(From Swazi Media Commentary 26 May 2010 www.swazimedia.blogspot.com)
A
row is growing in Swaziland about whether churches should be involved in
politics.
Leaders of the Swaziland League of Churches and the
Conference of Swaziland Churches in interviews with the Times of Swaziland, the
kingdom’s only independent daily newspaper, complained that other
church leaders had led a march to the prime minister in protest at the
death of democracy activist Sipho
Jele. They said that churches had no place in politics.
The Times’ article has provoked a response from the
Swaziland Coalition of
Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO) which is reproduced below.
There was also a critical response in
today’s Times (26 May 2010) in which a reader complained about the
biased reporting on the subject by the Times. Click here to read the letter.
The Swaziland Coalition of Concerned
Civic Organisations expresses its deepest concern that Bishop
Hlatshwayo of the Swaziland League of Churches and Bishop Masilela of
the Conference of Swaziland Churches are unable to distinguish between
the defence of human rights and politics. Their
attack on the Catholic Commission of Justice and Peace is without any
foundation in decency, humanity, theology or scripture.
To equate standing up for peace and
justice for all with a merely political act is to fundamentally
misunderstand the concepts of justice as preached in the bible and their
modern secular expression in human rights.
Our human rights are universal –
they apply to all of us and when one person is deprived of their rights
we all are. Whether Sipho Jele’s death was an
accident, suicide or homicide it was at a time when he was under the
protection of the state authorities. The march
was not a march of protest but a request that justice should be done so
that the Jele family gets to know how and why their son died so
tragically early.
In this country standing up for our
rights is seen to be playing politics – the two could not be further
apart – politics in this country is the use and often abuse of power by a
small number acting in their own self interest. Human
rights is about preserving the dignity and respect for everyone no
matter how lowly they may appear.
The Church, just like rights, is
also universal. For a church to remove itself
from the defence of the poor, the prisoners and the prostitutes is not
only an act of moral cowardice, it goes against the preaching and
actions of Jesus. As Christians, Bishops
Hlatshwayo and Masilela must know that Christ died for every one of us –
not just the rich and powerful. He died so that
Sipho Jele might be free.
Not to stand up for justice for
Jele is not only avoiding a political act but it is actually taking a
supremely deliberate and provocative political stand. It
is saying that the forces of government can, should and must do as they
wish with the blind support of the Church. It is
saying that the Church supports the powerful, not the powerless. We cannot
find that position supported in scripture.
The Church is the one place that
should not be neutral on questions of good and evil, it must take a
stand. If we follow the logic of the Conference
and the Federation then these clergymen would be calling Bishop Tutu’s
stance against apartheid as ‘political’, it would consider Dr Martin
Luther King’s championing of civil rights for Black Americans as
‘political’ and it would even call William Wilberforce’s campaign for
the abolition of slavery as ‘political’. They
were not political but incredibly brave moral acts driven by a Christian
desire for justice for all.
The bible is clear, we must respect
our leaders but only when they follow the rules of good leadership.
Link http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2010/05/church-should-embrace-politics.html
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