Go South, Young Man, Go South

If Horace Greely were uttering his famous advice: “Go West, young man” today, and if he were concerned about the future of Christianity, as many of us here tonight are, he would have suggested that we look in a different direction. He would have said: “Go South, young man, go South.”

Nor would Greely have been thinking of the southern states in our United States, however much those of us with Southern roots cherish those aspects of the culture of the old South that are rooted in a deep appreciation of the Bible.

Greely’s advice would have been to go to the Global South, for it is there that the future of Christianity lies. What that means for those of us who claim to be Christian, and especially for those of us who are Anglican or Episcopalian, is the topic of my comments this evening.

Church growth statistics

The statistics are staggering. While the numerical decline of professing Christians in the mainline denominations of North America is startling in and of itself, this decline must be put alongside the quantum growth in the number of professing Christians in the Global South. In 1900 Africa was 9% Christian. Today it is 46% Christian. When your grandchildren and mine are young adults [say by 2025], 50% of the world’s Christian population will be in Africa and Latin America, and another 17% will be in Asia.

David Aikman, who has traveled extensively in China and who is writing a book about the church in China, says that by 2020 China’s Christian population will have multiplied many times over so that 20-30% of the population of China will be Christian. He estimates that 20,000 new Chinese believe in Jesus Christ daily – and that is confirmed anecdotally by a friend of mine who works for the Dali Lama and is herself very pro-Buddhist. She returned from Beijing recently astounded at the fact that during the lunch hour on a business day all she could see in the parks around the nation’s capital were Christian groups eating their box lunches and studying the Bible.

Nor any more will it come as a surprise to us to be reminded that in Nigeria alone there are more Anglican worshippers on any given Sunday than there are in all of the Anglican churches of Europe, Britain, Canada and the United States combined. Catholics, to think of just one group, have experienced phenomenal growth in the Philippines and Africa. Pentecostals, to take another, by 2040 may have a billion adherents – far outnumbering the world’s Buddhists, and on a par with the world’s Hindus.

Deeper differences

But the differences between the Global North and the Global South are far greater than these numerical statistics show. As someone said: In North America the typical Anglican is older, white, well-educated, lives in a safe environment, is comfortably off, is an Anglophone and is liberal. However, if you take a global picture of Anglicanism, the image changes radically. The typical global Anglican is young, non-white, under-educated, lives in a hostile environment, is poor, is not an Anglophone, and is evangelical. The church in the Global South is conservative on doctrine, hierarchical in structure, radically communal in ethos, and zealous in sharing their faith. The church in the Global North is revisionist in doctrine, egalitarian in structure, individualistic in ethos, and while it may talk a lot about “mission” is hostile to evangelism. The same demographic and theological contrasts apply to all the mainline denominations, including the Roman Catholics, when you put the Global North and West alongside the Global South. This is why, for example, North America Anglicans or Episcopalians are shocked when they meet the Global South Anglicans. I’m not talking about meeting the occasional visitor. When African, Asian and Latin American visitors come to America they are invariably courteous and deferential to their Western hosts. But, I’m talking about when Episcopalians go to the Global South and encounter the church there on its own turf. They are amazed, embarrassed, and perhaps a little ashamed. Some, like a former colleague of mine, come home really converted to Christ for the first time and determined to rethink their entire theological world view.

A global journey

Let me take you, then, on a global journey by way of a few verbal snapshots.

Come with me first to the Anglican Cathedral in Gibraltar. It is Easter Sunday. The year is 1960. The liturgy is beautiful, and the sermon is an 8 minute homily drawing its inspiration from the Rose Window over the altar. The Resurrection may or may not have been mentioned. There is much hullabaloo over a sherry party in the Cathedral Close to be held after the service; and the preacher comments on my Oxford University tie as he shakes my hand at the door. Although Gibraltar is owned by Britain, it is surrounded by Spain. However, you will have found no hint of anything Spanish in the very English service. This is the Anglicanism that was: elitist, colonial, formal, theologically vapid, and smug.

It is the same year, 1960, and I am standing in London at Hyde Park Corner on a Sunday afternoon. I am a graduate student listening as speakers on box tops hold forth on a great variety of subjects, to the merriment of hecklers and crowds of passers-by. I am talking with an African, who on discovering that I am studying theology, offers the judgment: “Christianity is finished in Africa.” “Finished!” I wonder what he would say today, 43 years later, about his beloved Africa which, having shaken off its colonial roots, is experiencing the most spectacular church growth in the history of the world?

