Peace Possibilities in Southern Africa

The United Nations, whose charter says it is “determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” has broken precedent with a General Assembly resolution endorsing “armed struggle” for the independence of South-West Africa (Namibia). The World Council of Churches and the All Africa Conference of Churches, which in the past have taken credit for the settlement of hostilities, have now said in a consultation at Kitwe, Zambia, that the southern Africa “liberation struggle is a Christian struggle.” Just before Christmas, guerrillas slaughtered twenty-seven defenseless Rhodesian tea-plantation workers in a massacre that shocked even some of the “liberation” leaders.

As the Geneva talks on the future of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) resume this month, is there any hope? Has everything in the southern part of that great continent gone amok?

News from southern Africa, appearing more and more frequently in the mass media, indicates that there is, indeed, little hope for a peaceful solution of the region’s problems. Tension is rising.

Item. Angola, granted “independence” by the fleeing Portuguese in November, 1975, is still locked in a civil war. According to columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, the government of Agostinho Neto has been propped up only by the presence of 20,000 Cuban troops. The armed forces of Neto’s rival, Jonas Savimbi, are said to control an area the size of Pennsylvania. Church work has been disrupted, with many overseas workers unable to return to their ministries. Relief workers have estimated that one million “victims of war” there need help to re-establish normal lives.

Item. Mozambique, which also gained its “freedom” from Portugal in 1975, is an armed camp. Its Marxist leader, Samora Machel, is no friend of the churches. He has nationalized church properties and discouraged citizens from participating in various Christian activities. Yet he has accepted aid from the World Council of Churches. The ecclesiastical bureaucrats functioning in Mozambique seem to be as captive to that government as those in some state churches. They thanked the WCC “for the material help to our government. Helping our government is to help the people of this country.…” Other Christian leaders remain in prison. Efforts by the missionary department of the Swiss Reformed Church to send Bibles to Mozambique have been blocked.

Item. The Transkei, first of the “homelands” (black reservations with indigenous government) to get its “independence” from the Republic of South Africa, is being ignored by most of the world. There is serious question whether South Africa expects to grant real freedom—economic and political—to all the people involved. Meanwhile, border tensions are building with neighboring Lesotho.

Item. South-West Africa, a former German colony held by South Africa as a trusteeship, continues to seethe. Despite high-powered diplomatic efforts, the government of South Africa and the main “liberation” group refuse to meet each other.

Item. Rhodesia continues to be a battleground, with citizens fighting one another as talks grind on in Geneva. Non-combatants, including clergymen, have been killed in the crossfire; a Catholic bishop was arrested.

Item. The Republic of South Africa plays for time, but many of its people have reached the end of their patience. Security police spent a day going through a building housing eight church-related agencies. Prominent antigovernment people have been detained without charge. Black uprisings result in many deaths.

It is not a pretty picture. There is a struggle going on, and it is a struggle for a region of great potential. The situation is a very complex one and not simply black versus white, nor rich versus poor, nor one ideology versus another.

Where is the hope? Scattered throughout southern Africa are dedicated Christian people. Often working quietly (perhaps too quietly), the Church has played a major role. A recent Washington Post report on the Geneva talks on Rhodesia said there probably would have been no negotiations had it not been for the Church. Most black leaders were trained in mission schools.

These Christians in southern Africa are being heard from increasingly, inside and outside their own nations. They preach the whole counsel of God to both the powerful and the powerless. Fellow Christians outside the region should support them in this critical hour. Many of the leaders got new encouragement at last month’s Pan African Christian Leadership Assembly in Nairobi. Others have yet to experience much fellowship outside their own immediate neighborhoods. All of them need what one PACLA speaker called the ultimate protest against injustice: prayer. More rough times are ahead in southern Africa, but praying people informed by the Word of God can help save—literally save—this great region.

Feasts, Then Famine?

The ball is back in the home court for the evangelical church. Thousands of young people gave up part of their Christmas vacation to attend national or regional meetings sponsored by such evangelical groups as Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (see page 38), Campus Crusade For Christ, Youth For Christ, and denominational agencies. Who would have thought ten years ago that so many would assemble under evangelical banners?

