teachers. "They're comfortable with the approach they're taking, and they're not really interested in doing anything too taxing." Well, as i said, we're really quite content with the way things are in this world, and in the church.

Even if, demographically, we're losing our kids.

So I then offer to Katina to get together with her and her friends for coffee sometime, if they want— an opportunity to talk and explore absolutely any question they have. Katina shows interest, but they're all very busy with studies..... So many opportunities have already passed....

After we split up, I get to my email and find that some guy named Ioan from Romania had seen my youtube videos (go to youtube and search for "johnbburnett") and had written enthusiastically:

I have here some interesting movies with miracles you can present to your people... showing the difference between Orthodox Christianity and other religions:

1. The most important moment in Bible is Jesus' resurrection proving him to be God and having power over death. Apostle Peter coming to the Holy Sepulcher found a Light there. Over the Holy Sepulcher, ... on Orthodox Easter ... Holy Light comes from the sky...

2. When Jesus was baptised Jordan river moved backward to show that nature listens to God. Every year on Orthodox date of Jesus' baptism..., Jordan river moves backward....

3. On Orthodox Date of Transfiguration a cloud comes to Mount Tabor.

4. Angels are present when priests give Food for Eternal life to people in Orthodox Church, look in following movie...

5. Orthodox Priests with Holy Spirit received at ordination, through prayer transform normal water in Holy Water changing molecular movement of molecules from Brownian to other movement and Water resists for years.

6. Saints' bodies stream myrrh.

7. Prophets, miracle workers, people walking on water, levitation, seeing anywhere in Earth, apparitions after death and much much more!

8. At my grandpa's death ceremony food started to grow by itself.

9. Holy Trinity, Jesus, Holy Mother of God is speaking today with many people in Orthodox World

10. Saint Spyridon's incorrupt body dissapears from its place every year, helping people and returning with shoes worn out and every year people put a new pair a shoes on him.

All of this undoubtedly shows clearly what the difference between us and them is, and proves that Orthodoxy is the true religion, and that we can have Eternal Life when we die if we just become Orthodox.

Well, i know i'm going to get into trouble for saying it, but i really have concluded by the time i get to the end of this that we are pagans!

No surprise. Not much gospel being imparted, as we see in the previous story, and paganism is probably the natural condition of the human race, especially when the gospel is not preached. And— sorry to disappoint with radical views— since neither the Old Testament nor the New ever goes into myrrh-gushing relics, the Holy Fire, levitation, visions, or shoeless incorrupt saints. Not that these things don't happen— they do!— but these are not the point of the New Testament or of the Old! So, insofar as these are the things we think of as "the difference between Orthodox Christianity and other religions", then that far are we not preaching the news that's in the scriptures, not preaching what the apostles preached! A lot of people don't seem to understand that.

But it's a lot easier to present miracles and spectacles than what the apostles were talking about. To grasp at this point what they were saying, we'd need to grasp the their first-century context. They were excited because Jesus fulfilled the messianic expectation of the Old Testament, taught the whole way of God, got crucified for doing so— and was vindicated and shown to be the first-fruits of the God's everlasting reign, now beginning to happen, as in the sky— even on the ground!

RB Hays, a scholar I like, points out that "the Christian tradition early on lost its vital connection with the Jewish interpretive matrix in which Paul had lived and moved; consequently, later Christian interpreters missed some of Paul's basic concerns. For example, the Christian fixation on christological proof texts may have caused readerst to zero in on texts like Isa 53 and to overlook Paul's concern for explaining the mission to the Gentilies and the fate of Israel in relation to Scripture."* That 'fixation' was not wrong; it fact it was even necessary, given the questions swirling around in Greek culture— but person and nature, ousia and hypostasis, even the virgin birth simply were not the issues that held the apostles' concern, or which they urged on their hearers in the late 00's of the first millennium. And since most people don't really get all those (necessary) trinitarian metaphysics... popular Orthodoxy has tended to focus, not again on Paul's forgotten Jewish interpretive matrix, but rather, on miracle and spectacle.

