For 10 years I have been going to East Africa, taking solar equipment to electrify homes and schools, orphanages, offices, hospitals, clinics, and whole villages in the rural hinterlands of Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. I have 10 years of experience leading teams of American young people and African youth into the bush to install the equipment and to witness what a transformation electricity makes in the lives of people and the development of their communities.

On our first mission trip, we went to the verge of the impenetrable forest to install small solar units in two cinderblock houses the government had built for some resettled pygmies. These strange little people sang, “You came all the way from America to bring us the light. ”˜Tukutendereza Jesu’.”

Over those years we have seen and done a lot….

Read it all.

Christianity Today has a really interesting interview with Ugandan theologian Emmanuel Katongole. We found his reflections on the interaction between church and culture particularly interesting in this age of globalisation and important to consider as we reasserting Anglicans form new partnerships with the Global South.
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From Tower-Dwellers to Travelers
Ugandan-born theologian Emmanuel Katongole offers a new paradigm for missions.

Interview by Andy Crouch | posted 7/03/2007

Christian leaders from five war-torn countries of East Africa gathered in Kampala, Uganda, last November to strengthen the church’s witness in the midst of conflict. They were convened by Emmanuel Katongole, a Catholic priest whose biography embodies both ethnic tension and Christian hope. Katongole was born and raised in Uganda, the son of Rwandan parents. His father embraced Christian faith as an adult, and his joyful seriousness about Christianity shaped Katongole, who joined the priesthood and trained as a philosophical theologian in Belgium. Katongole now teaches at Duke Divinity School, where he is co-director, with Chris Rice, of the Center for Reconciliation. He spoke with Andy Crouch about this year’s big question for the Christian Vision Project: What must we learn, and unlearn, to be agents of God’s mission in the world?

You’ve lived on three continents and in four countries, and your parents were from yet another country, Rwanda. How does your story affect your understanding of God’s mission in the world?

Being an immigrant can be a blessing. God’s mission, as I read it in 2 Corinthians 5:17, is new creation. God is reconciling the world to himself. And there is a sense of journey that is connected with that. When, later on, Paul says that “we are ambassadors of God’s reconciliation, God is appealing through us,” he is inviting us into a journey toward a new kind of community. People looking at Christians should be confused. Who are these people? Are they black? Are they white? Are they Americans? Are they Ugandans? In Revelation, John sees people drawn from all languages and tribes and nations: an unprecedented congregation. Living on three continents has deepened my understanding of the church as such a congregation; at the same time, it has heightened my sense of Christian life as a journey and of what it means to live as a pilgrim, a resident alien.

That is reminiscent of the name Christians gave themselves in Acts, “people of the Way.”

That is, the way of Jesus. I also take that to mean people on the way, on pilgrimage. We have settled too easily. Instead of living out that story of journey toward a new creation, we tend to live out the stories of nationality. And then we forget what it means to journey. It’s not difficult to see why we settle, because our nations or tribes or races try to convince us that life can’t get any better than this. They ask us, “Where would you want to go? Why would you want to leave?” This is not just something that happens in a superpower like America. Even small nations like Rwanda, even small tribes, have an America-sized imagination of themselves!

The challenge that Christianity faces in our time is the challenge of tribalism. There’s a church in Rwanda where the baptismal font still stands. But it bears the scars of being hacked by machetes, and the church was littered with thousands of bones of people who were killed. You couldn’t find a more strange and ironic and tragic image than that: a common baptism surrounded by killing in the name of Hutu and Tutsi.

Many of us feel we are beyond that, but the dynamics of national identity remain””even of ecclesial identity. We can be settled in our Catholic power. We can be settled in our Baptist, Episcopalian, Pentecostal, or evangelical identity, and we feel a certain power from that. We think that our mission derives from that power.

The story of the tower of Babel begins with people settled in the land. The tower speaks of strength, power, and stability. It speaks of the ability to stand above the land and survey it. Pilgrims don’t build a tower! In our day, I think what God is doing is exactly what he did for that tower””dispersing people, spreading them out, scattering them. Scattering, the way I read it in Genesis, is a good thing. It is part of God’s purpose for God’s people. It is meant to be good news for both Israel and the nations.

[…]

Are specific places and local identities important in a life of pilgrimage?

Absolutely. Pilgrimage actually makes us more aware of localness, because it brings us into contact with specific places and people. People sometimes ask me how “the church in America” should relate to “the church in Rwanda.” But that level of abstraction grows out of a tower-building mentality. There are only specific Americans from specific places with specific gifts and stories; there are only specific Rwandans.

The language of culture actually prevents us from engaging other people. It leads us to see ourselves as permanently separate from them: We have our culture, and they have theirs. It keeps us from allowing others to radically challenge us””that’s just their culture, you see, and it does not have anything to do with our culture.