In its heyday the old Student Volunteer Movement could get about 10,000 to missionary conventions, but its liberal successor, the University Christian Movement, died after its 1967 holiday convention attracted only about 3,000. Inter-Varsity’s Urbana meeting alone drew 17,000 at the end of 1976.

“Reality can’t be faked,” the late Paul Little said at an earlier Urbana. The young people returning home from these holiday spiritual feasts now need the encouragement of real (not fake) home churches as they try to keep the commitments they have made.

The January Blahs

“Waiting in Jerusalem” can be a wearing experience. In the Northern Hemisphere, this is the time of year when construction is often held up because of inclement weather, and builders must exercise patience. Retailers, after the holiday buying binges, are likewise left to their thoughts. There are similar times in the lives of Christians when they do not know where God is leading them and are obliged to wait.

One does well at such times to remember that the apostles were told to wait in Jerusalem after the ascension. Noah and his family also had to stand fast for a while, waiting for the waters to subside.

How does one cope with spiritual Januaries? It just does not seem enough to be assured that if there were no valleys to descend, there would be no hills to ascend either. It takes good discipline to keep from venturing out minus God’s blessing—especially for those who are activists by nature.

Sometimes even God’s Word seems more a challenge than a comfort. It is, after all, full of stories of spiritual failures (if we did not think it inspired of God we could easily dismiss it as being too negative).

This is a time when believers need to look in many directions to count their blessings. Supplement the Word by worshiping God in his various creative expressions: in nature, in art, in music. Realize anew what a great God he is!

Others Say …

The Oval Office: Three Models For a Christian

Stephen V. Monsma, formerly professor of political science at Calvin College, is now a member of the Michigan House of Representatives.

The incoming resident of the White House unashamedly confesses Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Without attempting to judge the sincerity and faith of other recent presidents, we can agree that Jimmy Carter at least differs in the clarity of his identification with evangelical Christianity.

Who can recall a recent president who would have declared, as Carter recently did, a basic of the Christian faith with such forthrightness as this: “We are not saved because we are Americans, or Baptists, or because we come from a community that is stable, or because our parents are Christians. We are saved because God loves us. We are saved by grace through one required attitude—that is, faith in Christ.”

Yet as evangelicals observe Carter’s inauguration they are far from certain what difference it will make—and what difference it should make—to have one of their fellow evangelicals in the White House. There are three distinguishable models of how a president’s evangelical faith can interact with his presidency:

• The civil-religion model. American civil religion recognizes the existence of God and believes in his special concern for and care of the United States. He is a God of virtue, morality, and sacrifice. This is the basic religious message found in inaugural addresses, in State of the Union messages, and in television talks on solemn occasions. An evangelical president who would attempt to live out his faith according to the civil-religion model would outdo other presidents by making even more frequent and prominent references to God in his formal statements. Such a president would serve as the prominent and forthright high priest of American civil religion.

It is to be hoped that Carter’s commitment to Christ will not work itself out in the civil-religion model! From his past actions it seems unlikely to do so. A born-again president may very well make fewer public, civil-religion-type references to God than other presidents. He has good reason to avoid such non-biblical, Unitarian, superficial utterances.

Civil religion does not stress personal salvation but is instead oriented toward the nation. It tends to be supportive rather than critical of the nation, and to stress order and obedience over justice. A committed Christian, who has put his faith for personal salvation in Jesus Christ, who relies on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and who believes biblical truths should be used to judge nations as well as individuals, would find it unacceptable to exchange his vibrant, cutting faith for the soft blandishments of American civil religion.

• The personal-morality model. According to this model, a president’s Christianity has its biggest impact in controlling his standard of personal morality and elevating it over that of other presidents. He uses clean, God-honoring language. He practices marital fidelity. This kind of president lives the clean, honest, faithful life that God expects of all his born-again children. Under this personal-morality model a president’s appointees would also reflect high standards of personal morality.

Surely Jimmy Carter as the nation’s chief executive should live the same life of Christian morality that all Christians should live. To argue that a lower set of moral principles may govern the personal behavior of holders of public office than that which should govern other persons is to introduce a bifurcation unknown to biblical Christianity. It is as wrong for a president to lie to advance a policy of his as it is for a businessman to lie to promote a product of his company.