Now bring the camera forward 40-odd years. This time I am in an African cathedral – in the heart of Nigeria. I am the preacher, and 30 young men and their wives are being ordained. I say their wives, because it is expected that all wives of clergy are partnered with their husbands in ministry. It is they who will run the vitally-important Mother’s Union, so wives are formally commissioned when their husbands are ordained. These men will receive no salary, no benefits, no automobile allowance, and no pension. Most will not live in a rectory, will have to travel on bicycle and will grow their own food in their backyards. They will be lucky if they have a dozen books in their libraries. They will live and work in the midst of a hostile Muslim community. But there is joy on their faces as they go forth to spread the Gospel and build, yes, Anglican churches.

Or, for my last snapshot, come with me to Luanda, Angola – a city torn by decades of civil war, decimated from its once former glory by thousands of refugees who have sought shelter in tin shacks on the town’s garbage dump: a huge mound of clay and raw sewage that serves as home for thousands. Someday the UN will build housing there; but until that far-off day, these poor folk eek out a subsistence living in the most appalling circumstances. It is Sunday and my teen-aged daughter and I attend a Protestant service in a clay hut with no roof and just wooden boards for seating. The service begins with a line of fine-looking young Angolan men marching in singing in beautiful antiphon. The preacher pours out his soul in a sermon delivered in Umbundu. It is translated into Portuguese, and then into French. I overhear the French, and manage to convey the meaning to my daughter in English. Visitors from North America are greeted warmly, and I am asked to say a few words. What is this? This is the church of the future. These people love Jesus Christ. Their vision of the future is shaped by the cross and resurrection by which the world has been crucified to them, and they to the world. They don’t care what denomination we are. I don’t know what denomination they are. But they know that we all share a secret together. We all rejoice in the same Lord and the same hope.

These shapshots could be multiplied: the Anglican Cathedral in Hong Kong packed to the gills three services every Sunday with – Philippine domestic servants working for wealthy Chinese; a parish in Soweto, South Africa with a bright, zealous young curate battling the inroads of witchcraft and spiritualism; a female Pentecostal preacher in Mexico City’s main square declaring the finished work of Christ in a tent full of eager listeners. And on it goes. These images remain with me. The needs I saw still haunt me, the joy on believers faces still challenges me. These images shape my understanding of the worldwide Church of Jesus Christ. Without them I wonder if I would recognize the Church through the narrow parochial spectacles I have because of my American context.

A Counter-Reformation?

So when Philip Jenkins, author of The Next Christendom, says “Christians are facing a shrinking population in the liberal West and a growing majority of the traditional Rest,” I know what he means. I’ve seen it in my lifetime. He likens our time to the 16th. Century Reformation. There is a “Reformation” going on in the mainline churches of the West, if you can call it a Reformation. It is anti-hierarchical, individualistic, anti-traditional, ostensibly rational, and in tune with the deepest streams of modernity. In those senses, it is like the 16th. Century Reformation. But at the same time there is a Counter-Reformation going on in the Global South. It is hierarchical, communal, conservative, ostensibly mystical, and out of synch with modernity. The one is experiencing dramatic church decline, the other equally dramatic church growth. The one, here in the West, is asking the newer churches to be patient with it. “Understand that we must live out our faith in a very different context, and we must each interpret Scripture from within that context.” The other is increasingly impatient, shocked by the numerical, spiritual and moral decline they see in us, and believes as the 150 Anglican leaders two weeks ago in Limuru, Kenya at the EFAC International Consultation said: “The Holy Scripture must have authority over every culture.”

Looking with new eyes

What might it look like for us in the West to do what the rest of the world is begging us to do: sit humbly and quietly for a few minutes, or months, or years and look at the experience of those with little money, no political power, no international clout – but with vibrant, young, congregations of faithful believers who are the church of the future? We may be surprised at what we would see; and we may become uncomfortable and ashamed at the challenges we sense to our easy compromises with secularism and sensualism. But I believe we must; because we are watching the emergence of two totally different bodies in the world, each claiming to be Christian, each claiming to be brothers and sisters, but quite different when you examine them carefully.

What, then, will we see if we sit humbly and open our eyes to what is happening to the church – and what can we learn from what we see?

