From Portugal: "We also expect that, when we see in each other what we believe to be failure or unfaithfulness, there will be freedom for plain speaking and fraternal rebuke."
Accountability is a complex thing. University-educated Westerners have imbibed so much Marxist colonial theory that we find it hard to call many Africans and Asian to task for their flagrant human rights abuses, their murderous and cleptocratic governments, their protracted ethnic strife punctuated by attempts at genocide, and their shameless subjugation of women. Western governments don't call these nations to accountability either because they are too necessary to the world economy or are not necessary at all. Western churches -- including our own -- have gotten all misty-eyed over cultural diversity and therefore turned a blind eye to the manifest signs of bigotry in African and Asian churches.
Well, we now have the call to dry our eyes and cleanse our minds clouded by romantic notions of far-away places. We need to call people to account: from Robert Mugabe who calls us animals, to Bp Chuckwuma who wants to exorcize us, to the Lambeth bishops who hissed accusations of racism at those who defended us. Moreover, we must never cave in to the ideas that poverty is an excuse for hatred and genocide, that colonialism invites our tolerance of bad government, and that cultural differences justify our silence in the face of bigotry.
No more should we allow the rhetoric that Church growth which corresponds to birth rate is an indication of the spiritual superiority of a people. No more should we apologize for our hard-won toleration of other faiths and even of the right not to believe at all. No more should we be modest that we pioneered the full inclusion of half of the human race at the church altar.
Mutual accountability means an invitation to 'come and see' at the risk of both criticism and praise. It means being willing to let everything out of the dark obscurity of political rhetoric and into the bright scrutiny of daylight. It means subjecting your mission in God's kingdom to a potential summary dismissal like 'Veni, vidi, castigavi' (I came, I saw, I found it reprehensible.) Bp Griswold has graciously extended the invitation. Now it's time to hear the same from other parts.
Dan Beck dalexbeck@yahoo.com
Atlanta GA
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Neque enim praesentior spiritus noster est
ubi animat quam ubi amat.
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