Although Carter—along with all other persons—fails to live up to God’s perfect moral standards, all indications are that he recognizes Christianity as being relevant to his personal moral life and attempts to live a life of Christian morality. The evidence has been less reassuring with regard to some of his campaign associates. Nevertheless, there is reason to believe the next four years will see a presidency more fully permeated with high moral standards than has sometimes been the case. After the lies of Watergate, congressional sex scandals, and the gifts of foreign influence-peddlers, Washington could stand more Christian morality.

But this is not to say that the most basic, most important way that Christian beliefs should affect a president is by affecting his personal moral standards. A president could lead an impeccable life in terms of standards of personal morality, and yet lead the nation into all types of policies which in their injustices and violence run directly counter to God’s will revealed in his Word.

Although an evangelical president should certainly strive for high moral standards in his personal life, there is an even more fundamental way in which his Christianity should condition and control his presidency. This way is found in the third model.

• The policy-transformation model. Under this model the policy alternatives pursued by the president are molded by basic Christian principles and insights such as justice, healing, man’s purpose as an image-bearer of God, and the sinfulness of human nature. Whether or not to pursue just public policies is not an option for the Christian. “Enough, princes of Israel! Put an end to lawlessness and robbery; maintain law and justice” (Ezekiel 45:9). God calls all his children to “seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow” (Isa. 1:17). Surely such admonitions apply to his servant Jimmy Carter as he struggles with questions of nuclear disarmament, criminal justice, welfare reform, environmental protection, and the entire phalanx of policy problems that marches across a president’s desk.

This is not to say that a biblical Christian will as president have a clear, neat answer for every policy issue. God’s Word gives him basic principles and sharpened insights; it does not give him pat answers. An evangelical president will go through the same struggles and agonies of decision-making as does any president. But he should do so with added insights and a sharpened moral imperative.

One other word of caution. By policy transformation I am not thinking of the simple imposition of Christian standards of personal morality upon all of society. Policies should be transformed in order to make them more just and more in keeping with the true nature and purposes of human beings, not in the sense of causing them simply to impose Christian standards of personal morality on all society.

Whether or not Carter as president will consistently and fully attempt to be guided in his policy decisions by his biblical Christianity is an open question. What evidence there is on it is mixed.

On the one hand there is the statement in Carter’s acceptance speech before the Democratic convention: “I have spoken many times about love, but love must be aggressively translated into simple justice.” Such a statement is fully biblical and, if consistently followed, one which would truly transform Carter’s policy decisions. Christian love is what provides the moral imperative, but in the political realm that love compels one to pursue basic justice.

Carter has also stated, “If there is a conflict between God’s law and civil law, we should honor God’s law. But we should be willing to accept civil punishment.” This statement reflects a belief in the relevance of Christian truths for civil affairs and is fully in keeping with much of Christian political thought.

On the other hand, in his book Why Not the Best? Carter misses many opportunities to relate his biblical faith to social and political issues. Carter’s frequent campaign references to the need for a government as good and as decent as the American people appear to be out of step with the biblical teachings on man’s fallen, sinful nature.

Even more disturbing is a statement by Carter’s close aide, Hamilton Jordan: “He [Carter] differentiates his personal and religious views from his actions as a political official.” If this statement is accurate and if Jordan is actually saying what he seems to be saying, then Carter limits the influence of his Christianity to his personal morality and has sealed it off from his policy decisions. Then his policy decisions would not be sharpened and guided by biblical truths, but would emerge out of a diffuse, ill-defined assortment of values and beliefs more reflective of American culture than Christianity.

Hence the extent to which Carter as president will seek, as he ought, to use his Christian faith and its insights to guide his thoughts and to sharpen his perspectives remains to be seen.

There are two dangers that the evangelical church should seek to avoid. One is that evangelicals—many of whom are of the opposite political party and are considerably more conservative in political outlook than Carter—will disown Carter and fail to provide him with the love, support, encouragement, and prayers he needs.

The opposite danger is that evangelicals will be tempted to identify overmuch with Carter, perhaps out of a largely worldly desire to have some of the glamour of the presidency rub off on them. The evangelical church should maintain enough independence from Carter that it does not lose its ability to criticize and correct.

It is important that the Church be able to uphold biblical ideals of justice and healing and the biblically based need for tough political stands in a tough, sinful world. To do so, it must strike a balance that avoids both a cold aloofness and a too close identification with the new president.

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