Mirror, window, magnifying glass

We will see, first, a mirror to our own sense of superiority and paternalism. At an international Anglican Conference in Oxford last year, a note was sent around to all the Americans present – and we were in great preponderance. The note asked us please to restrain ourselves in discussion, not to dominate the question times, and not to foist our agenda on the rest of the international consultation – in effect, to keep our traps shut. At first I was offended; but as the conference proceeded I realized how very easy it was for us Americans to weigh in to every discussion, put up our hands to be noticed, and have a ready answer to every problem. Our Global South participants, on the other hand, were respectful and quiet. Their graciousness was a mirror to our unacknowledged arrogance. At one point all the conference participants were told that there would be no meal offered that evening, and that we must all eat out on our own. One African rose and politely asked what he and his fellows were to do because they had no money with which to buy dinner. Here, again, was a mirror to our mistaken assumption that other people were just like us. In actual fact the conference had money for them; but had forgotten to tell them.

Then, too, by looking at the church in the Global South, we are looking through a window into the suffering heart of God. We have a student from the Sudan at Trinity whose mother and father were hacked to death and whose bodies were thrown in a ditch. We had another whose house was set on fire, and who escaped through a back door just in time. He keeps a Plexiglas “coffin” in his living room filled with the ashes of that house as a reminder that “his life is expendable for Christ.” “We know suffering” says a Chinese pastor to David Aikman. “We’ve been in prison. We’ve been beaten. We are not afraid of mission. It is we who will bring the Gospel to the Muslim world.” I receive a letter from a Pakistani clergyman friend, desperate to get his family out of harm’s way. Can we help? These stories can be multiplied by the thousands. And, as Grant LeMarquand of the Trinity faculty points out in a paper delivered at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific: “Persecution is only one form of suffering. Most Christians in the world now live in places where AIDS, the lack of clean water, the paucity of health care facilities, government ineptitude, and the inequities of globalization lead to thousands of preventable deaths, not every year, but every hour.” Where better to see the suffering heart of God than in and through the experiences of millions of our brothers and sisters in Christ even as we sit here in the comfortable West tonight?

Then, again, we see the bright light of missionary zeal as if magnified by a magnifying glass. One of our doctoral students was one of the dozen or so missionary bishops ordained by the Church of Nigeria to go to the un-evangelized north, the Muslim north, and start churches as part of the decade of evangelism. I have been to that Muslim north. I was nearly arrested for taking a photograph of a mosque. The hostility was palpable. But Bishop Ali, who comes from a Muslim family but who was wonderfully converted to Jesus Christ, is building churches all through that area. He is a good preacher; but he is no George Whitefield or John Wesley. He is just a persistent proclaimer of the Good News, and his people take the message with them to their villages, their neighborhoods, their extended families and “gossip the Gospel.” Another graduate of Trinity went to Nepal as a missionary. He traipsed all over that mountainous country carrying a Swiss Army knife I gave him, and a Bible. Today he is the Dean of Nepal, working under the direction of the Province of South East Asia, and there are churches dotted all over that country – Anglican churches.

There is, then, a transparent quality about Global Christianity in the developing world. Whether as a mirror to our own sense of superiority and paternalism, or a window into the suffering heart of God, or a magnifying glass by which to understand mission afresh, we see with new eyes, and we are humbled and chastened and encouraged.

Headlight, lantern, lighthouse

But there is more to see. Global South Christianity is spotting for us, like a bright headlight in the night, some of the dangers on the road ahead. Who else can show us the impact of national indebtedness? We have Allen Greenspan. Who do they have? Governments corrupted by graft, greed and bribery. Digging their countries out of systemic poverty will be a century-long task, except perhaps in Asia where Western know-how combines with Eastern discipline and hard work. AIDS is soon to be a global crisis. What should we in the West be doing other than throwing billions of dollars at the problem? A Mother’s Union in Africa took on the task of loving the sick and feeding them in the hospital, washing the clothes, and taking care of orphans. Christians in Uganda spearheaded an abstinence program that (along with condom distribution) has markedly reduced the incidence of AIDS. And in the Muslim-Christian encounter, haven’t we a lot to learn from those Anglican Churches where Christians live in predominantly Muslim locales? How do we balance dialogue and mutual understanding with a commitment to mission and evangelism? What, for example, should Christian high school students do when a group of Muslim students ask the administration for a room in which to pray? We haven’t a clue. But in Nigeria, they know that that is a request to establish a mosque in the school; and once established the mosque cannot be used for anything else without causing offence. Any room where Muslims pray regularly ipso facto becomes a mosque.

