I-YOUniverse

  Wrongly accused of cutting telegraph wires, a young Sikh was taken from his home by British soldiers and flogged publicly. His friends called on C. F. Andrews, Anglican clergyman and friend of India, afraid the man would do violence to himself or others. Meeting him, Andrews realized words would not suffice. Instead, Andrews knelt and touched his feet, asking for forgiveness.

The gesture, familiar in the East, broke through his humiliation and rage. Through the conversation that followed the man reported that he had forgiven the injustice and his face lit up with joy and peace. 

This is an example of what Bonhoeffer meant by Christianity “from below,” Christianity that doesn’t arrogate power and privilege for itself.

It’s from Christ in the Silence [(London: Hodder & Stoughton. 1933), pp. 94-96], C. F. Andrews’ exposition of the Farewell Discourses of the gospel of John, the interior life underlying his years of service to India, Britain, and the world.

Wonder what such an approach could mean in the world today.

I never take media storms at face value. Take, for instance, this controversy over Jeremiah Wright. 

His comments were inflammatory. His ministry has been remarkable, though. He is highly regarded by responsible leaders. What if you sweep aside the distortion of sound-byte reporting and statements made in the heat of accusation-innuendo and the glare of the 15-seconds-of-fame spotlight? What if he has something to say? What if, though you disagree with certain statements, you find truth in his overall message?

During my friend Jean-Emile Ngué’s visit we watched the film Gandhi. The independence of India through spiritual struggle is one of the great victories of the 20th century. I’m intrigued by the Anglican clergyman C.F. Andrews, who showed up in South Africa to support Gandhi. Few of the English supported racial equality.

How did this clergyman escape the racism of his age? How did he so effectively identify with the Indian people?

I believe in missions and in the contributions missionaries have made. Missionaries way too often proselytize, however, and make converts twice the children of  hell as themselves (Mt 23.15). I’ve come to believe we need to go meet Christ among the people we serve, for Christ is already there. Too often what we bring is our own narrow white North American consumer culture.

Especially today, although 9/11 has changed our welcome of international students, the best opportunity in missions we have is the international students here. Think of the impact we could have by adopting students in our churches. Many live on starvation rations. A home away from home, no strings attached, would constitute worthy service in itself as well as plant seeds of Christian compassion. If a thinly disguised program to evangelize, though, such an effort would be disingenuous and sure to fail. We need to leave the winning to God, and simply do the loving.

I recall visiting a lovely SBC church in Gary, Indiana. It had a commercial style kitchen, fellowship hall, sanctuary to seat 300. But only four people attended, and there were bullet holes in the windows. Why? I asked the local Baptist leader. He said, “The problem is, you have to be converted twice to get into our churches. First, you have to become a Southerner, then a Christian.”

The great issue we face (perhaps not the greatest, but close), is racism. So many churches demand converts to be white first. I cannot speak for black churches.

What’s required is for us as individuals, if churches will not, is to become part of the lives of people in our cities, which are not whites only, to care about the issues people care about, to offer unconditional love. I’m afraid what most of us love unconditionally is our comfortable lifestyle. We live in a balloon of white privilege.

I’m still poring over The Ordeal of Love: C.F. Andrews and India (NY: Oxford, 1979) by Hugh Tinker. I found a used copy on Amazon. I’ve also found the two volumes of his Christian witness What I Owe to Christ and Christ in the Silence, which I will be reading soon. I’ve also found a terrific site for liberation theology reading at Liberation Theology Resources Online.

At our house through DVDs we’re reliving The Waltons, the mythic story of a family in Appalachian Virginia during the great depression. Sandy brings dinner into the living room on wicker TV trays, and we settle in for a feel-good hour. OK, sure, the show rasps off all the rough edges.

But I can’t imagine too many shows today that would continue to feature a star after a stroke, as Waltons did Ellen Corby. On TCM I looked for her as a much younger woman in I Remember Mama; she got more beautiful as the years passed, especially the lovely shots of her in the Waltons reunion show, on Easter Sunday.

