Whither
Christianity in the New Century?
Talk
to the African Spiritual Fellowship
David
Kilgour
St.
John's Church
November
3, 2002
Ottawa
Permit
me, as a Protestant speaking in
a Protestant Church on a day very
close to Reformation Day on the
calendar to voice some complimentary
thoughts about our suffering brother
John Paul II and his visit this
summer to Canada:
-
The
visit appeared to have an impact
on many across our country of
many faiths and probably some
of no religion at all.
For example, those who
gathered for his final mass—the
estimates ranged from 800, 000
to 1.2 million—constituted the
largest-known gathering in our
entire national history.
In a numbers sense at
least, it invites a contemporary
reply to Joseph Stalin’s query,
“How many divisions has the
Pope?”
This pontiff has many
both in Canada and across the
planet.
-
Jonathan
Kwitny’s 1997 book, Man of
the Century—The Life and Times
of Pope John Paul II, makes
many important points, including:
-
“…the
Cold War was won not by Washington,
but by a non-violent mass movement,
like those of Mahatma Ghandi
and Martin Luther King, Jr.,
led by a man whose religious
office has precluded him from
talking about it openly.
(Pope John Paul II) as
bishop of Krakow, forged the
Solidarity revolution—in his
philosophy classes, his community
synods, his secret ordination
of covert priests, his clandestine
communication seminars, the
smuggling network (of Bibles,
etc) he oversaw throughout the
Eastern Bloc, and above all
by his example.”
-
Contrary
to the view that successive
American governments helped
Solidarity to topple the regime
in Warsaw, Kwitny concludes
that not only did “the White
House deny aid to a desperate
Solidarity, by evidence it tried
to help John Paul’s opponents
destroy Solidarity… What defeated
communism was not any incapacity
to build weapons, but an incapacity
to accommodate the human spirit.”?
-
And
finally, as Kwitny notes, many
miss what is important about
His Holiness because they disagree
with his views on sex.
“…His clearest changes
in Catholic doctrine as Pope
have been toward pacifism, respect
for other religions, and willingness
to admit error. His blunders have been big—abetting major
financial and sex crimes, wounding
friends, fuelling lethal conflict
with Orthodox Christians—but
born of good intent”.
I hasten to add, as you
probably know, that the Pope
did mention while in Canada
his profound angst about the
issue of sex crimes by some
priests.
On
a range of subjects, Kwitny’s
732-page book, which he spent
eight years researching, really
opened my eyes.
Let me mention only three:
On developing
nations and neo-colonialism
His
Holiness was always blunt in opposing
colonialism in any form.
For example, in the early
1970’s, he spoke out against “the
phenomenon called neo-colonialism—meaning
the exploitation of nations by
other nations, of the poor by
the rich, of the weak by the stronger…
injustice felt… throughout the
world…by nations, and by social
groups.”
On
women’s rights
Even
in the 1970’s, John Paul II argued
that mothers rearing children
full-time “should be treated as
working people with a right to
a pension.”
He called for better vacations
for families, more medical faculties
specializing in pregnancy and
birth, more preschools for working
families, and pay incentives to
encourage teachers, nurses and
social workers to care for problem
children.
As Kwitny notes, “many
Western feminists would come to
view (him) as an enemy simply
because of his stance on reproduction,
unaware that for decades he dad
been battling to fulfill much
of their other agenda.”
On
human rights and peace
As
Pope, he often told gatherings:
“Where there is no justice…
there can be no peace…Where there
is no respect for human rights…
there can be no peace, because
every violation of personal dignity
favours rancor and the spirit
of revenge.” We can all think
of too many nations across the
world where these words apply.
Recently,
I came across a most interesting
article, “The Next Christianity”
in the October issue of The
Atlantic Monthly and would
strongly recommend it to you.
Philip Jenkins’ piece might
be summarized thus:
·
Christianity
around the world today is “growing
and mutating in ways that observers
in the West tend not to see.”
This century will in all
likelihood be one in which religions
of various kinds replace ideology
as the key force, for better or
worse, across the planet.
·
A
new Christian Counter-revolution
is already underway beyond affluent
suburbs in North America and elsewhere
in the industrialized democracies.
Jenkins describes it as “super-naturalism
and neo-orthodoxy… a vision of
Jesus as the embodiment of divine
power, who overcomes the evil
forces that inflict calamity and
sickness upon the human race.”
·
In
the global South, he notes, huge
and growing Christian populations—360
million in Africa, 480 million
in Latin America and 313 million
in Asia, compared with only 260
million in North America, are
already dominant in the Christian
faith.