Christians in the Global South read the Bible differently than we do. They offer us a lantern by which we freshly understand parts of God’s Word. “I am, because I am” we say in the West, defining ourselves as individuals. “I am, because we are,” says the African Christian who defines himself or herself as a member of a group, a family, or a tribe. Messages that we see as addressed to us individually, they see addressed to the community. This is only one of the ways Africans read Scripture differently. Again, Grant LeMarquand has an excellent paper (PDF help) on this on our Trinity website. The African way of reading is significant, because it challenges our own narrow reading of the Bible. The African’s struggle with suffering, displacement, slavery, and disease gives resonance to those passages like the Exodus, the Wilderness, the Captivity, and the diaspora. They view even the cross through communal eyes. Listen to a poem “I am an African” by Gabriel Setiloane (1976:56-59):

And yet for us it is when He is on the cross,
This Jesus of Nazareth, with holed hands
And open side, like a beast at a sacrifice;

When He is stripped naked like us,
Browned and sweating water and blood in the heat of the sun
Yet silent,
That we cannot resist him.
How like us He is, this Jesus of Nazareth,
Beaten, tortured, imprisoned, spat upon, truncheoned,
Denied by his own, and chased like a thief in the night,
Despised, and rejected like a dog that has fleas.
For NO REASON.

No reason, but that He was Son of his Father
Or…Was there a reason?
There was indeed…!
As in that sheep or goat we offer in sacrifice,
Quiet and uncomplaining,
Its blood falling to the ground to cleanse it...and us;
And making peace between us and our fathers long passed away:
He is the LAMB!
His blood cleanses not only us,
   not only the clan,
   not only the tribe,
      But all, all MANKIND:
      Black and White and Brown and Red,
         All Mankind!

And, in addition to a headlight in the night, a lantern to illuminate the Word, we can also see a lighthouse in the Global South churches. This is a lighthouse warning us that we are sailing too close to the rocks in our preference for academic respectability over humble discipleship, our capitulation to pluralism over the uniqueness and finality of Christ, our mixture of the Gospel and Right Wing or Left Wing politics, our severance of the sacred and the secular that leads us to see mission either as proclamation or social justice rather than the two together. From Kenya again, two weeks ago, comes the warning from 150 Anglican leaders from all over the world that we in the West have let the “Trojan horse” of pluralism within the walls. Scripture is clear, they say to us: “There is no other God who saves.” (Limuru Statement, 2003) We have also allowed the weakening of family life and the abandonment of self-discipline :“We affirm that adultery, sex outside of marriage and homosexual unions are all contrary to God’s purposes for our humanity.” What are these strong statements but a judgment on the laxity that we have come to take for granted, and a warning that we are sailing too close to the rocks. When Paul saw that his ship was sailing too close to the Rocks in Acts 27, “the let out four anchors from the stern.” Hebrews speaks of the “anchor” which is our hope in God’s promises.” (Heb. 6:19) We, too, have a “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” and our brothers and sisters from the impoverished part of the world are calling out to us to grasp it firmly and keep the ship from foundering.

Here, then, are three means by which we may see better: a headlight in the dark, a lantern for our feet, and a lighthouse lest we run aground – all means of enlightening us to those aspects of church life that we are in danger of missing in our fixation on issues rather than on the Gospel.

Spectacles, telescope, prism

And, a third triad: three remedial or corrective means whereby we might see better: a pair of spectacles, a telescope, and a prism.

It is recorded of the great scientist Ampere that he burst into tears when he first put on a pair of spectacles and realized all that he had been missing. Similarly, the church of the Global South can open our eyes to correct our short-sightedness. For example, most Episcopalians in the pews haven’t the faintest idea of the issues that are tearing this body apart. Why? Because we clergy have been insulating our people from these troublesome issues rather than putting them out in the open for real debate, discussion, and prayer. “There, there, Mrs. Snooks, these are big national issues that don’t need to trouble you. Have another cup of tea. St. Swithin’s is doing just fine.” The other night I told a woman about a man at Trinity whom we helped rescue from a Saudi prison where he had been tortured for preaching about Jesus in the underground churches of the Saudi kingdom. By her reaction, you’d have thought that I was talking about the latest James Bond movie.

