Continent in Crisis

The swift and bewildering changes in a continent nearly four times as large as the United States might well deter the observer from rash pronouncement on Africa’s future. Thirty-one new states within a mere fourteen years have brought a host of new and complex problems. An estimated 7,000 people lost their lives after Zanzibar became independent. On the other coast of the continent is a president who, regarding himself as an African Lenin, is trying to revise Marxism in the light of his country’s needs. In South Africa the policy of apartheid sanctioned a Cape Town advocate’s 168 days’ detention in solitary confinement without his having been charged with any offense. Further north is a country which achieved autonomy this month, and in which many people have already been killed through the enforcement of a one-party system of government.

What now is the Church’s role? Mr. Aston King, editor of Monrovia’s The Liberian Age, told Dr. Carl F. H. Henry of CHRISTIANITY TODAY: “The African continent is a ship without a rudder and compass. If it aspires only to material gains, and is not guided by Christian principles, it will be headed swiftly for the fate that overtook the Roman Empire. There are definite signs of moral deterioration. The Church of Christ is not aggressive enough in the life of the nation; especially does it lack a program for young people. But it is not too late for the churches. Their challenge is to reach the ordinary man with the understanding that Christianity is a way of life—not just a one-day-a-week affair, not merely a set of rules … but rather the finding of one’s complete self-fulfillment in Jesus Christ.”

A similar interview recorded some words of Mr. Ernest K. Martin, educational secretary of Cameroons Baptist Mission in Soppo, descendant of a Creole tribal chief, former member of the Cameroons Legislative Assembly, and a fourth-generation Christian. “Africa is in the balances,” he declared, “and which way it will go is difficult to say. But the only saving grace for Africa will be a strong commitment to Christian principles. Where Christianity is firmly rooted one finds stability and hope. The spread of Christianity holds the key to the future of the African continent. The missionaries should increase rather than relax their efforts.”

Such efforts are at present complicated by a number of factors. There is tension between evangelical missions and the ecumenists. The latter point up the divisions among churches (or missions) and their failure to accelerate Africanization. Their aim is to substitute for mission leaders the best ecumenical foreigners and carefully chosen nationals who are offered travel and study fellowships at certain centers abroad. The trouble is that most African leaders have not yet had to carry on doctrinal battle of any kind and therefore do not always see the need to contend for the faith. This discernment may come in time, but meanwhile in the wake of independence may ensue a confusing period when the strongest evangelicals are harassed by a rather reckless ecumenicity that disowns the missions, foreign bishops, and so on. This will be justified on the ground that Africans can best be reached through indigenous missionaries, and that Communism and Islam have already profited from having learned this lesson.

On the importance of trained African Christian leadership, Dr. Ben Marais of Pretoria University says: “In some African countries … leaders are drawing away from the Church … because the church leadership is not educated and alive enough to hold the interest of these men. This may increasingly happen if the leadership of the Church is not more informed and better equipped for its task. The Roman Catholic Church was quicker to grasp the significance of this.…”

A further snag stems front African Christian disappointment with the Church: that she has not trained her members in political action as one element in the life of citizenship and has tended to give the impression that Christianity is a simple alternative to political action in this world. In some oddly prophetic words thirty-eight years ago at a missionary conference in Southern Rhodesia, the Rev. John White said: “Have we nothing to say to our people about the right solution of these problems with which they are suddenly confronted? We have preached to them Jesus. Have we nothing to tell them about the spirit in which he would meet these difficulties and the implications of his teaching on their settlement? I think Paul would have considered any other interpretation of his ministry much too restricted.…”

This is not to deny the tremendous debt that Africa owes to missions. Many of the new national leaders are mission-trained. Independence for so many of these lands would not have been possible without the Christian teaching on the worth of the individual, his place in society, his direct relationship to God. But the Church must waste no time looking backward merely to point this out. New problems are waiting to be solved. The need is desperate. Dr. James Denney’s words on Asia half a century ago are relevant to the modern Africa: “What a frightful prospect it would open up,” said the Scots divine, “if the vast populations … should master the resources of Christian civilization and be left with none but pagan impulses to direct them!”

