Image from http://www.lightalantern.co.za/about-candle-lanterns.asp

While searching the web for something this morning I was really surprised to find this thought-provoking article by Matthew Parris on the importance of faith in liberating Africa (especially surpised as I was looking for a Giles Coren piece on an obesity tax…).  I know it’s a year old and probably done to death in commentaries last year, but reading it I really wanted a chance to talk about it.
Here’s an extract:

But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

In many ways this article is beautiful:  while the activities of aid workers and NGOs are important, only the actions of the missionaries bring a change in the heart, standing tall, liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world, a directness in their dealings with others.  Parris puts this down to:

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I’ve just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

In other words, Christianity as practised by the missionaries (and indeed the non-proselytizing aid workers) gives a sense of self to the believer, enabling and empowering rather than enslaving and cowing.  This is culturally at odds with many of the community actions and tribal religions that are in place and the difference in attitude of new Christians is amazing and, Parris seems to imply, better this way of encouraging self-belief and modernisation than the alternatives that are out there.

This is interesting from two perspectives, which make the article a bit less beautiful…
1) As an atheist, is it patronising for Parris to suggest that Christianity is a good for Africans for getting beyond tribal beliefs in Africa, given that he doesn’t actually think it’s true?
Or is truth only of concern once you are modernised?

2) If Christianity has such amazing uplifting properties that are good for the people of Africa, giving a sense of self-worth built on a direct relationship between God and man, could it not be that those are exactly the things that we are missing and in need of here in the western world too?
Or does it not matter for us because we’ve already modernised and grown beyond such superstitions?

I don’t have any answers.  I suspect only Matthew Parris really knows what he was getting at, and he admits that what he sees is incompatible with or inexplicable by his new world view. 

For me, the idea that Christianity is a helpful stepping stone but not ultimately true is close to the Marx/ Engels “religion is the opiate of the masses“ approach to life – an illusory happiness which can be set aside in order that they find “real” happiness. 
According to the rather fabulous Marx exhibition at the Karl Marx Haus in Trier, Marx had an exceptionally unhappy life, had a child with his housekeeper and two of his children commited suicide – so I’d be pretty clear that whatever this alternative source of happiness he was seeking, he didn’t find it. 
I wonder why this element of Marxist thought is not as discredited in the popular mind as the rest of communism?  (Incidentally, I maintain that we’ve not actually seen a real Marxist communist society yet – except perhaps early Christian communities:

“And all that believed were together, and had all things common; 45 And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. 46 And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, 47 Praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.” (Acts 2:44-47) )

But there is another perspective.  Perhaps Christianity lifts and inspires because it is true.
 
Christianity is undergoing a real boom in Africa not just because of the sense of self that a direct relationship with Jesus inspires but because what Jesus did, the society that he lived in, these things speak directly to many people in Africa in a way that we in the developed world have forgotten.   
Perhaps the liberation that comes from being an individual known to and knowing God personally is that missing element in life?
When you look at society today, the things that are prized (fame, money, advantage over others, being important, slick argument, “being yourself” in the Big Brother sense of saying exactly what you think without thought of the consequences for others in so doing, having the best of everything, doing exactly what you want to do) are about power and exerting that sense of self. 
Few people that get sucked into this belief system think about the consequences for their self, but the sense that something’s missing (the God-shaped hole) is often there in the statements that the “successful” people give to the press (being a reasonable person I’m compelled to point out this comments thread from the Daylight Atheism website that points out that confident atheists are also happy and that the posters seem to see it as a security-hole based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - but I see it as the Self-actualisation stage of Maslow rather than the Safety stage) .  And as is being seen in Africa, if embraced, that freedom can change worlds.

So how have we got ourselves to a stage where we are rejecting that freedom and regarding it as something that’s ok for others (even for liberating an enire continent) but just not for us?
Stephan Joubert, on the blog at www.echurch.co.za writes: 

One of my favorite quotes is that of Ernst Kaesemann, a well-known German theologian of the previous century. Just listen to what he writes as he’s thinking about Jesus: “People and institutions do not like to be kept continually on the alert, and they have constantly devised screens to protect themselves from too much heat. In fact, they have even managed to reduce Jesus’ red-hot message, which promised to kindle a fire throughout the world, to room temperature.”

If you look at church history through the centuries, that is just what has happened: sects appeared trying to rationalise what had happened (Jesus can’t have been human, he could only have been human, bodily ressurection wasn’t expected and therefore may be only spiritual ressurection took place, secret knowledge or good works required in addition to faith in Jesus in order to be saved… and so on).  Evidence if any were needed that the oldest message of the ressurection was hard to understand even then…
(Another aside – that ressurection was the key focus of faith in Jesus is clear from Paul’s letter here 1 Cor. 15:3-4: “ For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and that he was buried and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.”) 
People in the UK tend to think Christianity’s about a bunch of old men in dresses with unworldly eyes or fuzzy beards, debating the morality of homosexuality and, dressed up smartly looking down on or turning away those who need access to that message of unconditional love.  Of course the church is not just its clergy (and in any case many clergy these days are younger, and/ or women) but the people that believe, and we need to be out there, spreading the word and helping people to be spiritually as well as physically whole.

And that’s an aspiration that’s not old fashioned, or unneeded where I am. 
And in looking forward, it’s the perfect thought for advent.

Related posts:

1. Robbie’s Bodies obsession
2. Making up my son’s mind on God…
3. How sure are you? Pascal and “Bad Conscience”
4. What’s the politics equivalent of CofE?