This Orthodoxy of miracle and spectacle— of weeping icons, holy elders, holy fire, incorrupt saints, and all the rest— isfascinating and seems to offer a quicker connection with Christ than than all that biblical stuff, but in the final analysis, i think it's alienating. Even regarding the elders, i see the need (and wasn't Climacus making just that point?), but i still cherish a bit of scepticism. Someday I'll post about my experience of the Lord's Day on Mount Athos.

Miracle and spectacle, in fact, constitute our Orthodox equivalent of pentecostalism— it's all about private, personal experience, and not really very demanding or world-changing, at that. And it could get away with not being too world-shaking for a long time because the kingdom of this world was, well... already the Holy Empire, and already Orthodox Christian. So what came to count for us "little people" now tended to be private religious experience, personal ascesis and so forth. Such private experiences (even those accessed by tour bus) can be quite profound, but they are not about any 'kingdom of God' which has really begun to overtake this age, even in its institutional life. At least not in the western context in which we live (Romanides and Yannaras and others make interesting arguments about important differences in the east.) But no matter. For us, the 'reign of God' (βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ) now belongs strictly to the remote, inaccessible "eternity" of life after death, and this world remains quite comfortable, even when it's profane, condemned, untouched, brutal, and alien. It has signs, "proofs", it is "eternal mysteries beyond the grave"— but it is no longer the civilization-shattering leaven that the early church was.

Now there are all kinds of problems with what i'm saying, and i freely admit them all without pointing to any of them specifically, because this is already too long. But in Philippians 3.20, St Paul is saying, "Our citizenship (πολίτευμα) is in heaven, and from it we await the Saviour, the Lord Jesus, the Messiah". That was positively incendiary! Paul was writing to ex-legionaries who had been given land in Philippi and full Roman citizenship rights (rather as Paul himself enjoyed as a native of Tarsus). The battle of Actium in 31 AD had made everyone fully aware that the world's only 'savior' was Caesar, their direct lord. The point of having Roman citizenship and being Roman colonists did not mean that the Philippians hoped or even desired that Caesar would someday come and take them back to Rome— it meant that they could rely on the full backing of Roman law and might, and that they themselves were part of the projection of Roman law and might into the world.

Paul's point, moreover, to his Philippian converts, was that just as the emperor would come from Rome to rescue and liberate his loyal subjects when times got bad, so also, and even more, if things got hard for them now, they could be sure that Christ the Lord would manifest his almighty power— even over Caesar and Rome, if need be, and even over death. For 'savior', 'lord', and even 'messiah' (= king, cf John 18.33 etc) are precisely Caesar-titles, and Paul is saying that Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not. So, having “citizenship in heaven” does not mean that we're just passing through this world, and may expect eventually to go 'home to Jesus'— this actually would seem to be Mack's suggestion, though not exactly Climacus's— but that Jesus will come in power to judge and to rule 'on earth as in heaven'.**

This "imperial eschatology" of Paul and the rest of the New Testament seems pretty much on the other side of the mountain for my Romanian friend, for Fr Mack and, frankly, for most of the church today. At the very least, we need to start asking how our Orthodoxy of spectacles relates to the "imperial eschatology" of St Paul. We now pray facing any direction but east. We are 'oriented' no longer to the Rising Sun of Justice, to the Lord Who Comes in Glory to judge and to rule, but to our 'community', and to the sacred object, the special experience, the holy man who has seen those "eternal mysteries beyond the grave" and is here to tell us about it.

What is worse, we now teach, protestant-wise, that we owe a DEBT to Jesus who had PAID THE PRICE for our SINSSS!!!— in other words, salvation has somehow become even for us heirs of the Fathers, the same old pietistic, protestant "penal substitutionary atonement" theory that's driving people away in many western churches, complete with the standard non-biblical eschatology about 'going to heaven when we die'. So now we say certain prayers and fast for a couple of days, and make ourselves worthy for the "food for eternal life" (another sacred object attended by angels as you can see in the movie). And if you question or doubt all this, or its relevance, you can get answers and reassurances from our Experts!

