Pope Benedict 14 has opened a summit in Rome on the Catholic Church in Africa. After praising the African Church for its strength (spiritual vitality), he also rebukes them for their weaknesses (materialism and a penchant for extremisms).

All fine, so far. Everyone needs a little correcting. But Benedict, who is more than capable of choosing his words with care, lets his African flock off the hook:

But he said Africa has also been afflicted by materialism — the "toxic spiritual garbage" exported by developed countries. "In this sense, colonialism — while finished in the political sphere — hasn't really ended," he said.

African Christians remain children, apparently, innocent of their own excesses. Africans are good spiritual folk, but a little naïve about worldly materialism, and thus easily sucked in by imported garbage.

No: if Africa is going to be the spiritual home for Christianity for the 21st century, then let us (pardon the language here) let them stand on their own two feet and be men. Let us honor their strengths and rebuke their errors and above all, treat them as our equals or betters. Enough of this grasping for influence.

It may be true that materialistic faith comes from developed countries. So did the Pentecostalism currently dominant in Africa.

That doesn’t mean that African Pentecostalism has not in the meanwhile become fully homegrown; neither should it mean that Africans must forever remain simple victims of Western materialism.

Can they not also be complicit?

The Egyptian Health Ministry is slaughtering pigs in Cairo's Mokattam slum, in a precaution against swine flu. No cases, suspected or otherwise, triggered the crackdown, other than general pandemic fears these days.

The authorities are being met with rioters, who say they're having their livelihood taken away. Mokattam Slum, of course, has a lengthy relationship with Urbana.org: several Global Urban Treks have spent the summer there.

Scott Bessenecker writes of pig butchers in Mokattam here.

Mokattam is a Christian slum. 250,000 mostly-Coptic Christians live there, having been segregated away over the centuries by the authorities. (These are, Philip Jenkins has recently reminded us, some of the oldest Christians in the world.) So we can't understand this story without keeping in mind the religious angle.

Anyway, here's the Beeb, who barely mention religion:

Just in case you’re ever tempted to think you’ve got it hard (as I do when, for example, a child won’t go to sleep at night, or when I miss the bus): these kids have an incredible story to tell.

I just finished reading They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky: The Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan

It’s a first-hand account of refugees from the civil wars in Sudan, and it pulls no punches, points no fingers, and does not take sides. It merely gives a voice to three young men who walked thousands of miles, from parched deserts to deadly jungles, through lion-infested savannahs and crocodile-infested swamps, dodging AK-47-wielding enemies and more.

I was looking for something else, as I was working on something related to boy soldiers. After a few pages it became clear that this wasn’t my book. These kids are only refugees, after all.

But even with my very limited time, I kept reading. I was never sure just how much I could trust their accounts, but in the end, I had to. They were, after all, in many cases the only survivors.

Now: I do have a gripe here: the editors’ unbending choice to cut our editorializing. I realize that these three boys are not experts. They experienced the hellish conditions, but they didn’t necessarily understand the context of the war. Still, I wish at times I’d heard opinions, rather than merely stories about why they had to flee, why they were driven from camp to camp, etc.

But, on the other hand, sometimes it’s nice—if a little stomach-turning—to hear first-person testimonies. And this book is certainly that.

As the global church becomes more Asian and African, it becomes ever more important for North American Christians to pay attention to the emerging teachings and leadership from countries historically thought of as mission fields.

Especially when the problems they’re talking about—Economic collapse, corruption in politics, and so on—are once again on our North American plates.

To wit, here’s part of an article from Nigeria's This Day newspaper on the annual leadership conference for the Nigerian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (NIFES):

Christian students should exercise their leadership skills for the benefit of the society and not for their personal gains, wife of the Archbishop of Lagos Anglican Diocese, Mrs. Oluranti Ademowo, has said. ... Ademowo said students could not lead without the knowledge of God and that they should not see leadership as a means to wealth or popularity, rather, they should operate within God's will and wisdom and be selfless.

Or maybe the best. Because Zimbabwe’s new Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai faces such outrageous obstacles that, depending on how you look at it, he’s either doomed to fail or can’t possibly fail.

In any case: Tvangirai, likely the winner of recent presidential elections rejected by the loser of said elections, will now serve as Prime Minister of a coalition government under big man-perpetual president Robert Mugabe—a man who has said “Zimbabwe is mine”.

If Zimbabwe is Mugabe’s, its problems aren’t, as Mugabe has blamed the utter collapse of the economy in what was once southern Africa’s breadbasket on every bogeyman under the sun: The UK, the US, the UN, South Africa, and, of course, Tvangirai himself.

So what does a coalition government look like when the President has previously accused the incoming PM with treason? Al Jazeera English breaks it down for us, using an analogy from foosball:

So you think Obama’s  facing unrealistic expectations?

 [photo from flickr member Arbeiderpartiet on a creative commons licence.]
 

As of a few weeks ago, I’ve been a white member of a largely African American church for eleven years. That's a really long time.

It’s in light of this long-term relationship that Black History Month means something to me: inasmuch as my church is part of black history, black history is my history.  And inasmuch as the black church will be part of heaven, black church history is our story, all of us who call ourselves believers. This is family, folks.

February is Black History Month. This informal ritual is meant as a corrective to traditional history-telling, which in the Western context has under-represented black contributions to history.

Black History Month’s ultimate goal is to work itself out of a job: Black History Month is held annually, to try to eliminate the need for an annual Black History Month.

This year, for black history month, I encourage everyone who is not black to ask yourselves: what part of this story is my story?

[photo credit: sxc.hu user alixmorse]

I just stumbled upon a remarkable editorial in the Times of London while googling for something entirely different. But the headline drew me in:

As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God

The article is by Matthew Parris, an English writer (and former MP) who grew up in Africa, and who returned last month for a journalistic assignment with an NGO—forty-five years after leaving.

The Christianity he remembered from childhood, and re-remembered during his visit, is a dignifying, empowering African faith. It gives freedom from fear of demons and other evils; it gives meaning to individual actions (encouraging initiative and rule of law, i.e. dissent from “Big Men”); it lets Africans look white foreigners in the eye, “man-to-man,” as Parris puts it, “without looking down or away.”

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

If Parris’ story partially answers the question “Why have so many Africans become Christian,” it also begs the question, “Why have so many Europeans/English walked away from Christianity?” At the very least this story needs Parris' own testimony.

There are, of course, many answers to that question, but they’re rarely asked in cross-cultural context—it’s as if European post-Christianity takes place in an environment in which Christianity is an entirely Western story.

[photo credit: flickr user Beyer Shawn]