Stephen Hayes's Blog, page 82

Submerging Church: sunk without a trace

One of the blogs I used to visit occasionally was Emerging Africa, which three or four years ago used to have some quite interesting discussions. But I hadn't visited it for a while and saw that it had dropped off the radar, or at least below the top 25 on the Amatomu religion section.

I dug a bit deeper, and found it had dropped to number 50 on the list, and no doubt will continue to fall, because if you go to the site this is all you'll see: Site off-line:

Current Status Emergence: this is what the universe does, so if you think it is going away, please reconsider your point of view. Africa: Relatively stable, sitting as it does on only one or two continental plates. Emerging Africa : submerged for a long time, now being let loose to sink to the bottom of the ocean. But don't let that fool you: emergence is what the universe does, so if you think it is going away, please reconsider your point of view. Regards and Blessings The Sunken Emergent Dictatorship Inc.

I suppose the blog owner got tired of all the spam postings that were the only things available to read there lately.

But it does describe what's happening.

Forty years ago a radical Christian magazine, the Catonsville Roadrunner announced that "The submarine church is surfacing". That was probably the first reference to the Emerging Church. But those who felt threatened by it don't need to worry — it's submerged again, to suffer sea change.

Not that Amatomu is the best indicator. It still shows Dion Forster's old blog, Dion's Random Ramblings, abandoned more than a year ago, as more popular than his current one, An uncommon path. Perhaps he ought to go back to the old one!

Or perhaps it's a sign of entropy in the blogosphere, and perhaps even the whole internet. Information is becoming more concise, more incoherent and less connected. We're in a whirlpool of flotsam and jetsam going down a black plug hole into oblivion. I long for the old days of Fido technology netowrks. It was text only, it was slow, it was dial-up, but at least people had something to communicate.

Private enterprise socialism

A few years ago I blogged about building societies and a comment from Ryan Peter has reminded me that there probably isn't anyone under 30 in South Africa who knows what building societies are (or were, since I don't think there are any left in South Africa). Building society eats building society | Khanya:

Being a 30 year old my exposure to building societies was only when I was considerably young, and they (Perm, Allied) just remind me of stale smoke and bad decor.

But in the past week or so I've started to do some research on distributism and building societies have come up. It's garnered my interest, the idea sounds brilliant. Am I right in saying there are NO building societies in SA or is there one you know of? Who do you bank with, if I may ask?

So perhaps I should explain.

Building Societies (along with mutual insurance societies) were a form of private-enterprise socialism that flourished in South Africa and elsewhere in the world until the 1980s, when the Reagan-Thatcher privatisation mania killed them off. And if people under 30 don't know what building societies were, most people under 40 probably don't know what socialism was (and is). All they have ever heard of is the Marxist-Leninist version of socialism, in which the state owns and operates the means of production, distribution and exchange. But not all socialism is Marxist, and building societies and mutual insurance societies were examples of non-Marxian socialism in action.

Today the only remnants of such things that we can see around us are stokvels, which operate on the same principle, though usually on a much smaller scale. The theory behind all socialism, state socialism and private enterprise socialism, is that cooperation is a better principle for ordering economic activity than competition.

The basic purpose of building societies was to provide affordable housing for the masses.

Originally there were two kinds of building societies: temporary and permanent.

A temporary building society would have a fixed number of members, and once it was established no one else could join.

If, say, there were 20 people who needed houses, but could not afford to build or buy them — it would take them 20 years to save enough money to buy a house, and by the time they had saved the necessary amounf, the price of houses would have risen beyond their reach. But if they pooled their savings, within a year they would have enough to build a house for one person, and that person could be chosen by lot, and so only one of the twenty would have to wait 20 years for a house.

But this was too much the luck of the draw, and so permanent building societies were established. They would have an indefinite number of members, and anyone could join. But there was the same principle: the pooled savings of a lot of people could enable people to build houses. And that's the same principle that lies behind stokvels too, though stokvels are not necessarily about houses but about other things as well.  You can read more about the theory of building societies here, and about stokvels here.

In the 1970s there were about five big building societies in South Africa, with branches in most parts of the country, and several smaller ones that were more local in scope. The big ones were the United Building Society (UBS), the South African Permanent Building Society (The Perm), the Natal Building Society (the NBS), the Allied Building Society and the Johannesburg Building Society. The last two combined, leaving four.

In many ways they operated like banks, in that they took deposits from the general public, on which they paid interest, and lent the money in the form of mortgage loans at higher interest. The difference in the rates of interest covered the cost of administration — staff salaries, offices and equipment etc.

Anyone could walk into a building society and open a savings account with R1.00. The interest rate was fairly low, though it fluctuated according to economic conditions, but at least you got your interest and it did accumulate at a rate of 2-3 percent. There were no bank charges. I repeat, there were no bank charges.

Then there were subscription shares. You could pay R1.00 (or more) a month into a subscription share account (the money could be transferred from your savings account free of charge), for a minimum period of 3 years. I think the maximum was 20 years. After 3 years you would have R36.00 plus interest. Or more, if you paid more. You could use that to save to buy something, or for a holiday or whatever.

Then there were paid-up shares, which came in two varieties: taxable and tax-free. One share cost R10.00, but you could buy more if you wanted more. Holding paid-up shares made you a member (and not just a depositor) and entitled you to attend and vote at the AGM of the Society. Paid up shares paid dividends, not just interest.

The effect of this was (or could be) that building societies enabled the poor to save.

