Stephen Hayes's Blog, page 74

Is Sunday boredom a thing of the past?

I occasionally get curious about what brings people to my blogs, and for a long time one of the top queries on search engines that brought people to this blog was "what to do on Sunday when you're bored?" The latest statistics show that those have dropped quite a long way down the list. Here are the most popular queries for the last year, from 1 February 2011:

google installer
3,377


jesus christ
1,727


what is google installer
625


jesus
571


dorothy day
526


leo tolstoy
407


makwerekwere
376


reactive policing
254


vassula ryden
247


what is a miracle
197


khanya
176


pictures of jesus
172


vassula ryden 2011
163


ic xc
156


"google installer"
145


ic xc ni ka
145


christ
139


what to do on sunday
130


shamanism and christianity
122


things to do on a sunday
120

The all-time figures (since this blog started in February 2006) show those queries much higher on the list:

google installer
6,638


jesus christ
6,495


what to do on sunday
1,570


jesus
1,568


reactive policing
1,534


what is google installer
1,256


perelandra
1,011


makwerekwere
936


dorothy day
924


stuff to do on a sunday
795


what to do on sundays
787


khanya
771


stuff to do on sunday
722


google installer is trying to access the internet
625


wordpress porn
611


what to do on a sunday
515


christ
468


moral regeneration
450


leo tolstoy
411


"google installer"
405

I'm glad to see that there is quite a lot of interest in Dorothy Day.

I wonder why there is such a lot of interest in "reactive policing" — very few people leave comments on that topic to indicate why they find it interesting, or what prompted them to enter it as a search term.

Black and white perceptions of South Africa's problems

I've been reading Cobus van Wyngaard's Masters dissertation, in which he analyses public statements from the white Dutch Reformed Church (Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk, or NGK) on crime and violence in South Africa.

His main point is that in its public statements on crime and violence the NGK, while trying to use non-racial rhetoric, nevertheless continues to see these questions mainly from the point of view of whites, and tries to universalise this white point of view and extend it to everyone. Their statements are couched in language like:

People no longer feel safe…
People are beginning to give up hope…
people threatening to take the law into their own hands…
people have lost all confidence in the authorities…
People come to the conclusion that the authorities are not able to maintain law and order…

The church leaders no doubt reflect the voice of their people, and the things their people tell them. Things they chat about after services on Sundays. Things they tell the minister when he visits them in their homes. But who are these "people"? The members of the NGK are overwhelmingly white Afrikaans-speaking people, mostly upper-middle class. But the complaints that are voiced within the white Dutch Reformed Church are universalised as if they are the concerns of all the people of South Africa, or at least all the Christians in South Africa.

And so the Dutch Reformed church leaders go on to call on the President and the government, "On behalf of millions of Christians in South Africa (75% of the population) we beseech you to take drastic measures to restore law and order according to the Constitution."

The "drastic measures" sometimes form part of government rhetoric too (unacknowledged by the DRC leaders), speaking of "zero-tolerance" and the Deputy Minister of Police telling police to "shoot to kill."

Cobus is concerned about how to get white people, like the DRC leaders, to become aware that they are often speaking only or mainly for whites, and not for everybody, and to become open to a broader vision of the problems of South Africa.

This morning when we gathered for the Hours and Readers Service at Mamelodi East, I thought it might be interesting to get a different view of the problems facing "people" in South Africa. Mamelodi is an overwhelmingly black township. One could say "working class", with the proviso that the unemployed might outnumber the workers. Perhaps "proletarian" might be a better description, Certainly none of the people in our congregation own any means of production.

So, at the time for the sermon, I asked the congregation, black, North Sotho-speaking, what they thought were the main problems in the community, problems in their lives, problems people talked about in the shops. They came up with four:

Poverty
Crime
Backbiting and gossip
Witchcraft

One item, crime, was the same as on the white list. I suspect that the other three would not appear on any white lists.

I asked what were the good things in the community.

They said people help one another. If someone's house is broken into, the neighbours call the police. If there is a car crash, they call an ambulance, and try to help the injured. I observed that that, to some extent, countered the backbiting and gossip. People in the community did look after one another, so they are a community. Neighbours do care for one another (I think that is probably not so true in white neighbourhoods, at least in the bigger towns).

So if there is a car crash, the people in the community help the victims, they don't go through their pockets looking for cell phones?

No, it is the ambulance workers who do that. And the police, especially the police.

In asking that I had in mind a priest in Albania, whose car had left the road in a mountainous area, and crashed down the mountainside, and he and his whole family had been killed, except for one child, a boy of about 11, who lay injured in the wreck while the neighbouring people plundered the car and the bodies.