In fact, the centres of
the Christian world have already
moved “to Africa, to Latin America,
and to Asia…(the) balance will
never shift back.”
·
In
the case of Africa, for example,
the article notes that there were
in 1900 only ten million Christians
in a continental population of
107 million—about nine percent.
Today there are about 360 million
African Christians out of 784
million residents (46 percent)
on the entire continent.
·
Within
25 years, the world’s Christians
are expected to grow to about
2.6 billion.
By 2025, half of the Christian
population will live in Africa
and Latin America and another
17 percent in Asia.
By then, Jenkins notes,
“the proportion of non-Latino
whites among the world’s Christians
will have fallen to perhaps one
in five.”
·
Christianity
in the global south, he says,
is “…more conservative than the
Northern—especially the American
version.”
It is personified by Nigeria’s
Francis Cardinal Arinze, who has
served as president of the Pontifical
Council for Inter-Religious Dialogues.
Arinze is orthodox in his
catholicism and as has opposed
many reforms advocated by liberal
Northerners.
·
Pentecostal
Christians, who began as a movement
only at the beginning of the 20th
century, are already 400 million
strong—and heavily concentrated
in the global South—but by 2040
there could be as many as a billion.
In
short, diplomats, political leaders
and everyone else should henceforth
pay as much attention to religions
as to the location of oil fields,
etc.
Contrary to what many northerners
think, both Christianity and Islam
are the rising faiths of many
throughout the world.
The
Quest for God
Currently,
I’m reading The Quest for God by the British historian Paul
Johnson. He starts with the point
that the existence or non-existence
of God is the most important question
humans are called to answer. “In
a Godless world, there is no obvious
basis for altruism of any kind;
moral anarchy takes over and the
rules of self prevails.”
For
Johnson, one of the extraordinary
things about the twentieth century
was the failure of God to be driven
out of our consciousness. Despite
the best efforts of Marx, Hagel,
Huxley, Nietzsche, Russell, Shaw,
Sartre and many other writers
not to mention Stalin, Hitler
and the many other very bad leaders,
belief in God continued amongst
most of humanity.
He
notes human evil/brutality has
cost the more than 150 million
people in the century we just
left. Both the Nazi Reich and
the Soviet Union were “Godless
constructs: modern paganism in
the first case and openly proclaimed
atheist materialism in the second.”
Paul
Johnson explains why he thinks
our Creation is a God of beauty:
“It was Wendsworth who pointed
out that a poor man is just as
capable of enjoying beauty and
putting it high in his scale of
values, as a rich man. The people
of West Africa, who have little
but their national pride, may
well be happy that their small
country is capable of creating
a cathedral on the scale of Europe’s
largest, and that the black African
can pay his or her tribute to
Almighty God just as magnificently
as the white Westerner.” Having
been to that cathedral in Cote
d’Ivoire, I’ll be interested in
your thoughts.
Conclusion
Billy Graham in his book Peace with God states that
everyone is on a “Great Quest.”
We live in countries full of people
who are searching for something
and most of us are unsure of what
that is, says Graham.
We fill in that void in
various ways – education, science,
marriage, and wealth – but for
the most part we are still left
empty. The truth is we are searching
for a spiritual connection; something
that binds us to the truth and
the eternal; the soul of mankind
and the mind of God. An interfaith
group such as ASF demonstrates
that you are united in your belief
in God and your quest for spiritual
connection regardless of your
own religion.
The Dalai Lama in his "Thoughts
on September 11" says:
“A central teaching in most spiritual
traditions is: What you wish
to experience, provide
for another. If you wish to experience
peace, provide peace for another.
If you wish to heal your own sadness
or anger, seek to heal the sadness
or anger of another.” How true!
I believe that if we can
learn to fully understand what
the Daili Lama means and what
it entails, maybe that will mark
that start of our journey to fill
the spiritual vacuum that exists
within us.
Please let us pray:
For the God we have re-created in our
image, dressed up in fine robes
and golden crowns, set apart from
the world, untouched, sanitized,
fenced off from humanity...
Forgive
us
For
the world we have destroyed because
of our creeds and doctrine; for
ancient cultures ruined by our
arrogant religion, through domination
and fear making Christianity a
crutch, a policy and a weapon...
Forgive
us
For
the church we have built, based
on our power rather than people,
constructing an institution rather
than a body of love, making the
community safely ineffective rather
than dangerously relevant,
Forgive
us.
Read
"The
Perfect Pastor"
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