Now the poor can't save — their money is eaten up in bank charges. The poor have no chance of becoming shareholders in commercial banks. But they could own paid-up shares in building societies. They could save their money and see it grow.

Buiolding societies also made it easy to manage your money.

When I got married my wife and I opened a joint savings account at a building society. We could both deposit in it, and either of us could sign withdrawal slips. The building societies were computerised in the 1960s, and each account had a savings passbook. When you went along to the branch and deposited or withdrew money, the teller stuck your passbook in a machine which printed the amount of the deposit or withdrawal and the resulting balance. There were none of these silly cards, which make it impossible for you to know how much money you have or where it went.

So we put our housekeeping money in there, and if we went shopping we would draw out what we needed.

In the church people sometimes gave me money for things. A donation, a gift, or, if there was a funeral, the undertakers would slip one a cheque (calculated as part of their fees, of course). I had another savings account for such things, so I could keep it separate from my own money. It didn't cost anything, but was a discretionary fund, which I could use to help poor people or various good causes. You can't do that these days. Opening a savings account for accumulating money for such purposes is just pouring money down the drain of the banking system to aid the rich, not the poor. I kept my discrtionary fund account at a different building society, so I wouldn't be tempted to make use of it when I went for my normal financial transactions.

So we had several savings accounts for various purposes, sometimes with automatic transfers from one to another, soch as regular monthly transfers to the joint housekeeping account.  Before I was married I lived in a commune and we did the same thing — had a savings account to which all members, temporary or permanent, contributed, and from which three of the permanent members could withdraw money for shopping.

I've gone into this kind of detail about how it worked for the benefit of those under 30 who, if they have ever seen a building society, can probably hardly remember it.

Oh, and one more thing. There were also special savings accounts. There was a basic one that paid higher interest, provided you kept a minimum balance in it. And there was another one for first-time home buyers. You could not withdraw from it except once. It was to enable people to save money for the deposit on a house. When you finally withdrew it, the government would add a 2% subsidy over and above the accumulated interest.

The building societies were very useful institutions, though they could have been even more useful, if it had not been for apartheid.

The building societies were basically savings and loan instiutions. They pooled the savings of people to enable people to have money to build houses. But black could benefit only from the savings side, not from the loan side. That was because in  most places black people could not own freehold houses. In the urban areas they could not own houses because, according to the aparheid theory, they were merely temporary sojourners there, and their permanent homes were in the "homelands", to which they could be sent back at any time by the apartheid bureaucracy. And in the homelands there was no freehold tenure either — people had "permission to occupy" that was granted by the chief.

So what happened to the building societies?

In part the were victims of the Zeitgeist of the Reagan-Thatcher years, the 1980s. The high-flying risk-taking entrepreneur became the hero of the age. And the dull as ditchwater Clark Kents who ran the building societies had a yen to become financial supermen.

But building societies didn't really lend themselves to that kind of activity. They were dull. It was one of their good points. They lent people money for one thing only — to build or buy houses, and the house itself was the security for the loan. Building societies didn't lend themselves to the kind of situation where wannabe financial high flyers could lose hundreds of millions of rands belonging to the poor.

So the building socity executives decided that the building societies must demutualise and become commercial banks, with no restrictions on what they could lend money for. They conned the members of the societies into voting for the scheme by saying that they would get a bonus of "free shares" — though the "free shares" was just their own money anyway. So in 1987 all the big building societies became commercial banks, or were absorbed by commercial banks, and introduced fat bank charges on savings accounts, so there isn't a hope of hell of saving things any more.

There was also another, and much less publicised, side to this.

Around the time that the building societies were demutualising and turning themselves into commercial loan companies the National Party government was beginning to take a few tentative steps in reforming the apartheid system. One of the steps in that reform process was allowing black people to have freehold in urban areas. So just at the point where black people might have been able to benefit from the loan side of the building society system, the financial wizards waved their magic wands to make the whole thing disappear, or at least to make it just as inaccessible as it was before.

So the poor can't use their savings to build houses. And they find it much harder to accumulate savings than ever before.

Ryan Peter also asked where I bank.

Well, that's a long story, but since I'm telling stories, I might as well tell that one.

When I was a student in the UK I had a post office savings account. But banks liked to woo students, and offered student accounts with low or no bank charges, so I opened one with Barclays Bank in Durham. It was convenient to be able to pay for some things by cheque. On returning to South Africa I did the same thing — opened an account with Barclays Bank, since it was part of the same group where I had my English account. Two weeks after I had opened it, I was summoned by the branch manager to go and see him. Or rather by his secretary, who was very rude about it, peremptorily demanded that I must drop everything and go and see him now. Tomorrow, or the next time I happened to be in town wouldn't do.

I got there and the manager was very rude, and said I had an unauthorised overdraft. I asked him to show me where it was overdrawn. He called for the statements, while I waited in his office. I hadn't seen a statement, since the account was too new. He showed me the statement, and I saw that every payment I had made had been doubled. Each withdrawal was dupicated. I pointed it out to him. It was their problem, they should have fixed it, and then they wouldn't have had to phone me and wasted my time in going to see them. I might have expected an apology for their wasting of my time, but no, he dismissed me with a lecture on the importance of not overdrawing my account (which I had not done).