Meanwhile, I received another email from Africa, from a girl i recently said i would support, if i could, next year (but absolutely no guarantee at this point): "may the living God continue giving you an abundant life... it's as if u have taken me to the next step of my properity".....

Κύριε, ἐλέησον!

**RB Hays, The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel's Scripture, p 43.

** I'm indebted to NT Wright, "Paul’s Gospel and Caesar’s Empire", in RA Horsley, ed., Paul and Politics: Ekklesia, Israel, Imperium, Interpretation. Essays in Honor of Krister Stendahl: Trinity Press International, Harrisburg, Pa.: 2000; pp. 160–83.) See ntwrightpage.com for this article and more.

Towards an Indigenous African Orthodoxy

The amazingly prolific Fr Dn Steve Hayes writes about inculturation, interculturality, cross-fertilization, and the indigenization of Christianity in Africa on his Khanya blog, which I sometimes keep an eye on. His thoughts there evoke some of my own regarding this issue and Orthodoxy in particular, so I submit them with a good deal of trepidation (you might see why) here. I invite comments!

In my experience, some people in Africa actually seem interested in Orthodoxy on some level, almost despite what we're actually doing. I have a godson in Uganda who stumbled across our church on his own, and for some considerable time before I came there, had been attending our services because "liked the way we worship". He didn't (and doesn't) have much sense of any differences between us and the "Protestant" (Anglican) church he'd grown up in, nor between us and the Catholics down the road; he just likes our services and has decided that he "wants to worship in that way." But he wasn't from the same tribe as everyone else there, so it never occurred to him, much less to anyone in the church that he might ever want to join, even after he'd very faithfully attended for several years. (So much for our "mission"!) But I think he was kind of unusual. Now, it's important to realize that he's a serious guy, and I have tremendous respect for him, but he's never struck me as a particularly pious sort of person— he's never shown any interest in the priesthood, for example; his aspirations are rather what we might characterize as "solidly middle class". But he's quite sure he wants to be Orthodox.

Well, his brother had some trouble last year in school. As he put it, "[a] guy who is his classmate comes from a family that practices witchcraft. [My brother] was always the best performer in class [but] because of jealousy and envy [that guy] applied some kind of charm/witchcraft on him.... at times when he goes to read, he sees like 4 to 5 books in front of him and yet he carries only one book to read. Those weird things disturb him at night and he is not in peace at school. He was in tears while elaborating for me the story; it was like he didn’t like to remember those funny things that were happening to him." And he failed his exams.

So I wrote back and urged him not to take his brother to a traditional healer ("witch doctor", one who deals with witchcraft-caused issues) to solve the problem, and offered some suggestions about prayer etc. He wrote back, "I DON’T at all believe in witchcraft/traditional healer NEITHER have I ever visited a traditional doctor since I was born. Family/clan, my culture, tribe and I DON’T at all believe in witchcraft. I am a Christian who does not believe in such backward ideology. I have two physicians in my life one is JESUS CHRIST and the second is a scientist who prescribes for me what medicines to take. Anyway the guy who tried to harm him is not in fact [from our tribe but from another] known for such acts, who also do things like wizards. [My brother] got sick from school by a wicked classmate who was not hardworking and wanted to ruin his future with his barbaric act because of his intelligence."

So... interesting: witchcraft is a "backward ideology"— but it's definitely real, and it's powerful. I have come not to doubt this, even though I find myself instictively wanting to argue that magic really "doesn't exist", that it's "just superstition", and that his brother just needs to just "get tough" and "get over it". Well, I've been around long enough to know that's not quite the answer but, after all, my long training in Western Rationalism isn't going to disappear any faster than someone else's fear of witchcraft!

