On April 25th, 2008 the World Council of Churches in which the United Church of Christ and other mainline denominations are members called for the immediate release of results from Zimbabwe’s recent elections as a Chinese freighter attempted to unload a deadly cargo to perpetuate the dictator Mugabe’s oppressive regime.
But the outrage from the World Council of Churches is both belated and hollow because, after all, it was the goal of the World Council to create the very “regime change” that paved the way for Mugabe to “rule” there in the first place.
It was, after all, money diverted from mainline denominations to the World Council of Churches that, in part, financed the war that paved the way for the Mugabe regime. This money was collected in various mainline denominations under the ruse of helping feed starving children in Africa. But instead the money financed the martyrdom of Christian missionaries from WCC member denominations and whoever else got in the way of the Marxist forces.
Sincere Christians in the mainline who believed they had been working for finance Christian Mission instead of Marxist killing were stunned. One man in particular would become the nemesis of the theological dementia that was leaving the mainline incapable of discerning between mission and mayhem thanks to this event - Parker Williamson.
Williamson was a hunger action enabler for the PCUS mission board, which was the equivalent of the reunited denominations General Assembly Council. Toting a stack of brochures depicting children with bloated bellies, Williamson traveled from church to church to raise money for the denomination’s hunger program.
But unknown to Williamson during his fund-raising trips was that the mission board had politicized the hunger campaign. Besides giving the money he had raised for food and technical assistance, the board, through the World Council of Churches, was financing guerrilla warfare under the guise of “attacking hungers root causes.”
The Rhodesian guerrillas who shot down the plane had been recipients of Presbyterian mission money. “When I found out, I went ballistic,” Williamson said. “I felt I had betrayed Presbyterians by my participation in that program.”
Indeed all the average people in the pews of mainline churches were duped and betrayed through these actions and, to this day, still are betrayed by the mainline’s moral failure in supporting this reign of terror and failing to either admit or denounce it. Calling for Mugabe to act with honor now after a lifetime of pillage and slaughter reveals our own delusional state if sincerely issued and our hypocrisy otherwise.
Should Mugabe retain his office, we will undoubtedly at some point be called by the World Council to “help” his staggered economy with debt forgiveness and other unconditional aid without any recognition whatsoever that we have participated in the degradation of this society already. Further help will simply provide the funding for another boat load of weaponry for suppressing dissent and martyring of the Christians we claim as our brothers and sisters.
The World Council of Churches might have pathetically argued for helping enthrone Mugabe by stating that “the ends justified the means”. (One wonders how an ostensibly “Christian” organization aligning itself with one of the most murderous ideologies in history could have attempted that task, but they might have.) In this instance though, that plea to pragmatism would have at least required their funding of guerrillas to actually have made food more accessible to the average villager. It did not. By some estimates, the average lifespan has decreased to age 34 and inflation is at 500,000%! None of the “justice” promised by the revolutionaries occurred. Instead Mugabe’s pillaging of the farms and inept management of the economy has bankrupt a once wealthy nation turning it into a violent backwater. As a result the World Council could not even claim regarding Zimbabwe that the “ends justified the means”. One functioning structure - however imperfect - was replaced by something far worse.
But today, the World Council of Churches and the mainline denominations supporting that institution continue making moral pronouncements such as this most recent one regarding Mugabe with a straight face - as if there were no blood on our hands already as willing accomplices to his killing spree!
We prattle on, taking the high ground of moral superiority on every conceivable issue under the sun - except, in practice, the wanton dismembering of defenseless babies in the womb - and do not even acknowledge our own culpability for genocide, reverse apartheid, famine, martyrdom and every other evil perpetrated under the Mugabe regime.
This appalling display of moral callousness is at the root of our demise. We confuse mayhem with mission. We confuse atheist killing sprees with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We denounce, on the one hand, the “School of the Americas” because of tenuous connections with “right wind death squads” operating in the shadows, while financing left wing armies operating in the open. We rightly denounce the failures of the American Empire and advance even more hideous Stalinist ones in their place. We denounce racism and yet defend a practice that Margaret Sanger encouraged to control people she considered “subhuman”, namely, Blacks. In doing so we have been party and accomplice to the death of more Blacks than the “KKK” Rev. Jeremiah Wright properly rails against. Despite the painful contradictions, we pretend ourselves the champions of moral clarity. We are as free from self-examination and as full of self-righteousness as any of the “fundamentalists” we denounce. We are gutter drunks pronouncing ourselves sober and unimpaired.
Like Nebuchadnezzar boasting of his prowess and glory we make these and similiar pronouncements continually through our various organs of outrage. The sad moral reality is that we have the moral discernment of Nebuchadnezzar when he was reduced to living as an animal. Our moral sensibilities are consistently aligned with movements of genocide at the level of nations, races, and children despite our talk of peacemaking and protests of love.
As Ascension Day draws close, we are reminded of Christ’s victory over Sin and Satan and over the Principalities and Powers. He is the “other king” the Apostle Paul renounced, the True Lord enthroned in heaven against the false earthly Lords. As Pentecost draws near, we are reminded that Jesus Christ has definitively created the New Community of His Body the Church as a tangible alternative and transcendent critique of flawed human communities.
These two astounding realities are made filthy by the sins we have embraced in Christ’s name and dared to call “holy”.
Have others sinned? Have the “fundamentalists” sinned? Have the “evangelicals” failed in many ways? To be sure. But the mainline can only repent for itself and shifting blame to others is no substitute for our own repentance.
Like Nebuchadnezzar our way forward is radical and simple. It is not enough to try to cover up our sin with new pronouncements. It is not enough to ignore the insane moral ambiguity and compromise in which we find ourselves. What we are called to do is repent of the past and make amends as far as we might. We are called to relearn Jesus Christ and renew our sincere adherence to God’s Word instead of presuming ourselves superior to it. Mugabe himself stands as witness to the moral abyss to which our sense of smug superiority over the Word of God and Gospel of Jesus Christ has lead us.
Will we observe this season from Ascension to Pentecost as a time of humiliation and repentance and seeking God’s face? Or will we continue in our self-congratulatory moral insanity?
Related Links: Global Day of Prayer 2008
Zimbabwe: Helping a starving nation through the churches
Leaked poll results show that Mugabe lost – but will fight second round
Zimbabwe Police Raid Christian Offices