I considered closing the account, but then moved to Windhoek, and thought that maybe the branch there would be better. But then they had a big campaign of collecting money for the "boys on the border" who were protecting us from the "terrorist threat". I didn't fancy my bank playing politics like that, so some friends and I decided to transfer our accounts. But we went to another bank, and they were doing something similar. The one bank that wasn't playing such a game was the French Bank in Southern Africa. So we transferred our accounts there. I was quite satisfied with their service, and so when I was forcibly removed back to Durban (my putative "homeland") by the government, I transferred my account to the local branch of the French Bank, and was satisfied with their service too. I didn't use it much (most of my money was in the building society) but it was convenient for the odd payment by cheque.

Then we moved to Utrecht, and there was no branch of the French Bank there, and not even in neighbouring Newcastle. There were just two bansk, Barclays and Standard. After my bad experiences with Barclays, I used the Standard Bank. There weren't any building societies in Utrecht either. It was Ok, until we had to go into the bank in Newcastle. The Standard Bank, for some reason known only to themselves and their architect, built their new branches on the mezzanine floor of  buildings, accessible only by escalator. Have you ever tried to get a baby in a pram or push chair up and down an escalator? Don't try. We'd ask one of the shopkeepers on the ground floor to babysit while we went to the bank. I think there are now laws about disabled access, but there weren't back then. Wheelchairs would be just as awkward as prams, if not more so.

When we bought our house we had a mortgage with the Allied Building Society. But then when the building societies went commercial, we transferred it to the Standard Bank. The Allied (now ABSA) asked why. We told them: we had taken the mortgage with them because they were a building society. Since they were now a commercial bank, and we already banked with another commercial bank, and there were no other building societies, we would transfer it to the bank we used for our other business. It was easier to do business with one bank than with two.

Everyone said you should pay off your mortgage as quickly as possible, to reduce the amount of interest you pay. But not the Standard Bank. They went on charging us an "administration fee" for the next seven years. Paying off your mortgage early was an incredibly difficult thing to do. Their sloghan claimed that they made banking "simpler, better, faster", but in fact they were inspired and motivated to make it more involved rather than simpler. When we were in Utrecht, we could go and see the manager of the branch and he would sort it out. Now you go and see a jobsworth who says its the responsibility of another jobsworth in the head office who remains perpetually incommunicado.

I much preferred the days of the building societies, when everything was simpler, better, faster.

 

 

New David Bosch Book

I was planning to blog here about the launch of the new book (with the title I can never remember) about David Bosch, one of South Africa's foremost missiologists. I went along with camera and all to the Unisa Campus, where it was being held, but every parking place was full. There are lots of lawns where one could possibly park, but when I worked there the jobsworths who keep an eagle eye out for parking infringements tended to clamp wheels at the drop of a hat, and I wasn't going to risk it on my pension.

Still, I did manage to nick this picture of the book cover from Reggie Nel, so there is something to show for it. Perhaps Reggie will also blog about it.

Holiday pics

I know nothing is reputed to be more boring than looking at someone else's holiday photos, but here are my favourites from our holiday in the Western Cape last month.

These were all taken on  the same day, our last day in Cape Town, when we went up past the cableway station and along the road that runs along the slopes of Table Mountain. It was late afternoon, near sunset, and mist was pouring over Kloof Nek, between Table Mountain and Lion's Head. Looking the other way, towards Devil's Peak, there was a light drizzle and a bright rainbow. We took lots of photos, but these are the best.

Then we drove back to Kloof Nek and down towards Camps Bay, and saw the sun setting over the Atlantic Ocean.

The photos are in reverse order, both in time and in my liking of them.

Sunset over the Atlantic Ocean, between Kloof Nek and Camps Bay, Cape Town. 11 May 2011

The next photo, taken about 10 minutes earlier, is our second favourite.

Devil's Peak from Table Mountain at sunset, 11 May 2011

And finally, my favourite from the whole holiday — taken about the same time and place as the picture above, but just turning around and facing West instead of East.

Lion's Head from the slopes of Table Mountain

Kakangelism

Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy — God hates you.

Is this the "good news" proclaimed by the Westboro Baptist Church?

That is not evangelism, it is kakangelism.

As my blogging friend Matt Stone says, Pray for Westboro – Glocal Christianity:

These guys make me angry.

Anger calls me to action.

But then the words come: 'But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.' (1 John 2:11)

Evangelism is proclaiming the good news, the glad tidings, the evangelion.

What does the Bible say about the evangelion, the good news, the glad tidings?

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people (Luke 2:10).

And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him (Luke 8:1).

And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers,  God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again (Acts 13:32-33 ).

it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! (Romans 10:15).

καθὼς γέγραπται· ὡς ὡραῖοι οἱ πόδες τῶν εὐαγγελιζομένων εἰρήνην, τῶν εὐαγγελιζομένων τὰ ἀγαθά

But how ugly are the feet of those who preach the bad news of strife, and bring miserable tidings of horrible things!

The Greek prefix ev in words like evangelism means both good and happy, and so the gospel is the good/happy news.

Are the placards held by the members of the Westboro Baptist Church in the picture announcing the good news, the evangelion? Or are they rather announcing bad news, the kakangelion?

So who will evangelise the mem bers of the Westboro Baptist Church?

How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! (Rom 10:15-15).

What is the good news?

According to the New Testament it is the news of the kingdom of God, and that Christ has risen from the dead.

Tomorrow is the Leavetaking of Pascha, and until then we joyfully sing of the good news that

Christ is risen from the dead

trampling down death by death

and upon those in the tombs bestowing life

And thereafter let us evangelise, and not kakangelise.

Requiem for Fr Johannes Rakumako

Father Johannes Rakumako died in Lent, and his funeral was on Palm Sunday, so most clergy were not able to attend.