In the Orthodox Church, today is the Sunday of Zacchaeus.

The paschal season of the Church is preceded by the season of Great Lent, which is also preceded by its own liturgical preparation. The first sign of the approach of Great Lent comes five Sundays before its beginning. On this Sunday the Gospel reading is about Zacchaeus the tax-collector. It tells how Christ brought salvation to the sinful man, and how his life was changed simply because he "sought to see who Jesus was" (Luke 19:3). The desire and effort to see Jesus begins the entire movement through Lent towards Pascha. It is the first movement of salvation.

And in the story of Zaccheus we see something of the problems that the members of the church had mentioned.

We see crime, in that Zacchaeus had cheated people as a tax collector. He had abused his position of authority like the police and ambulance people who steal cell phones. He had enriched himself by impoverishing others, so that crime and poverty were not separate problems, but are related. People sometimes like to talk about poverty as the cause of crime. But it is much less common for people to talk about it the other way round — of crime as the cause of poverty. Yet much of the poverty in places like Mamelodi is caused by crime — white crime.

The backbiting and gossip were there too:  But when they saw it, they all complained, saying, "He has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner" (Luke 19:7).

But the good things are there too

Zacchaeus repents, but he also tries to undo some of the evil that he has done.

And so that is the message as we turn from the celebration of the Nativity of Christ and begin to look forward to Great Lent, the season of repentance. It is a time to look and see how we can reduce the evil in ourselves and in our surroundings, and to see how we can turn evil into good, like Zacchaeus.

I suggested to members of the congregation that between now and next time we should think about what we can do and how we can do it, to reduce the evil and increase the good. We are not the government, and we are not the Mayor of Tshwane. We are not in a position to take "drastic measures" (except with ourselves, by fasting). But perhaps we can come up with something, something that is within our reach.

Being missionary, being human – book review

Being missionary, being human: an overview of Dutch Reformed Mission by Willem Saayman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Twenty years ago I was chatting to Willem Saayman at lunch time in the Unisa cafeteria, and he told me something about his time as a Dutch Reformed Church missionary in Namibia. He was there from 1974-1978, and spent a year in the Okvango, and the rest of the time at Orumana, in the Kaakoveld.

It was fascinating to me, as it told the other side of a story to which I had seen a very different side. He also told me that the Tomlinson Report, which laid out the blueprint for apartheid in South Africa (and the Odendaal Report, which was the equivalent in Namibia) had provided much of the motivation for many in the DRC to become missionaries, and were seen as providing the incentive and the opportunity for Christian mission.

I went in Namibia in 1969, and was deported in 1972. Though we were not exact contemporaries there, it was close enough for us to have experienced the same times, the same physical, spiritual, ideological and political climate. In my experience the implementation of the Tomlinson and Odendaal reports, and the evil ideology behind them, were precisely the opposite to what Willem described to me. They persecuted the church, and obstructed Christian mission at every turn. Those who implemented them seemed determined to destroy the Christian faith and went to great lengths to prevent its spread.

Willem, it seemed to me, knew the story from the inside. He knew both the good and the evil intentions, the good and evil results. I urged him to write it down, to tell the story, because I doubted that there were many other people who were both willing and able to tell it.

In one sense, he has now done that, in this book.

It is short (150 pages), and it surveys the history of mission of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa from 1652 to the present.

Willem distinguishes four "waves" of mission in the DRC: From 1179-1834; from 1867-1934; from 1954-1976 and from 1990 to the present. Each of these waves, or upsurges in interest in mission, had its own characteristics and importance, but the one that interests me most is the Third Wave, from 1954-1976. That was the one that fell entirely within the apartheid period, and was bound up with the ideology of apartheid.

Willem points out that apartheid did not begin in 1948, that its roots began much further back, and that most whites in South Africa were generally in favour of racial segregation in one form or another long before then. But the soil in which apartheid flourished is one thing, the roots and fruits another. In the past, the matters dealt with by apartheid were not central. They were referred to by preceding (white) governments as "the native question". Apartheid, however was the main plank of the National Party's election campaign in 1948. They promised to make "the native question" the main question, and to solve it once and for all. Apartheid became the official state ideology, an outlook, a worldview, a totalitarian vision of society to which everything had to be forced to conform. It was both qualitatively and quantitatively different from what had gone before. In the book Willem tends to play this down somewhat.

He does show how the mission vision of the DRC both shaped and was shaped by apartheid, by showing how it developed in both church and state, and how church and government influenced one another.