What would it mean for Christians to have a certain naiveté about all these things called culture? How do we inhabit what we might call tactics instead of strategies? Strategy is the posture of an army, of a nation state, of a business that is able to conduct surveillance of its territory and all others. Tactics, on the other hand, are weapons of the weak, of those who have no place to call their own, who live in a territory that is surveilled and controlled by others.

Isn’t that a waste of our capacity to think strategically?

There are two dominant models of mission in our time. There is the model of mission as aid, which arises out of the great need we see in the world””famine, AIDS, poverty””and also out of a recognition of how much American Christians have. So American Christians go to Africa to help. This can be criticized as giving a person a fish for a day, but if that person is starving, then this model of mission actually does some good. A lot of people are being helped by this kind of mission. But the problem is that from this mission, Christians return to a tower. Their world remains their world, and Africa’s world remains Africa’s world.

Then there is the model of mission as partnership. It arises out of a sense of mutuality and solidarity between churches in the North and the South. So churches develop sister-parish relationships and so forth. The hope is to teach people how to fish, to equip them to do the fishing.

But as far as I can see, the pond in which they fish is still their pond. Christians in America have their own pond. We are still talking about your pond and our pond!

This model also overlooks the difference in power between America and the rest of the world. One gets an impression that because of the numerical strength of Africa’s church, Africans Christians can be equal partners with their Western counterparts. But we cannot pretend that the power of America does not exist. There is a new desire to learn from one another, but how deep does the learning go?

Read it all here.

From the New York Times:

Virtually every aspect of global migration can be seen in this tiny West African nation, where the number of people who have left approaches the number who remain and almost everyone has a close relative in Europe or America.

Migrant money buoys the economy. Migrant votes sway politics. Migrant departures split parents from children, and the most famous song by the most famous Cape Verdean venerates the national emotion, “Sodade,” or longing. Lofty talk of opportunity abroad mixes at cafe tables here with accounts of false documents and sham marriages.

The intensity of the national experience makes this barren archipelago the Galapagos of migration, a microcosm of the forces straining American politics and remaking societies across the globe.

Read it all.

Apparently making reference to the accumulation of wealth by the former president, Akinola who is ranked among the 100 most famous people in the world, also charged Obasanjo to dedicate the rest of his life to the service of God and his poor neighbours. He said: “This is not an option. You are used to giving orders to people. Now we give you order and decree from this pulpit, that you must dedicate the rest of your life to the service of God and in humble service of your poor neigh-bours. Two, you must seek reconciliation with people you deliberately or inadver-tently antagonised these many years. By the grace of God, you have everything in life.

“What is left for you is to be humble and to shed off everything of that excesses luggage that you have, all those side attractions. Every political expediency.

“All those military adven-turism, all those unholy financial pursuit must go. They must go!.

“You must seek reconci-liation with people you deliberately or inadvertently antagonised these many years. What is left for you is to be humble and to shed off everything of that excess luggage that you have and all those side attractions”.

Read the whole thing.

What are your priorities?
My priority is the economy. I’m keen to roll out policies that will ensure growth, so there will be job opportunities, and also look at infrastructure, particularly in the energy sector, which I see as a critical element in our quest for rapid development.

Most Nigerians have the impression that very little has been achieved in recent years.
These things take time. The government has signed a contract with the Chinese to generate 2,000 MW of hydroelectric power from the Mambila Plateau worth $1.5 billion, which will take four years to complete. Contracts such as this are being signed in virtually all key sectors of the economy. These achievements are phenomenal. With patience, we will all get there.

What about the fight against corruption? Critics say the outgoing regime has been inconsistent.
There has always been this claim, but I have not seen any evidence of inconsistency. But putting that aside, I will make sure all laws on corruption are meticulously enforced. We have enough laws to fight corruption. All we need is the will and commitment to enforce them.

Read it all.

Archbishop Pius Ncube, in an interview with the magazine Inside the Vatican, said that President Robert Mugabe has been using the army to inflict brutality for years.

The 60-year-old archbishop, speaking of the years before his episcopal ordination, said: “The 5th Brigade of Mugabe was killing innocent civilians — this amounted to more than 10,000. Some of these people were my relatives.

“Estimates are that between 10,000 and 20,000 innocent civilians had been killed. Some of these people were over 70 and 80 years old, which shows how merciless the dictator Mugabe is.”

In April, the bishops of Zimbabwe published a pastoral letter called “God Hears the Cry of the Oppressed.” The letter pointed to Mugabe as the cause of the country’s crisis.

Archbishop Ncube said: “It was imperative that such a letter be issued. The situation of the people was becoming worse and worse.

He added that after the letter’s publication, the regime increased efforts to frighten priests, though “the intimidation of clergy has been on going for a long time.”

Read it all.

