Israel, Gaza, Arab Spring, women bishops and freedom
Let me trespass on political soil – and hopefully not lose too many friends…
More than 20 years ago, in a Time essay conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer asked “By whose values do we critique Israel’s conduct – those of the liberal democracies of the West, or those of her neighbours?” At the time I was still living in pre-liberation South Africa, and on reading this wondered if the same question might not be asked of my own country. From the wider perspective, both Israel and apartheid South Africa have been shining beacons of tolerance and liberty compared to most of their immediate neighbours – while pursuing practices and policies that have drawn exclamations of outrage from the Western liberal establishment.
It has to be acknowledged – and this is certainly not an apologetic for apartheid – that the record of most Middle Eastern states and of post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa with regard to human rights and democracy has been abysmal. Millions have died of wars, genocide, starvation and disease – and their grandiosely brutal dictators have strutted across the world’s stage, often feted by the media and rulers of the liberal West while their people suffered. The record of such has certainly been worse by orders of magnitude than anything ever seen in modern Israel or apartheid South Africa.
One of the immediate results of the Arab Spring, following a similar trend in newly democratic Iraq, has been the intensified marginalisation and persecution of Christian minorities. While not exactly enjoying spectacular freedom under the old authoritarian regimes, under the new (often Islamist-dominated) democratic regimes those who follow the historical Christian churches in the Middle East are now even more vulnerable to the dislike of their rulers and neighbours. Foretelling the demise of historical expressions of the church in this region, in a typically supercilious BBC manner a presenter on the “Sunday” programme recently remarked to an Iraqi churchman: “Sadly soon the only representatives of Christianity in the Middle East will be the American right-wing conservative evangelical and charismatic groups…” (Wake up and smell the coffee – these despised groups are the evident heirs of the next generation of Christianity! And for heaven sake may the BBC and other Western media please stop equating “conservative evangelical” with “right wing” – and an awful lot of these groups are anything but American)
Where do women bishops stand in this mix? It was significant that this hoped-for amendment to C of E polity was resisted by the laity, and primarily by those of Catholic tendencies (can a woman guarantee sacramental assurance?) and of Bible-believing charismatic-evangelical persuasion (should a woman teach and lead?) Here we have an unlikely conservative alliance where the modernising charismatic-evangelical wing finds common cause with the very pre-modern Catholic wing. One feels that the evangelicals should never have been there – their equally Bible-believing revivalist and Pentecostal peers have long found little problem with reconciling the text of Scripture with the evidence of Spirit-filled women who demonstrate a clear vocation in Christian ministry at every level.
The issue of modernisation of cultures
Underlying all of these scenarios is the juxtaposition of pre-modern and modern thinking and cultures, and the question of what promotes or hinders the progression from the former to the latter.
Israelis, with their historical roots in European Jewry, represent the ultimate modernised culture and society in the Middle East. Their approach to the problems of agriculture in the desert, and to their surrounding sea of enemies, clearly illustrates this. White Africans similarly represented in Southern Africa the modernising and modernised cultures of their European roots. Modern Israel and the previously White Southern African nations have been surrounded by cultures and societies in which the majority of people were and still are primarily pre-modern in world-view and cultural practice. When the privilege of modern democratic elections has been offered to such societies, too often the outcome has been at best a hybrid of cultures but more likely the affirmation of pre-modern attitudes and practices. And while the modern, middle-class, professional, merchant and artisan elements of Arab society launched the Arab Spring, ironically the democratic harvest they achieved has been new governments that reflect the pre-modern majority in their countries.
The established churches of Europe, no matter how liberal and modernised their clergy may be as individuals, reflect too in their structures a conservative pre-modern feudal value-system. So do the historical churches of the Middle East. As such their social influence is less likely to encourage or promote modernisation. On the other hand, anthropological and sociological researchers argue that the Pentecostal-charismatic groups are a major modernising influence in the societies of the Global South where they are fastest-growing. That it is the charismatic and evangelical Anglican laity that would object to ordination of women bishops seems a sad anomaly within this trend.
Resistance to modernisation
I have as little interest in championing Israel as I do in providing an apologetic for apartheid. But I cannot help but wonder what the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians might have been if their cultures had enjoyed equal modernisation in 1948. It is too often the antipathy between religious and ethnic groups that provides one or both parties with excellent political reasons for resisting with all their might the modernisation of their population. If Egypt were composed of a majority as modernised as those who first took to the Square, would the Brotherhood now be in power? Were the population of Gaza as modernised as the Christian population of Lebanon or the secular population of Turkey, would there be rockets fired and massive walls erected – and could Hamas hope to cling to power? And only with extreme difficulty (but great necessity) do the pre-modern Iranian mullahs keep the lid on the modernised sections of their own people.
Similar scenarios play themselves out in Africa. Faced with the real possibility of his African nation developing an educated and modernised middle-class that would oust him, Mugabe simply had to destroy their social and economic basis: urban businesses, middle-class housing, and the commercial farms and mines. Despite the economic ruin he has foisted on his nation, 50% of the people will still vote for him – the least modernised 50%, the subsistence farmers of the rural regions. And the majority of Black folk in neighbouring South Africa believe fervently that the ruin of Zimbabwe was orchestrated from abroad by White imperialists! This is the same majority that continue to support their own massively corrupt and manifestly incompetent ANC government – a government that has no intention of improving state education, since an upwardly-mobile educated class would never provide such unconditional support.
(In passing: I am well aware of the argument that Israelis and White Africans themselves have had a stake in resisting the modernisation of their surrounding cultures. Speaking for myself, for my fellow White Africans and for the Israelis I have met, this argument verges on the ridiculous – who among us would imagine that a thoroughly modernised Middle East and Southern African sub-continent could be anything other than a most desirable outcome? We would give our eye-teeth for that – to see our respective regions flourishing culturally and materially in an informed and open environment.)
The Pentecostal-charismatic movement
It would certainly be radical to imagine that the conservative established churches of the European nations might eventually be replaced in their social influence by the modernising Pentecostal groups. Yet in the Global South it is probably the fact that the greatest public Christian influence is wielded by these groups rather than by the historical churches that contributes to the modernisation of cultures. Indeed, in Latin America the modernising influence is clearly evident, of both the Pentecostal groups and the secular movement as they replace the entrenched feudalism of the Roman Catholic Church.
Yet sadly these Pentecostal groups might be nurturing within themselves an antidote to this positive trend. The autonomy of Spirit-filled individuals who can search the Scriptures for themselves is slowly being subverted by new guru cults of authoritarian church leadership. The modern question “Is it true?” is being replaced by the mediaeval question “Who said it?” The open and dynamic freedom of the Spirit of the liberating Jesus, operating within the precise parameters of the Scriptures, is gradually being replaced by new superstitions that acknowledge occult forces and rituals, that replace free liturgical expressions with mechanistic rituals, and that resist accumulating knowledge and insights that might benefit the people and the not the leaders.
How sad it would be if a most promising modernising movement, significantly present in almost every region on earth, were to be subverted from within to become just one more ritualistic religion, anti-intellectual culture, and pedlar of superstitious nonsense? The notion of a fundamentalistic Pentecostal Taliban is not as far-fetched as we might imagine. Pray God this may never happen, let us educate the next Pentecostal generation in modern ways and expressions that reflect the freedom offered by the liberating Christ.
Mathew Clark 