Philip Jenkins castigates the Western media for seeming to know nothing about the growth and strength of the Christian movement in the Global South: “I suspect that most (observers) see Christianity very much as it was a century ago – a predominantly European and North American faith. The media have tended to suggest that Islam, not Christianity, is the rising faith of Africa and Asia, the authentic or default religion of the world’s huddled masses. But Christianity is not only surviving in the Global South, it is enjoying a radical revival, a return to scriptural roots.” (Atlantic Monthly, October 2002) Where, then, shall this myopic view be corrected? In our parishes, by people like you and me. And by Christians who go to the Global South and have their eyes opened.

Then, a telescope. Shortly after Lambeth, 1998 one of our revisionist dioceses was showing a film about global Anglicanism. When the camera panned over to Africa, and began to show scenes of vibrant church life on that continent, the clergy in the room began to boo. They were booing at the Africans because in their minds it was the backward Africans at Lambeth who had pressured the rest of the Communion to issue such a strong statement against homosexuality. Their boos represented a classic case of denial. Africa they saw as backward, themselves as progressive. However, this is the Communion that is coming. This is the future of Anglicanism – not in the old, decaying West where there are as many Muslims worshipping in England weekly as there are people worshipping in Church of England parishes. You can’t deny reality for very long. Eventually the sun rises. The Global South hands us a telescope and says: “watch the dawn break.” There is a new church coming.

And, finally, a prism. Here is where we see the true diversity of the world-wide church. You can pull together a carefully-chosen international church convention in which all sorts of native dress is worn, and all sorts of languages are spoken. But the predominant theological paradigm, carefully chosen by the conference planners, will be liberal and revisionist. That is not diversity, any more than videos showing Native Americans doing tribal dances alongside people walking the Labyrinth is diversity. Those are external forms of diversity. Real diversity is when people are free in Jesus Christ to express their true opinions, to confess their real sins, to disagree on nonessentials while holding fast to the Truth, and to love one another despite the cultural, racial, social, and geographical differences that exist. We need the refraction of the full spectrum of color that exists in the church today. To get that we need to experience the rising church in the Global South.

And, so, three sets of seeing afresh are needed, and are being offered to us by our brothers and sisters in the Global South. Mirrors by which we can see our own superiority and paternalism. Windows through which we can see the suffering heart of God. Magnifying glasses by which we have mission focused with new urgency and power. Then, headlights to see in the darkness, lanterns to illuminate the Word of God, lighthouses to keep us from wrecking ourselves on the shoals. And, then three corrective lenses: spectacles to remove our myopia, telescopes to see the dawn, and prisms to see the magnificent diversity of the people of God.

Weaknesses

I have purposely avoided speaking of the weaknesses of the emerging church in the Global South, not because there are not any weaknesses. There are. Ask them. There is a lack of solid teaching. There is nominalism. There is disobedience. There is authoritarianism by some leaders. There is militancy in the face of Muslim aggression. There is corruption especially over money. But these do not negate the good things I have said. The Spirit of God is at work, and it is we who have to learn from those who have come to know our Lord better than we.

One final snapshot. Walking through the market place in Jos, Nigeria – the very market that was burned down, alas, in the recent conflict between Muslims and Christians – a friend and I were stopping here and there to look at the various booths. As we walked by one little stand, we noticed a young man sitting on his stool, and on his lap was an open Bible. Here was a twenty-something Nigerian taking a few minutes on the job to read and pray. As we walked by, he happened to lift his head up. His eyes caught mine. He knew what white people like us were doing in his part of the world. He broke out in a warm smile, and I smiled back. We shared not a word; but there in that simple act of bonding, as two pairs of eyes met over an open Bible, the church of Jesus Christ is made visible: international, black and white, rich and poor, Anglican and God knows what, sharing the mystery that angels longed to look into, but that has been revealed to us. I left refreshed and encouraged.

This address was given by Dr. Moore at the 2003 Trinity dinner at General Convention in Minneapolis on August 2, 2003

The Very Rev. Dr. Peter Moore is Dean and President Emeritus of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry. He is the author of the award-winning Disarming the Secular Gods (IVP), One Lord, One Faith (Nelson), and A Church to Believe In (Latimer), and most recently the editor of Can a Bishop Be Wrong?: Ten Scholars Challenge John Shelby Spong (Morehouse, 1998).