But my point is this: Here is an "African worldview" that Orthodoxy actually traditionally has a good deal to say about, but most of us Orthodox Western Rationalists aren't too aware of what that is, and are simply not equipped to say it. Sooo... what does the Orthodoxy we are bringing to Africa actually represent, in a world where witchcraft is real, and we can say almost nothing about it except to offer the solace of Enlightened rationalism? We're not really dealing with the problem; we're offering mostly another bridge to the world of "scientists who prescribes what medicines to take".

Well, not everyone is as clear as my godson about not wanting to get involved in traditional witch doctoring. There were instances of "possession" in the church's secondary school in Kampala, and the bishop's own driver, it turns out, was particulary skilled at talking to the spirits and finding out what they wanted and how to make them go away. It might need a white chicken, or a goat, or some other sacrifice.... So... what is "Orthodoxy" when it exists quite apart from that world and doesn't really even challenge it?

I don't know how things are in South Africa, but again, in my own experience in Uganda, perhaps a great percentage of people had become Orthodox because they hoped to get school fees or some other kinds of assistance from Greece or America. And certainly, there are priests who induce people to join by holding out such promises to them. One priest friend of mine once told his brothers, 'You will all take off your collars when the money dries up.' They just kept quiet; they knew what he was saying. Ambitious young men perceive the church as a means of getting "out" (out of poverty; out of Africa). Yes, they will likely remain "members of the Orthodox Church" when they succeed, but we can wonder what they have understood about the body of Christ and the need to build up their local community. But whether people have hopes of gain or not— to be honest, no one is being catechized, and church life is effectively nil. When even the service books are not yet translated, certainly they are not yet explained, or really even understood, by the priests themselves. What is Orthodoxy when there are almost no services, no teaching, and no community? What are we spreading, when we go for numbers but not for quality?

"Orthodoxy" sometimes seems to have more to do with institutional allegiance (one that turns out to be quite flexible, when you probe it a bit), than with any deep conviction of Truth, much less with any deep commitment to a particular practice discipline. In actual fact, we subscribe to, and teach, the same civic and religious platitudes that the other churches have jointly and ecumenically authored into the government-issued Christian Religious Education (CRE) program that's taught in all the schools.

In other words, among Africans, Orthodoxy largely strikes me as simply a choice, often if not usually for one or more of a number of extraneous reasons, to attend a Greek-style church. That church typically stands near a village of grass huts, and is perhaps attractive because it's more conveniently located than its competitors. It was built with Greek or American money, often by a Greek or American team; it bears the name of an obscure local Greek saint, and was consecrated by a Greek bishop who came one day with a Greek entourage, in a Greek-language ceremony at which the people were passive observers or, to be honest, mostly only props. The whole thing seems strangely naive and even narcissistic. What services we offer are effectively the same as those of other churches— baptisms, "prayers", burials. To be sure, this Greek entity represents... well, they always tell me, "original Christianity". And they actually believe it to be so, and we are happy to let them believe it; in fact, this is the main point of what minimal catechesis we do— not them; us! We're the original church! —But really, this 20th century institutional Orthodoxy isn't quite the same as "original Christianity", is it? And what we're actually doing in Africa isn't really what the original church did in Greece, is it? And we don't quite (!) talk to the Africans about their own culture, do we?

I was very puzzled by the whole phenomenon. After a couple of years, my seminarians began to relax with me and I discovered that their religious and spiritual viewpoint was formed by the "deep structures" of their native traditions, far more than by any kind of Christianity they'd encountered, much less by Orthodoxy, which was rather new to most of them anyway. Of course, much of that "deep structure" was quite inarticulate and vague, since colonialism has largely wiped out the practice of their traditional culture, and aids and malaria and whatnot have mostly wiped out what few storytellers are left. But what they had were strong attitudes and assumptions and orientations, largely without "doctrinal" or explicit mythic content— in fact, they were often articulated in quasi christian terms that were actually unrelated to anything in the Bible. One has only to look at attitudes regarding death and the dead to see this. I think that's why pentecostalism is so attractive in Africa— it saddles people with few dogmatic demands, but interlocks quite well with practical local concerns about health and prosperity— and life after death (a concern imported from 19th-20th century Christianity more than anything else, and grafted on to notions about the ancestors).