And that, in itself, makes this a very important book.

In one sense, it shows the huge gulf that existed, and still exists, between different denominations in South Africa.

The missiology department at Unisa, like many others, has taught the history of Christian mission from the perspective of "the Constantinian Era". I have my doubts about that, and think that is a simplistic judgement (see Notes from underground: St Constantine, Scapegoat of the West), but given its widespread acceptance, one could say that in the 1970s in Namibia, the Dutch Reformed Church was in the Constantinian Era, while at the same time, in the same country, other denominations, and especially the Anglican Church, were in the pre-Constantinian Era, the era of persecution, of government obstruction.

The Dutch Reformed mission in the Kaokoveld enjoyed government favour, and the government tried to smooth its path. In Windhoek a Dutch Reformed minister hosted a pastor from Romania, Richard Wurmbrand, who told of the difficulties of Christians in far-away Romania, while Christians in Namibia were facing the very same difficulties at that very time — see Notes from underground: The martyrs of Epinga.

A big eye-opener for me in Willem's book was the story of black farm schools, which, it appears. were seen by the Dutch Reformed Church as a missionary opportunity. The Bantu Education Act in effect nationalised church schools for blacks in the 1950s. All black schools were put under the control of the central government, and most of the Christian churches that had lost their schools in this way thought that it was because the government wanted to be sure that the teaching in the schools was politically correct according to the apartheid ideology. An exception was farm schools, which were controlled by farmers.

From the Dutch Reformed point of view, the mission opportunity was provided by mission-minded farmers who opened the schools for Christian teaching, thus providing a mission opportunity.

My experience was somewhat different.

In 1976-77 I was an Anglican priest in Utrecht in northern Natal, and found myself manager of several farm schools. These schools were held in Anglican Church buildings, but since the church was no longer allowed to run them, a farmer had to be found who was willing to become the "owner" of the school, and most farmers were not interested and not willing. The Bantu Education Department was forever on our case because many of the schools were on church land, and they said they must be on the farm land. And only children from that farm could go to them, whereas in fact children from several surrounding farms came. In one case the church building was on farm land, and the farmer was an absentee landlord, who owned several farms in the area, and one day he visited the farm and closed the church at gunpoint, and all along the road to the farm were armed police.

So there was a distinct apartheid between the Constantinian and the pre-Constantinian Church in South Africa, and neither side really saw the other. And in Namibia in July 1971 the Lutheran Church crossed from one to the other when it issued an open letter criticising the policy of apartheid, and supporting the position of the World Court that South Africa was occupying Namibia illegally.

In his book Willem barely mentions Namibia, and that is why I gave this book four stars rather than five. It is a very important book, and important to read. But I think the full story has not yet been told, and I still hope that Willem will tell, in the form of a memoir and narrative theology, the story of his time in Namibia. The generation who experienced that is passing, and only they can tell the story.

In 1976 I found

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Missiologists and economists

I've spent the last three days at the annual congress of the Southern African Missiological Society, and one of the things that struck me was how many of the speakers said, "I'm not an economist, but…" and then went on to talk about global economics.

Over lunch one day I chatted with Stuart Bate, who wanted to know what the "neoliberalism" that everyone was talking about meant. And for that I could refer to a blog post of mine (one in which I myself say "I'm not an economist but…"), which in turn refers to someone else's blog post that no longer exists: Notes from underground: Liberalism, neoliberalism and neocons. To put it crudely, as I understand it, classical liberalism put political liberalism first, and economic liberalism was secondary. In neoliberalism, economic liberalism is all, or at least dominant.

Foucault points out that if classic liberalism, resting on "the historical experience of an overtly powerful and absolutist state", had seen in (the state) the role of 'defining' and 'monitoring' market freedom, this conception is "inverted" under the neoliberal model. Here, rather than the "state supervising the market," the market becomes the organising principle underlying the state…(n)eoliberalism removes the limiting external principle and puts a regulatory and inner principle (of the market) in its place".

So in neoliberalism, rather than the "state supervising the market," the market becomes the organising principle underlying the state.

Or, to put it in more theological terms, in neoliberalism the market (unlike the Sabbath) was not made for man, but man for the market.

But with all these theologians and missiologists talking about economics (prefaced by the disclaimer that "I'm not an economist but…") I wonder what might happen if the next SAMS Congress were to arrange a panel discussion between a couple of Christian economists. I would find such a discussion between say, Azar Jammine and Arnold Mol very interesting indeed. I think that some of their ideas might turn out to be very different from each other, and that would give the missiologists something to get their teeth into.