His 40-day requiem was held in the Soshanguve cemetery, and several clergy gathered for that.

Requiem for Fr Johannes at Soshanguve

In the Orthodox Church a Requiem (Memorial Service, Mnemosyne, Panikhida) is held, if possible, on the 3rd, 9th and 40th day after death, and then on the 3rd, 6th and 9th month and a year after death, and thereafter anually. The 40-days and 1-year memorials are the most important. There is boiled wheat (koliva) to reminds us of what St Paul said, " But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?   Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body (1 Cor 15:35-38).

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Bill Burnett: Anglican bishop and charismatic renewal leader

On a recent visit to the Western Cape I spend some time with John de Gruchy at Hermanus discussing our proposed book on the history of the charismatic renewal in South Africa. We both agreed that Bill Burnett (1917-1994) was a key figure in the charismatic renewal, not only in South Africa, but among Anglicans throughout the world.

Bill Burnett was also a significant figure in South African Christian circles at a significant period of South Africa's history. He was Anglican bishop of Bloemfontein, Grahamstown and Cape Town, and was also General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches at the time of its transformation from being the Christian Council of South Africa. He was in many ways a controversial figure, as the following newspaper cartoon shows, and yet there is no adequate biography of him.

Rapport: 9 Dec 1979. The caption reads: "For you, as guardian of the security of South Africa, there is no place in my church." The placard held by the bearded clergyman in the background reads: "Away with the Security Police"

In our research for the book, we have found that people's assessments of him vary enormously. Some Anglicans regardhim as the greatest Archbishop of Cape Town, and think that since he retired the Anglican Church in South Africa has been going downhill. Others think that his period as Archbishop of Cape Town was an unmitigated disaster, which his successors have not yet managed to put right.

While our book cannot be a biography, we will have to make some assessment of his role, and I'm putting down some rather disconnected thoughts about it here, partly to help clarify my own thinking on it, and partly in the hope that others, with somewhat different experience, may be able to contribute to our knowledge and understanding.

The Rock That is Higher Than I : by Bill Burnett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Bill Bendyshe Burnett (1917-1994) was an Anglican bishop in South Africa, and was Archbishop of Cape Town from 1974-1981. He was also Bishop of Bloemfontein and of Grahamstown, and General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches (SACC). After his experience of "baptism in the Holy Spirit" he became influential in charismatic renewal circles, not only among other denominations in South Africa, but all over the world. Yet the nearest we have to a biographical source is his autobiography, The Rock that is higher than I, edited privately and published after his death by his wife Sheila.

After reading it, I doubt that he intended to have it published in its present form. It reads like a very rough first draft, which seems to indicate that he was still working on it when he died, and his family had to publish it in an unfinished form.

Fully half the book is taken up with Burnett's early life, and his experiences in the Second World War, especially as a prisoner of war in Italy. This is generally well written, and forms a coherent narrative. It looks as though it may have originally been written for his family, for children who asked him "Daddy, what did you do in the War?" I wish my father-in-law had written such an account — he too was captured at Tobruk, and escaped from an Italian POW camp.

The second half of the book, which covers his time at St Paul's Theological College in Grahamstown and his ministry as an Anglican priest and bishop, is much more sketchy, consisting of a series of disconnected anecdotes, many of which raise more questions than they answer. This is a pity, since this is the part of the book that would be of most interest to most readers.

I first met Bill Burnett in 1960, when he was Bishop of Bloemfonein. It was the inaugural conference of the Anglican Students Federation (ASF), held at Modderpoort in the Free State snd I attended as a student. Since the conference was being held in his diocese, Bishop Burnett was the celebrant at the first Mass of the conference, in the priory of the Society of the Sacred Mission (an Anglican religious order), and he also read the first paper, on "The theological roots of Anglicanism".

In the afternoon he read a second paper, on "The Church of the Future". He said that people are generally unsuccessful in relating the rapid advance in technical knowledge to what really matters. The Church must bring a theological basis back to the centre of our lives. Intellectuals are out of touch with modern theologians. People must become more aware of the theological purpose of what they do in everyday life. Many church buildings in this country are mock-Gothic and out of touch with reality. This could be rectified if architects knew what a church is for. The church should use modern skill, knowledge and materials to build more functional buildings. In music we wallow in Victorian slush — as far as art is concerned, the church is wearing clothes which are out of date. Modern art is symbolic, and ideally adapted to the use of the church. In the experimental liturgy there is no blessing — the congregation is told to go out into the world and "be the church." The Church of the future must be reunited, and the Ceylon scheme of reunion is a good pointer in this direction. Denominational apartheid is an evil which must be remedied. The Ceylon scheme will keep the ancient scheme of Bishops, Priests and Deacons. The Church must become indigenous in each locality, but this must not be paramount, as the word "Anglican" seems to suggest. The emphasis is often too much on "Anglican" and too little on "Communion". The church over the whole world is too "Anglican" — too "English". How can we be indigenous and yet remain Catholic? Nationalism must not cause us to lose our Catholic principles. We must really BE the people of God. The Church must be built around the altar, font and pulpit as the buildings are. We must live as if we really are in the dying and rising community which is the Church. You do not become a Christian and then join the Church. We are baptised into a body, a community – the Church, which is the Body of Christ. We must become what we are by virtue of our baptism. The altar and pulpit enable us to do this. We are Christians, and we must become what we are. We neglect the Holy Spirit too much. One cannot see God and live – our preaching must say this, but because we are dying with Christ, we must also rise with him. Worship is not merely one of the things the Church does – the Church is a worshipping community. We place our lives and all that we have on the altar, and receive all this back to become the Body of Christ. The perfect union with Christ will come at the Last Day – at the consummation. At every Mass we are waiting for the bridegroom.