For two centuries ships have been bringing to Africa books from Europe. Apart from Scriptures in the vernacular, the type of books sent has often displayed a dismal lack of imagination. Even today in many parts of Africa, textbooks are being read laboriously in stifling hot classrooms, giving exercises in grammar concerned with snow and scarves. In history classes King Alfred is still burning the cakes; in nature study the sturdy old English oak gets frequent mention—and generations of pupils are hindered from gaining real understanding of their lessons. Most big secular publishers abroad are now sending textbooks written in Africa by those conversant with conditions there, but what Christian books are being unloaded from those same ships? They are the same books that have been written in England for English eyes, with few exceptions. The one who is Lord in the context of snow and scarves in Birmingham needs to be shown vividly as Lord also in an overpoweringly hot office in Lagos or in a kitchen in Mombasa. There is need to deal with the old traditional concepts in Africa about God and nature, man and the spirit world, which are deeply rooted in the minds of even Christian Africans. This calls for nothing less than African Christian thinking, and for research into actual situations in African social, economic, and political life today and their interpretation in the light of Scripture. These are the aims of the African Christian Press, recently established in Kumasi, Ghana.

Nowhere does money given to the Lord’s work go farther than in missions. For example, in America it would cost about $250,000 to endow a theological professorship; in Egypt it can be done for $15,000. Even a very modest library in America would cost about $75,000 or $100,000; in Cameroon it can be built for $7,500. Here is a list of eight practical needs on the mission fields of Africa whose fulfillment would help to set ahead the evangelical Christian witness:

1. Cameroon: $7,500 to build a library for Saker College, a secondary school for girls, with an expected enrollment of 350 by September of 1965. Location: Victoria, West Cameroon. Sponsor: North American Baptist Conference, 7308 West Madison Street, Forest Park, Illinois.

2. Egypt: $15,000 to endow the chair of theology for a fulltime national professor in the Evangelical Theological Seminary of Cairo, which is owned and administered by the Synod of the Nile under the Coptic (Egyptian) Evangelical Church. Sponsor: Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations, Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., 475 Riverside Drive, New York, New York.

3. Kenya: $10,000 to provide transportation and meals for an East African pastors’ conference for the 300 ordained African ministers of Uganda, Tanganyika, and Kenya, to assist them in developing spiritual growth at grass roots. Location: probably Nairobi, Kenya. Requested sponsor: World Vision, P.O. Box 1, Pasadena, California.

4. Liberia: $10,000 for additional equipment and supplies for the newly dedicated hospital serving Liberian nationals at Radio Village, ELWA. Location: Monrovia, Liberia. Sponsor: Sudan Interior Mission, 164 West 74th Street, New York, New York.

5. French literature: $10,000 launching fund (buildings and equipment) for Champion, new French counterpart of Africa Challenge, aimed at evangelizing French readers among 60 million in French-African countries. Thirty-five thousand copies of an experimental issue have been distributed. Location: Niger-Challenge Press, Private Mailbag 2067, Lagos, Nigeria. Sponsor: Sudan Interior Mission, 164 West 74th Street, New York, New York.

6. South Africa: $15,000 for a revolving fund to build five churches for Eurafricans in specially designated colored townships. Location: outside Johannesburg, South Africa. Sponsor: Evangelical Alliance Mission, 2845 West McLean Avenue, Chicago 47, Illinois.

7. The Arab world: $15,000 for the translation and publication in Arabic of noteworthy evangelical theological works. Sponsor: Arabic Literature Mission (formerly Nile Mission Press), Box 5439, Beirut, Lebanon. Also $10,000 for Arabic evangelical magazine for Muslims in North Africa. Sponsor: Moody Literature Mission, 820 N. LaSalle Street, Chicago 10, Illinois.

8. Bible translation: $10,000 to assist in the completion of the translation and production of the Lingala Bible which together with Scriptures in other Congolese languages is urgently requested by the chief of chaplains of the Congolese armed forces. Lingala is the language most widely used by the army. Sponsor: American Bible Society, 450 Park Avenue, New York 22, New York.

Malawi: Another New Nation

The world’s population explosion is paralleled by an explosion in the birthrate of new nations. Since 1950 Africa alone has borne more than thirty new, free, independent nations. This month out of her social and political travail another independent country began life.

The thirty-first new nation is Malawi, the name given to what under seventy-three years of British rule was known as Nyasaland. Amid the din of cheers, stomping, and dancing, political control passed from the country’s minority of about 9,000 whites to over three million Negroes. Her first prime minister, Dr. H. Kamuzu Banda, has no illusions about the country’s difficulties stemming from “ignorance, poverty, and disease.” But he was confident she would act in freedom. Under what he termed a policy of “Discretionary Non-alignment,” he promised to follow now the East and now the West, whichever does what is right and good for his country.