All is grace: book review (and SAMS Congress)

All Is Grace: A Biography of Dorothy Day by Jim Forest

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A couple of years ago I read Love is the measure by Jim Forest, the biography of Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, and I wrote a review of it, which I posted on my blog, here.

All is grace is a revised and updated version of Love is the measure, based on more sources, including Dorothy Day's letters and diaries. I have little to add to my original review, other than to say that this one is bigger and better and even more worth reading. Dorothy Day, and anarchist, pacifist and communitarian, was one of the outstanding Christians of the 20th century and in 1998 the process of having her declared a saint in the Roman Catholic Church was started.

Jim Forest was himself a member of the Catholic Worker community in the 1960s, and editor of the Catholic Worker paper, and is now the bosser-up of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship.

If you would like to know more about it, please check my original review of Love is the measure.

Perhaps I could add that this week I have been attending the annual congress of the Southern African Missiological Society (SAMS), which is on the theme of Religion and Empire. And listening to the papers being read, and the discussion on them, I think that if anyone knew anything about "Religion and Empire" it was Dorothy Day. So I really recommend this book to anyone who is interested in that topic.

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Real and imagined suffering

About 45 years ago I read Venture to the interior by Laurens van der Post, and was impressed by something he wrote on real and imagined suffering.

It has always been one of the more frightening ironies of Afrikaner life that people like my father, who with Smuts and Botha had fought and actually suffered in the war, could forgive and begin anew, whereas others, alive today, who were never in the heart of the conflict, can still find it so hard to forgive an injury that was not even done to them, and how can there be any real beginning without forgiveness?

I noticed something similar in my experience with war crimes officers, who had neither suffered internment under the Japanese, nor even fought against them. They were more revengeful and bitter about our treatment and our suffering in prison than we were ourselves.

I have so often noticed that the suffering which is most difficult, if not impossible to forgive, is unreal, imagined suffering. There is no power on earth like imagination, and the worst, most obstinate grievances are imagined ones (Van der Post 1964:26).

At the time I was living in semi-exile in a bed-sit in Streatham, South London, and working as a bus driver for London Transport. At the time I read it I wrote in my diary (4 June 1966):

This seems to touch on the core of a rather big question of human behaviour, One is that we so often find it easier to forgive those who injure us than those who injure others; and this imagination business. Reading about life in Nazi Germany conjures up all sorts of horrors, but they are imaginary horrors, I have never experienced them. In South Africa there are probably the same horrors, but one gets used to them. This is why so many people emphatically deny that South Africa is a police state, because it does not fit their mental image of a police state. But Germans probably felt the same 30 years ago.

I seem to recollect Trevor Huddleston in his book Naught for your comfort saying how much harder it was to forgive things done to other people, because one can only imagine how they feel. And John Aitchison, questioning the value of Liberal Party rural meetings, because you know that you go to encourage them in the face of SB intimidation, but by going you only encourage the SB to step up their campaign of intimidation. But it is a selfish martyrdom attitude — a sort of "I alone can bear the suffering" kick. But they too must bear their share of suffering — we are not the ones to deny it to them. It is their privilege as members of God's kingdom.

It is so also among the Jews. The ones who keep harping on the Nazi concentration camps are not the ones who suffered there, but those whose relatives did. In a way this is the root of altruism — a willingness to suffer for others. But it can also be selfish and self-glorifying.

It is something which deserves further thought.

And 45 years later I wonder what further thought one can give it. A lot has happened since then, not least the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where the sufferings of many people were laid open to the world, and closed up again and shelved, and stored away out of sight.

A phrase from the Psalms keeps repeating in my mind as I write this: "Oppression and fraud are in its marketplace." And some things seem in some ways not to have changed over 45 years.

Some things have changed though. Nowadays people use the word "closure" in relation to suffering, though no one seemed to use it 45 years ago. It started with journalists asking people, usually those who were close to thise who had suffered, whether they had "closure". Now the people who are interviewed by the journalists seem to expect the question, and often answer it before it is asked. "We are looking for closure," they say, or "now we have closure."

I wonder about this "closure", and what it means to those who say it, and what it means to those who asked about it. Does it mean that they are closing the book, and putting it away on the shelf, where it can stay dusty and unread, like the Cemetery of Forgotten Books in the novel The shadow of the wind, which I read recently?