(Church of Uganda)

In response to the recent announcement that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. and Rt. Hon. Rowan Williams, has sent out invitations to the 2008 Lambeth Conference of Bishops, the Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, the Most Rev. Henry Luke Orombi, made this statement:

On 9th December 2006, the House of Bishops of the Church of Uganda, meeting in Mbale, resolved unanimously to support the CAPA Road to Lambeth statement, which, among other things, states, “We will definitely not attend any Lambeth Conference to which the violators of the Lambeth Resolution are also invited as participants or observers.”

We note that all the American Bishops who consented to, participated in, and have continued to support the consecration as bishop of a man living in a homosexual relationship have been invited to the Lambeth Conference. These are Bishops who have violated the Lambeth Resolution 1.10, which rejects “homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture” and “cannot advise the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions nor ordaining those involved in same gender unions.”

Accordingly, the House of Bishops of the Church of Uganda stands by its resolve to uphold the Road to Lambeth.

The Most Rev. Henry Luke Orombi
ARCHBISHOP OF CHURCH OF UGANDA.

Listen to it all from the BBC (starts at about 12:20 in).

The Diocese of Lagos West Anglican Communion has said that the poverty level in the country is unacceptable and called on political leaders to be God-fearing and build better communities by the provision of social amenities for the people.

The diocese at its Second Session of the Third Synod held at Archbishop Vining Memorial Church Cathedral, Ikeja, condemned ills associated with those in authority today, and criticised “those in, and those who aspire to leadership positions in government and other spheres of endeavour for their personal gains, rather than for service to the people, and called upon such people to have a change of heart.”

In a communiqué issued at the end of the synod, the church urged the incoming government of Alhaji Umar Yar’Adua “to urgently and seriously address the issue of security of life and property. The situation where no one is safe is unacceptable. Government should be more sensitive to the value placed on human life and property.”

The Synod themed: “Church as a Catalyst for Change,” commended the judiciary for its strong and firm decisions in the recent past and urged “the incoming administration to stem the tide of frequent and flagrant disobedience of court orders. It should continue to uphold its role as the last hope of the common man.”

Read it all.

The drive to sanitise the offensive regime of Robert Mugabe has sucked in the Church, with the Anglican Church being the most high profile to have openly expressed views that chime with the daily propaganda that is churned out of the government controlled media. The Pastoral Letter of its Bishops released after the Episcopal Synod in April demonstrates how pliant and subjugated the Anglican Church has become to the regime of Robert Mugabe.

One would be forgiven for thinking this report was authored in the Munhumutapa Building as it bore an uncanny resemblance with, and has all the hallmarks of a George Charamba literary product. It has since emerged that some men of the cloth are dissociating themselves from this ecclesiastical fraud.

Students of African history would recall the assertion about “missionaries being forerunners of colonialism” throughout the length and breadth of the continent. The Nolbert Kunongas, Obadiah Msindos, Trevor Manhanga and other state apologists are craving to fill the void left by the late Border Gezi in delivering the church vote to the regime.

The Anglican Pastoral Report of April confirmed the widely held suspicions of the politicisation of the pulpit. The Anglican Bishops’ report was a PR coup for an embattled Robert Mugabe as it lent ecclesiastical approval to his obnoxious views about “illegal sanctions”. Kunonga and his fellow primates regard themselves as part of the African Church, and feel duty bound to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with this dictatorship.

One would have thought that the Pastoral letter would empathise with the suffering of its congregation and spoken about the causation of such suffering. Instead, the report parroted the official line that the suffering was a consequence of sanctions. There was a glaring lack of understanding of the dynamics at play in the country and clearly one could see nothing but a resonance with the daily propaganda stuff churned out daily in the Herald and other state media.

That the Herald gave the Report a ringing and rapturous endorsement speaks volumes for how grateful the regime was for the support from these men of cloth. It was in stark contrast to the reception that was given to the Pastoral Letter that was released by the Catholic Bishops at Easter.

The Pastoral Letter led to the Catholic Bishops being labelled opponents of the state and would therefore be treated as such, whilst the Anglican Bishops were garlanded and lauded for their patriotism. The Anglican Bishops report demonstrated just how far removed these primates are from the harsh reality that obtain in the country.

Read it all.

Dear All,

In response to requests for comments on the Lambeth Conference invitations, Archbishop Peter Akinola reaffirms that the Church of Nigeria is committed to the CAPA commissioned report “The Road to Lambeth”
(link here for Road to Lambeth doc)

Since only the first set of invitations had been sent, it is premature to conclude who will be present or absent at the conference. However, the withholding of invitation to a Nigerian bishop, elected and consecrated by other Nigerian bishops will be viewed as withholding invitation to the entire House of Bishops of the Church of Nigeria.

The Lord bless you as you remain in Christ

The Venerable AkinTunde Popoola
Director of Communications
Primate’s Office, 24 Douala Str., Wuse Zone 5, P.O. Box 212 ADCP, Abuja,
F.C.T., Nigeria.