The mysteries of the world’s population explosion remain shrouded despite scientific investigation. But while the explosive birth of free nations is a complex of social and political travail, the cause of the explosion is not hidden. For centuries most of Africa slumbered on the banks of world history, unperturbed by the stormy rush of world affairs. Much of the great continent had little awareness of the past and little sense of future destiny. Almost without past or future, great sections of Africa lived in a dreamlike present.

And then the disturbance came in the person of the missionary who proclaimed that man came from God and had been met by God in Jesus Christ, the Christ who delivers man from his past and opens for him an authentic future. This Gospel infused a dynamic into Africa’s present, and this dynamic accounts for her turmoil today. It was not from official pronouncements of ecclesiastical conventions that the African learned of human dignity and the right of men to be free, but from the missionaries of the Cross who proclaimed salvation through Jesus Christ.

Malawi is a case in point. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Nyasaland was not open to Europeans until the arrival of the pioneer missionary, David Livingstone, on September 16, 1859. Although only 11 per cent of her population is classified as Christian, the yeast of the Gospel permeated her masses until today they have demanded their freedom and obtained their right of self-determination.

Having learned from the preaching and teaching of Christian missionaries about human dignity and the right of a people to self-determination, Africa awoke from her slumber and began to stir. None should understand the ferment of social and political unrest in Africa better than the Church. Awake to freedom, Africa sees her poverty, ignorance, and disease for what they are, something that free men can do something about.

We hope and pray that Malawi will recognize the source of her freedom. If she does, she will reject those offers for the elimination of her poverty and disease that, once accepted, would wither the roots from which her newfound freedom stems.

Value Is Where You Find It

In a society greedy for the external symbols of success, it is refreshing to hear of James J. Fahey, a suburban Boston garbage-collector. He has written a sensitive portrayal of the Pacific War as seen through the eye of a sailor. Published a year ago, the book is now going into a sixth printing; a paperback publisher plans a million paperbacks, and the author is being approached by motion-picture companies for screen rights.

Fahey’s book brought him to the White House and brings him a continual stream of invitations to literary teas on Beacon Hill and cocktail parties at Boston’s Ritz. He declines the invitations, not because he is a non-drinker—which he is—but because he is just too busy. Doing what? His job, collecting garbage. He claims that he is not an author and that his book was a “literary freak.” In spite of the carrot of success that dangles so temptingly before his eyes, he says, “I’ve been a garbage man for the city of Waltham for fourteen years. I still drive a garbage truck and, I guess, I always will until I retire with my civil service pension.” He lives on a take-home income of less than ninety dollars a week; his thousands of dollars in royalties have been donated for the erection of a Roman Catholic church in South India.

Fahey will soon go to New York to receive a special award as “Garbage Man of the Year.” He vetoed the proposed title of “Sanitation Man of the Year” on the ground that the kids on his route say, “ ‘Hey, Mom, here comes the garbage man.’ They don’t say, ‘Here comes the sanitation man.’ ”

The likes of such a man one does not often see. His recognition of the dignity of life’s common tasks would make him a good son of the Reformation, and his sense of values is considerably more perceptive than that of success-hungry people—certainly more perceptive than that of the fifteen publishers who rejected his manuscript. If the book reflects the values of this garbage man, it should be a good book. Value is where you find it, and that is often not where men think it is. Many a parent, and many a minister, wishes he could get this point across to young people before whose eyes our culture hangs so many symbols of value that are as phony as they are deceptively attractive.

Honest Before God

Christians need to be honest to God and honest before God. One of the best ways to determine one’s honesty before God is to examine one’s giving for the propagation of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. When this is done, it becomes woefully apparent that there is not much honesty before God in financial matters having to do with missionary endeavor.

According to the latest statistics published by the Department of Stewardship and Benevolence of the National Council of Churches, the per capita missionary giving of almost 41 million church members was $2.16 a year. This brought to almost $88 million the amount given by these church members for foreign missions in 1962.

The $2.16 figure means that the average church member gave approximately four cents a week for foreign missions. But this does not tell the whole story. The per capita average of the American Baptist Convention was $1.75. For the Southern Baptist Convention it was $1.87. The Methodist Church averaged $1.46. The United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. averaged $3.20. The giving of the Protestant Episcopal Church was $1.72 per member.