Forty-five years ago we did not have the word "closure" as part of our vocabulary. No, I lie; we did. At a meeting when there was a debate and people were making interminable speeches and repeating the same old points, someone would propose "closure", and, if accepted, the chairman would take the names of those who still wanted to speak, and when they had had their say the debate would be over, no more speakers would be allowed.

But that is not the same as the "closure" mentioned by journalists and those they interview. The new closure seems to mean something like forgetting, and 45 years ago we did not know that meaning of the word. Or perhaps it does have a similar meaning: that once you have had your say, there is to be no more talking about it.

Laurens van der Post's thoughts seem to indicate one reason for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission being better than a war crimes tribunal. Forgiveness and reconciliation are important, but closure? Closing the book on it and forgetting it is not so good. What we forget, we will be doomed to repeat.

Forty-five years ago another saying would churn around in my head, and it seemed to mean the opposite of closure. It was a saying of Kierkegaard: "Only one thing can be remembered eternally: to have suffered for the truth."

At requiem services we sing, of those who have died: Memory eternal!

And especially of those who have suffered for the truth: May their memory be eternal.

The shadow of the wind — book review

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A bookseller takes his ten-year-old son to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books in Barcelona in 1945, where he is allowed to choose one book. The book he chooses is The shadow of the wind by an almost unknown novelist, Julian Carax.

The boy reads the book and enjoys it, and tries to find other books by the same author, but they are impossible to find, and he soon discovers that others are interested in his book, and he is made several lucrative offers, one from a person named after one of the characters in the book. He refuses them all.

As he grows up, he becomes more interested in solving the mystery of the book, and what happened to its author, and it soon becomes apparent that such a quest is dangerous, and that there are powerful people and forces intent on stopping him.

To say more would be a spoiler, and it is otherwise difficult to describe this book: a literary detective story, a tale of star-crossed lovers, a fantasy novel, an adventure-thriller. It's a cross between Romeo and Juliet, The Eyre affair and the film Pan's labyrinth, and more besides. At times, with the description of encounters with the police of the Franco era in Spain, it felt familiar, like the old apartheid South Africa, with echoes of A dry white season.

A very good read indeed. I recommend it.

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2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here's an excerpt:

Madison Square Garden can seat 20,000 people for a concert. This blog was viewed about 63,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Madison Square Garden, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Happy birthday! Happy New Year!

Christina's great grandson, Vincent, lights candles on her birthday cake

Today the oldest member of our Mamelodi congregation, Christina Mothapo, celebrated her 86th birthday, so we had a little celebration after the service in her house.

Most of the other members of our small Mamelodi congregation were away for the long weekend, but the numberes were made up by members of Christina's family who had come to celebrate her b irthday. She had ten children, sixc sons and four daughters, though some have died, and she has numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren. Her great grandson, Vincent Allies, acted as the reader for most of the service. He is one of the three members of the family (including Christina herself) who have been baptised in the Orthodox Church. He told us he is looking for a job. He had a job at a mine near Rustenburg, but the contract came to an end.

It was a verry joyful celebration, and St Nicholas Parish in Brixton had prepared some Christmas food parcels which we distributed to members of the congregation afterwards.

Christina Mothapo with family on 86th birthday

Calendar: old, new and ultramodern

If this proposal gets of the ground, we are perhaps in for a three-way split: Old Calendrists, New Calendrists, and Ultra-modern Calendrists: Time for a change? Scholars say calendar needs serious overhaul

Using computer programs and mathematical formulas, Richard Conn Henry, an astrophysicist in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, and Steve H. Hanke, an applied economist in the Whiting School of Engineering, have created a new calendar in which each new 12-month period is identical to the one which came before, and remains that way from one year to the next in perpetuity.

Under the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar, for instance, if Christmas fell on a Sunday in 2012 (and it would), it would also fall on a Sunday in 2013, 2014 and beyond. In addition, under the new calendar, the rhyme "30 days hath September, April, June and November," would no longer apply, because September would have 31 days, as would March, June and December. All the rest would have 30. (Try creating a rhyme using that.)

I have serious doubts about this, not least because, if their calculations say that Christmas would fall on a Sunday in 2012, then their calculations are seriously wrong already, before we've even started with their proposed new New Calendar. Old Calendar Christmas falls on a Monday in 2012/13, and New Calendar Christmas falls on a Tuesday in 2012. If they start with a wrong assumption, how much else could go wrong?

But even apart from the possibility of errors, how boring it would be if Christmas always fell on the same day of the week, or if Pascha always fell on the same day of the month?

But I'm sure bureaucrats will ove it. Life should, after all, be as monotonous and predictable as human science can make it.