Last night, we made it through half of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I had remembered the cute child “Short Run,” but even he couldn’t hold our attention. So we switched and watched a Waltons episode about the Revival Meeting.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Preacher

The evangelist arrives in town, demanding to go to the local den of iniquity. The preacher suggests the nearest they have is the Dew Drop Inn, which serves beer as Jason Walton pounds out country ballads on the upright piano. The evangelist blasts the patrons with the news that they’re going to hell, if they don’t come to his meeting and get saved.

Young Ben Walton happens to be there with ne’er do well Yancey Tucker. The outraged preacher sends him home.

John and Olivia are divided, John having never been a church-going man. He insists the children be let alone to make up their own minds. But the saved siblings tease those who are lost, particularly Ben. He asks why he should get baptized if Daddy never has.

Peacocks and Other Sinners

John does go to the meeting, but, as the preacher yells at the top of his lungs, John walks out, drenched in the rain. I can’t help wondering if that isn’t symbolic of John’s being a natural-born man of God, whose faith doesn’t express itself through ritual.

Each  episode seems to have a symbol parallel to the story. In this one the symbol is a peacock. Jim-Bob names it Rover; when he confines it to the barn so that it won’t fly off, it begins to lose its feathers. At last, persuaded he must let it go, he releases it and it roosts in the tree-house. There it cries through the night, until Jim-Bob goes outside to keep it company.

Maybe the subtext is that the church folk need to go outside the walls of the safe and familiar.

Seeing with an Outsider’s Eyes

Having given most of my life to the church and been baptized twice, I’m now seeing things more from John’s point of view.

American Christians have lost a lot of ground the past several decades, by throwing our weight around. I wonder if we will only reach people today “from below,” in Bonhoeffer’s words; outside the corridors of power, in the alleys with Mother Teresa, and on strike with the sanitation workers and Martin Luther King Jr.

As for the century, the Indian poet Tagore expressed it like this:

Alas, shadowy Africa,
Under your black veil
Your human aspect remained unknown,
Blurred by the murk of contempt….
You wailed wordlessly, muddied the soil of your steamy jungles
With blood and tears;
The hobnailed boots of your violators
Stuck gouts of that stinking mud
Forever on your stained history.

Meanwhile across the sea in their native parishes
Temple-bells summoned your conquerors to prayer…

“Africa,” by Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Poems, trans. William Radice, (NY: Penguin, 1985).

A Christian whose example we might follow is William Wilberforce, whose determined efforts led to the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. (His story is told in the 2006 film Amazing Grace.)

Hope of the Hopeless

Flipping through the channels, I heard one scientist say that we’re headed for another mass extinction like the one that occurred 65 million years ago. On CNN was a review of the documentary I.O.U.S.A., a serious look at the public debt, which will shackle our grandchildren.

I struggle to find hope. There are historical examples of civilizations that used up their resources, like the empire whose capital was Angkor Wat in Southeast Asia, or that destroyed themselves through warfare like the Mayan culture of Central America. Today the world is one culture. We live or die together.

“Is there any hope?” Pippin asked Gandalf, as they looked out over the destruction of the great City. “There never was much hope,” answers the old wizard, “just a fool’s hope.”

The poet of Lamentations, surveying in heart-breaking detail the razing of Jerusalem, found this reason to hope:

But this I call to mind,
     and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,
     his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
     great is your faithfulness.
“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
     ”therefore I will hope in him.”
The LORD is good to those who wait for him,
     to the soul that seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly
     for the salvation of the LORD.

Lam 3:21-26 (NRSV)

Gandhi taught us that meaning abides in the struggle for, as well as the achievement of, our goals. If there was hope for the poet of Lamentations, surely on this side of the cross there is hope as well-even if, in the eyes of the world, it is just a fool’s hope.