Isn't our approach to "mission" (how I hate that word!) quite as colonialist as that of the 19th-century Europeans? To be sure, we "Greeks" are not in a position to conquer and exploit, like western Europe did. Our very lack of colonial history and power makes us attractive to Africans who have connected in some way with Jesus— even if it's not quite clear that we wouldn't have exploited them, if we'd had the chance. But seriously, isn't it still colonialism when America's Ocmc seeks to send "an army of missionaries" into the world to "gain converts" and "expand" the Church into new territories hitherto "unconquered" by "Christ"? Does the fact that Byzantium, the empire in whose name we come, is already over and done with make our 'Byzantine' missionary endeavors any less imperialistic (even if they're virtual rather than economic) than those of the 19th century Anglicans and French?

The customs and compromises that have grown up in all the churches regarding marriage provide another glimpse of the issues. In Africa, marriage seems first of all to be a union of families and of clans, rather than of individuals (although this is changing). People are poor and families are hard-pressed, but young men are still obligated to pay a pretty hefty bride-price when they want to get married. But because the price is so hefty, the couple usually lives together without marriage for a number of years, and may even have several children, before the traditional wedding can take place. Now, by custom, the church wedding (both betrothal and crowning) is not celebrated till after the bride-price has been paid, the union accepted, and the traditional wedding has taken place. What is the relationship of the the betrothal and crowning to the traditional wedding? And if the couple can't go to communion until after the church wedding (because they're 'living in sin'), what is the place of their very real union (with children!) in the eucharistic community of the Church? What are we signaling by such arrangements about the relationship of the Church to the culture?

More broadly, how does Africa, as such, encounter the Good News? Or has it encountered the Good News... or only something called "the church"? How should/would an encounter with God's Good News— the news of what God was doing in the world, in his Messiah— impact the traditional understanding of marriage, family, clan?

I was constantly driven by my experience and by my students to ask, What was the power of those events that took place in first-century Palestine, and how can we convey it to people in 21st-century Africa? (This presupposes that we've encountered it ourselves, of course.) Our usual treatment of the scriptures as a compendium of disconnected tales that we are to allegorize as teachings about ethics mostly only serves the further superimposition of European views— including Western Rationalism— on Africa. The current hysteria over homosexuality in some parts— a hysteria of which Orthodoxy in the West is itself not free— is an excellent case in point. Our moralistic allegories ensure that Orthodoxy will quite firmly be placed in the framework of government-sponsored CRE religion at best, and otherwise of traditional ideas and attitudes which have never even heard of Christ. The fact that we quote Chrysostom more than Barth doesn't mitigate this or change the framework.

And suppose people actually do connect with the encounter that is attested in the scriptures. How do we get, in Africa, from that initial encounter with God's Good News (which seems in many ways to remain yet unaccomplished) to the Liturgies of Ss Basil and John and the teachings of the seven Councils? Especially when we are rapidly moving from a time when the church wedding is a kind of consumeristic Western add-on to the traditional wedding, complete with elaborate gowns and videotaping, celebrated privately and apart from the eucharistic synaxis— to a time when, due to urbanization, cultural breakdown, and loss of tradition, African weddings will be as individualistic, western, and consumeristic as they are in the West, and still without reference to a eucharistic community that hardly exists anyway? Is individualistic, Orthodox-style consumerism the "Orthodoxy" we want?

I'm not saying anything special about Africa, by the way. I think exactly the same issues have faced us from the very day of Pentecost, and have become especially acute, mutatis mutandis, in both Europe and America (not to mention Russia and Greece) today. It's only that in Africa the contrasts are higher and therefore the image is perhaps a little more sharp.

Which is why I love Africa: it makes you recognize what is really important, and to face up to it!

Am I Wrong to Be Sad about the Discovery of Oil in Uganda?

Here's an article from Prospect magazine (online), regarding Uganda's burgeoning oil industry. I'm all for prosperity, but I fear that oil does not mean peace for anyone on the face of the earth. And Uganda (Africa generally) soooo doesn't deserve all the trouble it has!