As an impressionable teenager this made a great impression on me, which is why I made extensive notes, and included them in my diary. I also later discovered that much of what he described and was advocating as part of Anglican faith and practice was already there in the Orthodox Church, and had been all along, but that is part of my story, not his.

One thing that has puzzled me a little was that when they prayed for the bishop in the Diocese of Bloemfontein, they used his middle name, and prayed for "Bendyshe our Bishop", yet in Grahamstown and Cape Town it was his first name that was used, "Bill our Bishop". A minor point, perhaps, but one that one hopes to find explained in an autobiography, and it is things like this that make the book seem like a published first draft rather than a finished work.

In the chapter dealing with his time at St Paul's Theological College in Grahamstown, in the immediate postwar period, Burnett notes that he and the other students were influenced by the theology that had begun to emerge from the resistance to Nazism in Germany, and says that he was more impressed with Paul Schneider than with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, though he does not compare their theology or give reasons for his preference.

Perhaps he intended to expand on this later, and this too gives the impression of a rough draft. But then he says (p. 123), "If I were to write about every parish or diocese in which I have ministered I would have to write many books. I give notice that I have no intention of doing so."

And so his ministry as assistant curate at St Thomas's Church in Durban and as school chaplain at Michaelhouse is covered in less than a page, which contrasts sharply with the amount of detail in his account of his life as an escaped POW. His time as Vicar of Ladysmith is similarly sketchy, dealing only with a description of some of the tramps who came to the vicarage asking for help. This is supplemented by a letter in an appendix; the letter, from John Henderson, a parishioner in Ladysmith, describes how Bill Burnett influenced him and others to train to become Anglican priests. The sketchiness, however, leaves one with the impression that Bill Burnett did not value parish ministry very highly.

The same applies to his description of his ministry as Bishop of Bloemfontein. There are a few disconnected anecdotes, but nothing of substance. When Burnett was nominated as a possible candidate for Archbishop of Cape Town one priest in the Diocese of Bloemfontein commented, "Very few of the people here with whom I have discussed the matter want Bishop Burnett. As you know he was bishop here and I have yet to find any clergy or laity who look back with much pleasure to the time of his episcopate. The CSM and AA sisters found it a traumatic experience to coin an Americanism. No doubt he has gained in maturity and judgement since then: but his present ? enthusiasm for Pentecostalism continues to make him a dubious character in the eyes of some."

In the light of that, it is interesting that Burnett has only positive things to say about the Community of St Michael and All Angels — that they ran "a splendid little school" and made a great contribution to the development of the nursing profession in South Africa. So one is left wondering what the "traumatic experience" could have been.

In this chapter, too, however, an element of bitchiness appears, which grows stronger as the book proceeds. He describes the way in which English-spealing Anglicans and some Afrikaners distanced themselves from the policy of apartheid, and says "These people and their friends of whom Miss Louisa Marquard was one, distanced themselves completely from the apartheid philosophy and practice, and, in some cases, this meant leaving the Church as well. Their predicament and sufferings were unknown to people such as Archbishop Joost de Blank, and Bishops Trevor Huddleston and Ambrose Reeves, who did not have the opportunity given to us and for which we thank God as we remember the courage and integrity of these friends."

This again raises more questions than it answers. Why did their distancing themselves from the apartheid philosophy and practice mean "leaving the Church"? And what is the significance of their predicament and sufferings being unknown to the bishops mentioned, none of whom was ever Bishop of Bloemfontein, nor did they ever have any pastoral ministry there? It just comes across as a very nasty piece of innuendo. Trevor Huddleston (who was not a bishop during Bendyshe Burnett's time as Bishop of Bloemfontein, but was responsible for training the novices at the Community of the Resurrection's mother house in Mirfield, England), wrote a book, Naught for your comfort, in which he criticised the philosophy and practice of apartheid, and described the effects of the practice as he observed them as a pastor in Sophiatown, and the ethnic cleansing which took place there in the mid-1950s. The implication seems to be that if he had known of the way in which Burnett's Free State friends had distanced themselves from apartheid, Huddleston would not himself have criticised it. That doesn't make any sense, so why mention Huddleston's name at all at this point? This kind of bitchiness does not seem to be evidence of the fruit of the Spirit, but rather of the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:16-23). I know this because I myself have often fallen into the same temptation.

At this point Burnett owes it to his readers to say what it is that these bishops said or did to cause him to mention their names here. Perhaps he might have done so if he had lived long enough to prepare the book for publication, but as it is the reader is left hanging, wondering what is going on.

The following chapter deals with Burnett's time as General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, which is again marred by bitchiness, as he describes the arrest and trial of Dean ffrench-Beytagh, and concludes by saying that he went to England "where he was able to bask in the glory of his anti-apartheid stance".

It was when Bill Burnett was at the South African Council of Churches that it collaborated with the Christian Institute in drafting the "Message to the people of South Africa", which was a theological critique of the ideology of apartheid, and described it not merely as a heresy, but as a pseudogospel. He quotes part of a summary of it in his book, and says, "This is simply a small taste of our 'Barmen Declaration'. It angered the National Party Government and, I suspect, bored the English-speaking people, and it changed nothing."