Some of the smaller denominations gave far more liberally. The Christian and Missionary Alliance per capita missionary giving was $55.26; the Evangelical Free Church, $32.36. The Evangelical Mennonite Church figure was $34.29, and the Free Methodist Church, $16.86.

Statistics can always be abused. But it seems that denominational bigness does not beget a corresponding bigness in giving for foreign missions. Almost without exception the small denominations outdid the large ones in foreign missionary giving. The large denominations might do well to ascertain the reasons for their small missionary giving and then do something about challenging their people to give more liberally for such an important cause.

There is no reason but apathy why missionary giving cannot be trebled in a few years. And if it is trebled, it will still be far from truly sacrificial giving by the Christian public. Perhaps the blessing of God is being withheld because of niggardliness about an essential part of the witness of the Church.

When Streets Are Unsafe

Public apathy toward a growing spirit of lawlessness in the United States is an appalling reflection upon the citizenry.

No informed person can deny that widespread disrespect for civil authority, a wholesale flaunting of established ordinances, and lagging law enforcement and judicial corrective are common to many American metropolitan centers. Habitual offenders openly taunt the public in general and police in particular. In Washington, D. C., recently, an alien from Albania shot a young policeman to death; the alien was under deportation orders reportedly unenforceable because the United States does not have diplomatic relations with Albania.

The cliché, “You can’t even walk the streets,” reminds the Bible student of ancient Israel, where “the highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through byways” (Judges 5:6) to escape violence. Yet the lack of concern over the crime rate is deeply distressing. The attitude attributed to the Laodiceans, “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing” (Rev. 3:17), seems to underlie much of this lack of social sensitivity. A people lacking moral indignation and spiritual aspiration may have material abundance; yet they are not mere spectators of a declining culture but contributors to its decline.

In a democracy, one of the consequences of mass irresponsibility with offenders’ gaining the upper hand is loss of freedom as the public tends in desperation to take matters into its own hands. This is exactly what has happened in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, where crime became so rampant that the ultra-conservative Hasidic Jewish community organized a dusk-to-dawn citizens’ patrol.

We have some serious reservations about such an arrangement, particularly regarding the possibility of providing a bad precedent for taking the law into one’s own hands. But we command the motivation of the leader, the young Rabbi Samuel Shrage, and we believe it is to the credit of the contemporary “Maccabees” that the area has seen a 90 per cent reduction in muggings, assaults, and robberies. As additional police now in training are assigned, the citizens’ patrol plans to disband, and in this it is in contrast with such anti-social and sub rosa groups as the Ku Klux Klan. We shall hope that the new condition of peace in Crown Heights will continue.

Needed—A Third Voice

The broad direction of American politics in recent decades has occasioned mounting criticism and determined dissent. Only through awareness of such discontents can one understand the Republican nomination of Senator Barry Goldwater as a presidential standard-bearer. The Democratic nomination of President Lyndon Johnson, a foregone conclusion, promises a heated debate in months ahead on the very essentials of American political philosophy. Every four years American voters declare an “open season” on politicians and their parties. While the verbal pyrotechnics of a campaign usually astonish European neighbors, free exchange of conviction almost always effects a welcome catharsis.

Of the dire need of reformation of political life there can be little doubt. Nor may this need be confined to such features as centralization of political power, expansion of government bureaucracy, the evils of inflation, and a protective attitude toward moral corruption in office. These concerns are serious indeed, and sensitive leaders in both parties will be properly disturbed about them. But if an evangelical Protestant may speak his mind, the current critique of American political manifestations does not strike down to the roots. Both those who condemn extremists and the extremists themselves fail to go deeply enough.

The American political scene desperately calls for a renewal of commitment to those principles of enduring social morality that make for national greatness. We do not speak of a “Christian political party.” Nor do we have in mind advocacy of a “Christian amendment.” But neither has a political “hands off” policy anything to commend it. The political debate needs to be lifted to a higher level of social and ethical concern, and evangelical Christians who are politically informed are best equipped to do this. America’s two-party system exists neither through biblical necessity nor through historical inevitability, but through a highly serviceable political philosophy. Today it needs a third voice to speak out and remind all candidates that God wears no party button and that the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount were not drawn up by a platform committee.

Historically, our nation is rooted in the Judeo-Christian ethic. To render its highest and most ennobling service, this ethic must be taken seriously by a people and reflected honestly in the utterances and lives of her spokesmen, the politicians. Religious verbalism and professional piety are not enough. An infinite God cannot be contained within the postscript to a campaign speech.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.