New-found oil reserves could double Uganda's GDP, but at what cost?

Ben Simon, Prospect, 21st September 2009, Issue No. 163

Life in Uganda is full of uncertainties. But one thing is clear: the country has far more oil than anyone initially expected. Since the British-owned Tullow Oil drilled its first successful well in 2006, the company has found double the amount it expected. The latest estimates suggest total deposits may exceed 1.5 billion barrels. Once production starts, oil revenues could feasibly double Uganda’s current GDP. Perhaps not surprisingly, this anticipated influx of petro-dollars has created a few complications—not least that President Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s leader of 23 years, may view it as his ticket to a lifelong grip on power.

The problem is that most of the oil lies underneath land that for centuries belonged to the Bunyoro monarchy, one of Uganda’s oldest and most powerful tribal kingdoms. In the 1890s, the kingdom mounted one of the bloodiest rebellions in colonial east Africa. The uprising was ultimately crushed, but the surviving monarch insisted the British share any profits earned from Bunyoro’s mineral rich land. Two agreements were signed with the colonial government, in 1933 and 1955, guaranteeing the kingdom a cut of any mineral or oil related profits. Today, King Solomon Iguru insists that these treaties are still valid—unsurprisingly, the government does not agree and the kingdom is not mentioned in any of the revenue sharing agreements signed with the oil companies. The king’s private secretary, Yolamu Nsamba, has warned that if the government doesn’t give the monarchy a share of the oil revenue it “will be a breach of trust, and that would be very unfortunate.” The huge riots that gripped Kampala in mid September, which led to 14 deaths dead and 600 arrests, might be an indication of what “unfortunate” just might mean. Although this time the clash involved supporters of a different monarchy, it underlines the fact that, for many Ugandans, tribal allegiance continues to outweigh loyalty to the president or the so-called “national interest.”

Indeed, if Uganda’s oil programme does go ahead, the tribes will not be the only ones up in arms. As one might expect, the government’s decision to allow drilling in protected wildlife reserves has not gone down well with environmental groups.

But the question likely to cause most discord is what Uganda should do with the oil that sits waiting beneath its soil. During a speech in July, President Museveni acknowledged that when oil was first discovered he was pressured to construct a pipeline to Mombasa in Kenya with the aim of exporting crude oil to international markets. However Museveni, a self-described pan-Africanist and long-time proponent of east African unity, now says he wants to build a refinery in Uganda itself and sell a refined product to Uganda’s neighbours.

While Tullow publicly supports Museveni’s preference, there is speculation the British and Canadian companies involved have reservations about the plan. Generating steady profits requires at least some stability in a part of the world infamous for persistent conflict. Neighbouring eastern Congo remains one of the world’s most volatile stretches of earth. South Sudan has stabilised somewhat since a 2005 peace agreement ended a brutal civil war with the Khartoum government, but there is no guarantee that the country won’t descend back into conflict following a 2011 referendum where the south may vote to permanently secede from the north. True, 15 years after the genocide Rwanda is conflict free and continues to impress investors with steady economic growth, but over the border Burundi is still emerging from more than a decade of civil war and the country’s last active rebel group only agreed to disarm in April. In short, the regional market is fraught with enormous risk.

The Ugandan government is eyeing a refinery capable of handling 150,000 barrels a day, which would require an initial investment of at least $2bn. To pull it off, Uganda will need outside help—and Museveni has already approached some non-traditional allies. “I recently visited Iran, that bad place, according to the BBC,” he said in his July speech, detailing how Tehran had offered support and guidance for his refinery scheme. And at the end of August he travelled to Russia, where, according to a statement from his office, he met with various investors to discuss how “to reverse the colonial approach of exporting raw materials.”