I don't think the last statement is true. Black Christians who read it said it was nothing new, it was something that most black Christians knew. It was the whites who needed to read it, they said. And for whites who read it seriously, it posed a choice: choose this day whom you will serve, the false god of apartheid, or the Lord. Even those who denied that there was such a choice did not remain unaffected. For some, even some in high positions in the National Party, a seed of doubt was planted.

Bill Burnett was elected Bishop of Grahamstown, and in 1972, soon after he moved there, he experienced "baptism in the Holy Spirit", which revitalised his ministry. While in Grahamstown he introduced the Human Relations and Reconciliation Programme, to challenge racism in the church, and this involved setting up "challenge groups" that would challenge instances of racism.

The charismatic renewal movement in the Anglican Diocese of Grahamstown started with a priest in Queenstown, Peter Campbell, and once the bishop himself had been "zapped" it spread rapidly in the diocese, and Burnett tells of instances where clergy who were initially sceptical were drawn in. He was asked to give a testimony at the South African Congress on Mission and Evangelism in Durban in 1973. The Congress, organised by the South African Council of Churches and African Enterprise, an interdenominational evangelistic organisation, marked the first large meeting of "evangelical" and "ecumenical" Christian bodies in South Africa, but the Pentecostals and Roman Catholics were not really included. Bill Burnett and David du Plessis, however, introduced a Pentecostal element.

Bill Burnett was elected Archbishop of Cape Town in 1974, and clergy from Grahamstown who were asked about it were generally more positive than those of Bloemfontein, cited earlier. They thought his pentecostal experience had made him a better pastor.

In Cape Town the Archbishop's residence, Bishopscourt, became a centre of renewal, and developed a community. Several young men who thought they might be called to ordained ministry went to stay there to test their vocations. Burnett describes how dying parishes were revitalised, and people were healed. But when the synod of the big and unwieldy Diocese of Cape Town refused to divide it into smaller and more easily manageable ones, Bill Burnett resigned, and devoted himself to the Support Ministries Trust, which he founded to promote charismatic renewal in parishes, and internationally in a simialr organisation called Sharing of Ministries Abroad (SOMA). In some places the book appears to muddle these two. He travelled widely, attending renewal conferences, and conducting retreats and seminars. Much of this part of the story is told in short pericopes, lacking details, especially of dates and people involved. Even where people's names are mentioned, we are told little about them or their background.

The book ends with a kind of polemic against "liberation theology", which Burnett seems to have equated with the "Kairos Document", which was produced in late 1985, and signed by a number of clergy and lay leaders of various denominations, and then circulated. Burnett does not quote from the "Kairos Document", nor does he even describe its content, but criticise it, leaving the reader to guess what exactly he is criticising. I would say that many of his criticisms are valid, but what he is criticising is not "liberation theology", and so his criticisms in effect create a caricature of liberation theology. He is doing, by implication, what he implies that Bishops de Blank, Huddleston and Reeves were implying against his friends in the Free State. This implied cricisms of implied views for implied criticisms of other views becomes far too nebulous, and by the end of the book it appears that Bill Burnett had lost the plot, and so the charismatic renewal ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper, running into the sand and leaving little to show for itself.

I don't think this book does justice to Bill Burnett, or to his role in South African Christianity. The first part is well told, but, apart from some formative experiences, does not relate to the second. The second, describing his ministry as a priest and bishop, is scrappy and badly told, though it is evident that his ministry had three phases: the first, developing theological convictions expressed in the "Message to the people of South Africa"; the second, receiving the power of the Holy Spirit to live according to those convictions in joyful freedom; and the third, a kind of withdrawal into embitterment and carping criticism, with the joy apparently dissipated, which also seems to affect the way the rest of the story is told.

There really needs to be a full biography that will look at both the good and the bad points to do justice to Bill Burnett and his ministry, and the way it influenced the church and society or failed to do so.

View all my reviews

So much for his autobiography. At this point I'll write mainly on my own memories of him at various times.

Bill Bendyshe Burnett, Anglican Bishop of Bloemfontein, at ASF Conference, Modderpoort, 1963

I first encountered Bill Burnett in 1960, at the inaugural conference of the Anglican Students Federation, held at Modderpoort in the Free State. In 1963 he spoke at a conference of a group called "Faith in Action" in Grahamstown, where he spoke on "The theology of church and state". In July 1963 he spoke at another conference of the Anglican Students Federation, and again in July 1964, about a book called The primal vision by John V. Taylor. It was on Christian presence among African religions, and remains one of the best books on the relationshop between Christianity and African traditional religion and worldviews. His review made it sound sufficiently interesting for me to buy and read the book.

He was invited, year after year, to speak at the ASF conferences, partly out of courtesy, because he was the local bishop, but also, I think, because most of the other students, like me, regarded him as a good theological teacher. I certainly admired him and looked up to him.

At the time of the publication of the Message to the people of South Africa he was present at some of the follow-up meetings. At one such meeting Bill Burnett opened by saying that there had been a group meeting, calling itself the "Obedience to God Movement", which had been trying to think of ways of disseminating the "Message", and getting the churches to accept and act on it. He said he couldn't, as the General Secretary of the Council of Churches, lead such a movement, though he might be willing to do so if the churches failed to respond as they ought to the Message, and the Obedience to God Movement begins to develop into some sort of

Confessing Church. Beyers Naudé said that every effort should be made to get the churches to accept the Message officially. Ian Thompson, a Presbyterian minister, got up and spoke strongly in

favour of a Confessing Church, and many people suggested having a mass meeting, or a teach-in, or all kinds of things to get the

Message going.

