The True Faith
Undiluted by modernity, by social mores in conflict with a literal reading of the Holy bible. That is the true faith, one espoused unflinchingly by the Roman Catholic Church, and by evangelical congregations as well as most truly fundamentalist conservative Christians. The others are pretenders, almost apostate in their leaning, their permissiveness, their theological anarchy. They bring shame to the tradition of the worship of God and to his emissary on earth, Jesus Christ. The Saviour.There was a time, when Christianity expressed its passion by forcibly converting Jews, and those who would not be converted, who fled persecution, or who allowed themselves to be martyred; were fodder for that great annihilator of the unblessed, the Inquisition. There was a time when Christian knights took the courage of their convictions into action and marched purposefully to the Holy Land, their holy campaigns often funded by Jewish money-lenders, there to confront the armies of Islam and the killers of Christ.
Well, there was a time when missionaries fanned out in their conversion fervour across Asia and Latin America and Africa. Doing the work of God, converting the godless, the pagans, to the word of God, bringing them to his gracious, forgiving fold. Occasionally, in the process, committing grave offences against humanity, but that too is history. The passions of conversion and the urgency of bringing humankind to salvation excuses all excesses.
Now here is history being turned on its head. It was widely speculated after the death of John Paul II, during the Vatican's Council of Cardinal's voting process that it was now feasible, quite possible, that a candidate from Latin America, Asia or Africa might be elected to the highest office of Christendom. But not quite yet. Surprisingly, it would appear that all the seeds of conversion, so slow to take root despite careful nurturance has skipped a century.
There is a widely perceived religious malaise identified in the West, where religion has taken a back-seat to modernity eschewing reliance on religion for social cohesion. In contrast, a great surging emergence of increased conversion and dedication to the Christian Church is blossoming in those other geographies. Where cultural heritage and social tradition is naturally taken with the supernatural, pomp and ceremony, the majesty of spirituality.
Holy Scripture lives, it glows, it represents the deep faith of the Global South; missionaries did their work well. Now the game has turned; it is missionaries from the Global South who are migrating back to Europe, to tame the ungodly, those whose Christianity has become a shade of what it once was. The liberalism of evolution and sexuality is anathema to the dogmatic fundamentalists in Asia, in Africa and South America; they rebel against the traditional authority of Europe.
Now the Global South, representing much of South America, has reached back to Europe and to North America, to welcome distressed Anglicans back into the fold of conservative authority. A breakaway, parallel national Anglican church has placed itself under the authority of Gregory Venables, archbishop of the Southern Cone, in rejection of the Anglican church which is grappling with the ordination of women and gays, and the sanctioning of same-sex unions.
The Anglican archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, installed a bishop in the United States, bypassing the Episcopal church, which gave sanction to the consecration of openly gay bishop Gene Robinson. "All these people brought Christianity to us, but now the church is growing here [in Africa] like wildfire, it's spreading everywhere while the church in England is withering, the church in the States is going completely and there has been a cry, "Why don't you come" according to Archbishop Bernard Malango, the Anglican primate of Central Africa.
And so they do. They are sending missionaries to the United States and to Canada. Because, they say, those who brought Christianity to them have now lost their way and their will. The Holy Scriptures are being misinterpreted and soiled by the perception of individual freedom and personality no longer being defined by conservative religious values.
Faith triumphs over reason, yet again. Reason is the enemy of faith. And many Western-based Christians yearn for what has been left behind in a religion-emancipated environment now seen as hostile to true devotion.
Labels: Human Fallibility, Religion
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, November 25, 2007
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