During the first years of his regime, western donors hailed Museveni as “a new kind of African leader,” one who represented a welcome change from Uganda’s turbulent past. But anti-colonial, anti-west and anti-donor rhetoric has become an increasingly common refrain in his public speeches. His relationship with the west was tested when he decided to run for president again in 2006, which required a scrapping of the constitutional provision on term limits. During those elections, which were widely condemned by local and international observers, Museveni’s only legitimate opponent was arrested on rape charges that even the president’s handpicked judiciary considered ridiculous. Allegations of widespread corruption, too, have become increasingly difficult to ignore in recent years. And Museveni now seems intent on extending his rule another five years by contesting in presidential elections scheduled for 2011. If the vote itself is as bloody as many observers have predicted it will be, it will become increasingly difficult to avoid comparisons with figures like Robert Mugabe.

But with Uganda’s new-found oil, there may be little to disincetivise Museveni from doing what he pleases. Crude revenues could make the country much less reliant on a donor community that currently provides roughly 30 per cent of the national budget, and could give the government the freedom to invest in things the donors are unlikely to fund—like a “super weapons” programme, which the president called for in December, or a space exploration programme, which he voiced support for in May.

Museveni never talks publicly about succession. For him, he says, running Uganda is not a job to retire from, but a project of struggle and sacrifice. Backed by oil money, that struggle could continue indefinitely.

Cellphones Outnumber Lightbulbs in Uganda

Paul Boutin at Venturebeat recently wrote: “More than a third of Ugandans own cellphones. In some areas, ‘cellphones could outnumber light bulbs.’ Is that really true?”

Let’s do the math…

In 2007 only between 5% and 6% of Ugandans had electricity (demand is growing at roughly 6% per year). Meanwhile in 2007, .52% had landlines while mobile subscriptions stood at 13% (a number skewed by the fact that it’s common to have a several cellphone, all mostly pre-paid). Demand is much higher in the mobile space than in electricity although demand is obviously correlated. note: My using the word ’subscriptions’ is a bit of a misnomer as virtually all cellpone usage here is pre-paid. Here subscriber really reffers more to ‘people who have purchased a sim card’.

Fast-forward two and a half years and from an MTN lawyer I recently discovered that current mobile penetration in Uganda is an estimated 7 to 8 million users. MTN projects that by 2012 that number will nearly double. The population of Uganda is somwhere between 29 and 31 million people. Because of the skew (the commonality of mulitple cellphones and providers) it’s virtually impossible to know for sure but the 1/3 of the population number seems to be reasonably accurate. Meanwhile, while the grid is extending into more rural and less prosperous parts of the country (and people that can’t afford electricity even if it’s available). We know that city life in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, largely consists of ’slums’ with poor infrastructure and certainly little electricity (which is rather expensive because demand is so low). In this article from All Africa, Action Aid International suggests that over 1.5 million of Kampala’s 1.8 million are living in areas that would qualify as slums. We also know that roughly 90% of Ugandans live in rural areas that have even less infrastructure. But we also know a lot of those same people have multiple mobiles (often via hand-down or sharing with peers and family).

It stands to reason that in these areas mobiles might signifigantly outnumber light bulbs.

(From http://appfrica.net/blog/2009/07/14/2134/)

Uganda forests rapidly disappearing

June 20th, 2009

At the left, patches of burnt grass are seen in a tree forest in the Ugandan north-eastern plains in 2007.

Uganda has lost nearly a third of its forest cover since 1990 due to expanding farmlands, a rapidly growing human population and increased urbanisation, a government report said on Friday.

Uganda's annual deforestation rate has climbed 21 percent since the end of the 1990s. The country lost an average of 86,400 hectares of forest—or 2.1 percent of its forest cover—per year between 2000 and 2005. On a generational time scale, Uganda lost 26.3 percent of its forest cover (1.3 million hectares) between 1990 and 2005. Like Burundi, land-clearing in Uganda results mostly from subsistence farming and cutting for fuelwood. This forest loss is directly threatening some of the highest concentrations of biodiversity in Africa: Uganda is home to more than 5,000 plant species, 345 species of mammals, and 1,015 types of birds.