A few of years later I found myself in Durban, and responsible for a parish in which youth groups were being taught some really sub-Christians stuff and bad theology. I can't go into the details here, but I turned to Bill Burnett, then Bishop of Grahamstown, as a kind of theological adviser I could trust, and asked him what I should do. He replied that since his fairly recent experience of baptism in the Spirit he had realised that the one who does God's work is God. A few weeks later he was in Durban, speaking at the South African Congress on Mission and Evangelism, but also at a charismatic prayer group at the Roman Catholic Cathedral, together with David du Plessis, of the Apostolic Faith Mission. That was amazingly ecumenical, and as a result I became involved in the charismatic renewal movement in Durban.At another meeting he spoke to an ecumenical group, organised by the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship, many of whom were from Pentecostal churches, and I was interested to see Bill Burnett preaching social action to the revivalist, and revival to the social activists. It seemed to me that he was bringing together two things that should never have been separated in the first place.

When I moved to Zululand in 1976, the charismatic renewal had been going for a long time there, and Bill Burnett spoke at a diocesan conference, where one of the learly leaders, Canon Philip Mbatha, said, "Lord now lettest thouy thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." In the beginning, in the 1950s the charismatics in Zululand had been accused by others of being Zionists and not really Anglican, and so seeing the Archbishop of Cape Town involved in it seemed like a vindication.

But in the 1980s Bill Burnett seemed to change. I've noted some of the changes in my review of his autobiography; he seemed to become more negative, and making carping criticisms of others. In his autobiography, though he rejects apartheid, he does not criticise the architects of apartheid very strongly, and at times goes out of his way to praise them. He reserves his harshest criticism for those in the church who opposed apartheid. But none of those he criticised were radical revisionist theologians. On the contrary, they were all pretty conservative theologically. Their criticism of apartheid was based on the unchanging gospel of Jesus Christ. Trevor Huddleston, in particular, wrote a theological critique of apartheid in his book that prefigured the Message to the people of South Africa.

Erica Murray, a friend who worked closely with Bill Burnett over a long period, said the change had begun when he was zapped. But if so, I had not been aware of it. Richard Girdwood, another friend I saw recently, who has been working in Cape Town for several years, and was himself invcolved in the charismatic renewal in Durban in the 1970s, said that coming to the Diocese of Cape Town long after Bill Burnett had left, there was still a bad legacy. There had been division, with charismatics being favoured at Bishopscourt, and non-charismatics being made to feel like second-class Christians. Bill Burnett had bought his own staff from outside the diocese, thus appearing more like an occupying power (my interpretation, not Richard's words) than the bishop of the diocese, and he gave more attention to charismatic conferences overseas than to the problems of his diocese that demanded his attention as bishop.

So Bill Burnett is a complex figure, and something of an enigma. If we are to write a book on the charismatic renewal, he will be one of the central figures, yet there are still so many unanswered questions.

Places to stay in South Africa

On a recent holiday trip to the Free State, Eastern Cape and Western Cape we discovered that several of our cousins are involved in the hospitality industry, and are operating bed and breakfast or self-catering accommodation, or planning to. At the risk of engaging in rank nepotism, we'd like to describe some of these places — but though there may be an element of nepotism, its more than that, and these places are among the best we stayed at in our travels.

Villa Reinet in Graaff Reinet

Villa Reinet is run by my second cousin Ailsa Grobler (nee Hannan) and her husband Nick and is in a beautiful old house in Graaff Reinet.

Villa Reinet, run by Nick and Ailsa Grobler

There is a large lounge for the use of guests, very pleasant for sitting and reading on sunny winter afternoons.

The sitting room at Villa Reinet

The bedrooms and self-catering apartments are arranged around a pleasant courtyard behind the main house.

Villa Reinet courtyard

We had never been to Graaff Reinet before, and Val had always wanted to see the Valley of Desolation (in a nature reserve 13 km from the town), so we stayed a couple of nights. If we had had more time we'd like to have stayed longer. The breakfasts were magnificent.

The Shire, Stutterheim

The Shire Eco-Lodge is something quite different. It is out in the country 6 km from the village of Stutterheim, and is very much rural. It has four self-catering wooden cabins of a unique design, overlooking a stream and indigenous forest. It's run by Rob Scott, my second cousin twice removed.

The cabins are solidly constructed, and very roomy inside, with a veranda for looking at the stream and the forest on warm days, and a corner for sitting in cool or rainy weather.

Views from the cabins at The Shire

One problem I have often found at bed and breakfast places is that there is nowhere to sit and write, whether by hand, or using a laptop computer. One often has to sit awkwardly on the bed with paper or computer perched precariously on a bedside pedestal. The Shire solves that problem by providing a table at the right height, though an upright chair would be a nice addition. So if you are a writer and looking for a quiet place to work on your book uninterrupted, The Shire is the ideal place.

The cabins are roomy, and there is even a place for writing

The cabins have a kitchenette, loo and shower.

The other end of the cabins, with kitchenette and shower

And for hot sunny days, after a long walk in the mountains and forests, there is even an outdoor shower (with hot and cold water).

The Shire open-air shower (you don't have to use it, there's an indoor one for rainy days)

And you can also eat outdoors if it's not raining.

Forest cabin at The Shire, Stutterheim

 Clarens, Free State

Another second cousin, Peter Badcock Walters, and his wife Toni, have bought an old sheep shed at Clarens in the Free State, and are busy converting part of it into self-catering apartments. It isn't finished yet, and it has no name. But it will be a good place to stay for a weekend away, for people living in Gauteng, or as a place to stay on a trip to somewhere else.