Before the rule of Idi Amin, Uganda had a relatively sound environmental record. During his dictatorship (1971-1979), the forests suffered from civil and political strife (and much of Uganda's big wildlife was killed off by hungry soldiers with machine guns), and by ten years after his exit, Uganda had lost 50 percent of its forests, including virtually all of its primary forests.

Then between 1990 and 2005, Uganda lost 26.3 percent of its remaining forest cover, and deforestation continues today at a rate of 2.2 percent per year, mostly due to subsistence farming, cutting for fuelwood, and colonization by the burgeoning population.

While Uganda is famous for its mountain gorillas, it is home to some of the highest concentrations of biodiversity in Africa. More than 5,000 plant species are found in the country along with 345 mammals, 1,015 birds, 165 reptiles, and 43 amphibians.

Today very little of Uganda's forest cover is considered primary forest by the U.N. In spite of this, more than 25 percent of the country is under some form of protection— but it's still disappearing in land "trades", expanding farmlands, a rapidly growing human population, and increased urbanisation.

"The biggest challenge we have in the Government forest reserves is encroachment," Moses Watasa, the public relations manager of National Forest Authority, said in an interview last year. "The local people have discovered that it is possible to trade their votes in exchange for land under protected areas."

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has repeatedly sought to hand forest areas over to industrial developers and undermine the sanctity of reserves, and even blames the forestry agency for the deforestation.

But Museveni has been at odds with the National Forest Authority (NFA) over his attempts to grant 7,000 hectares of Mabira forest "reserve"— actually a postage-stamp sized piece of pristine woods, in the midst of which has been built a tourist hotel— to a sugar cane plantation company. He has also sought to hand over a forest reserve on Bugala island in Lake Victoria to oil palm developers. Both projects were shelved in response to local protests (Mabira in October 2007, Bugala in May 2007), but Museveni has been battling the NFA over evictions of encroachers in protected forests, ordering the agency to halt evictions in 2005.

"When we go against the encroachers, politicians and businessmen who deal in items like timber resist us," Watasa continued. "It has got to an extent where NFA officials have been assaulted in the process of securing the forests."

In 1990, the east African nation had more than five million hectares of forest cover but by 2005 only 3.5 million hectares (8.6 million acres) remained, the report, published by Ugandan's National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), said.
If deforestation continues at the present rate Uganda will have lost all its forested land by 2050, it warned.

On average 10 percent of the population of Uganda has access to electricity, while the rest make do with firewood for cooking. Gas for cooking (even in bottles) is virtually unknown. "Because 89 percent of rural Ugandans rely on burning firewood for cooking, deforestation is occurring at an alarming rate," NEMA said. At least as seriously, wood is used for firing the bricks from which all new buildings are being made.

Compounding the problem is that Uganda, an east African country of roughly 31 million people, has one of the world's highest population growth rates.

Recent government estimates put the figure at more than seven live births per woman.

This growth rate has resulted in the expansion of built-up areas in urban areas, particularly around the capital Kampala.

Three districts surrounding Kampala lost more than 78 percent of their forestland since 1990, as people have migrated out of the increasingly crowded city into neighbouring regions, according to the report.

Meanwhile, also, in nearby Burundi, rates of forest clearing have risen by almost 48 percent since the close of the 1990s. In total, Burundi lost 137,000 hectares—or 47 percent of its forest cover—between 1990 and 2005. Today only some 152,000 hectares remain in the country—none of which is considered intact forest. As a result of this forest loss, gorillas and elephants are extinct in Burundi. Again, uncontrolled cutting of trees for fuelwood coupled with agricultural clearing and livestock grazing are the main causes for the nearly complete deforestation of the country.

On a more positive note, forest areas in Rwanda have expanded dramatically since the end of the brutal civil war in the mid-1990s. The national reforestation effort increased overall forest cover by an average of 8 percent per year between 2000 and 2005. While the country has virtually no old growth forest remaining, Rwanda is still home to its world famous population of mountain gorillas. These gorillas are an important reason why tourists are again returning to the country.

Data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and from a Uganda government report released this week.