Peter & Toni Badcock Walters's place in Clarens, Free State

It would be nice to have time and money to spend more time travelling around, but many  people lack the means to live adequately right where they are. But I still sometimes have a yearning to be one of Allen Ginsberg's "angel-headed hipsters  burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night… who drove crosscounty seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity."

The road goes ever on and on

Burgersdorp is an amazing place

When we travelled down to the Western Cape at the end of April, we passed through the small town of Burgersdorp, and were impressed with it, as it seemed a very pleasant place. The houses were neat and well painted, and the streets were clean. Even the more workasday buildings at the industrial end of town looked clean and well-maintained. Since we had a long way to go, we didn't stop, but on the way back we had the chance to spend a night there on 17 April, so we booked in at a bed and breakfast place called "The Nook", run by Anita Joubert, and then went for a walk in the town.

Main Street, Burgersdorp, Eastern Cape, as seen approaching from Aliwal North

We walked up to the main street and took photos of the houses there that had attracted us when we first passed through the town three weeks earlier. Then there was a mission house, which was labelled as a museum. Unfortunately they were restoring it, so much of the stuff was just piled up higgledy piggledy, but we could see enough to know that it had been the original Dopper seminary and John de Gruchy had in fact told us that the town had been associated with the Doppers. It had a couple of pictures with Dirk Postma, with captions that were enough to show more about the history of the Doppers than all the church history books I had read ever read on the subject. In most of them the origin of the Doppers

is shrouded in mystery, but here were the facts in a nutshell, which lay in Postma's own history.

The old Dopper seminary in Burgersdorp, now a museum

Dirk Postma was a minister in a strict Calvinist sect in the Netherlands, and when he came to South Africa disagreed with the Reformed Church in the Transvaal, and formed an independent congregation in Rustenburg, and then started a seminary of rthe Gereformeerde Kerk in Burgersdorp, where the denomination was nicknamed "Doppers".

We went on down the main street, and saw a sign pointing to a restaurant, but it seemed more like a cafe, and we bought cold drinks there. There were three Afrikaans teenagers at the counter, and one of them, a plump boy of about 13, was exceedingly polite, and greeted us with old-fashioned small-town friendliness. Around the corner was the Dopper Church.

Gereformeerde (Dopper) Kerk, Burgersdorp

Around the next corner was the Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk, which was architecturally far more interesting than the Dopper church, though less interesting historically. It had a kind of dome, and was built of stone instead of just being plastered.

Burgersdorp: Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk

At the next corner was a bunch of ANC youth, singing songs, and as we turned the corner they had a kind of float pulled by a tractor, and were preparing for a procession to stir up interest in the local government elections the next day, and eventually the procession set off, about 20 cars and bakkies following the

tractor up Kerk Street, and then back down the main drag, singing and waving flags and bouncing on the bakkies so that the springs were creaking, and a couple of them nearly fell off. They were a very jolly crowd.

Burgersdorp: ANC youth procession to drum up support for local government elections

In the town square, among all the election posters, was one advertising the Dopper fete. The square was a sort of microcosm of South Africa. At the south side was a monument to struggle heroes, mainly young people who had been killed in the 1980s. Nearby was an Afrikaans taal monument, with a statue that

had originally been erected in 1881, and then defaced by "the enemies of the Afrikaner people" in the Anglo-Boer War, and unearthed from a grave in King William's Town, and brought back to Burgersdorp, where it was re-erected with a replica of the original.

Burgersdorp: Taal monument with struggle monument next to i9t

And then, on the other side of the square was a structure that was probably intended to be a drinking fountain, erected by the citizens of the town on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. It was a cast-iron affair, and if it was ever a fountain, it wasn't working now, though it was surrounded by a kind of moat in which a couple of paper cups were floating.

Burgersdorp: monument for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubiulee, 1897

Built into the fountain was the injunction to "Keep the pavement dry", which made us wonder what it was supposed to mean.

Queen Victoria Jubilee Monument, Burgersdorp (detail)

And so it was all there in one place, monuments reflecting the sentiments of three sections of the South African population who had fought each other bitterly in the past: British imperialism, Afrikaner nationalism and Afrikan nationalism. Now they are all there in the same grassy town square.

The monuments represent the violent past, and there were the youth, representing the future. There are the quiet and polite Afrikaner youth, and the jollity and enthusiasm of the ANC youth promoting

the elections. We wouldn't be home in time to vote in the local government elections. It would be easy

to get caught up in the enthusiasm of the youth, and to vote for the ANC, but then I think of Jacob Zuma, and the thought goes a little bit sour. Zuma may be a consummate political wheeler-dealer, but an inspiring leader he isn't, not like Nelson Mandela, or even Thabo Mbeki.

We walked back up Kerk Street, and passed another church, Christ Church, presumably Anglican, built in 1861, though the chancel was added later. It was whitewashed, and matched the older local houses, and it too, like many of the other buildings in  the town, with the exception of the likes of the ubiquitous Pep Stores, was a historical monument.

Christ Church, Burgersdorp

Burgersdorp is an amazing place. I like it.

I hate WordPress (was: Burgersdorp is an amazing place)

WordPress has done it again!

It has lost my entire post.

As soon as I pressed "publish" all the text and pictures in my post disappeared, leavin g only the heading.

I am beginning to develop a serious dislike of WordPress.