By Lloyd Mackey
LET'S TOUCH base, this week, on Darfur, the church in the city and the Franciscans.
Out of this consideration comes an increasing sense that the various Christian faith influences in and around the body politic tend both to compete with and dovetail each other.
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The Christianity Today website, under a "breaking news" banner, sends word that US President George Bush has issued a strong notice of sanctions against Sudan, over its policies and practices regarding Darfur.
Interestingly, the announcement has attracted little attention in the Canadian media, likely because neither the government nor major Canadian newsgroups are quite tuned in, at this point, to Sudanese or Darfurian issues.
But a blog item accessible on the CT site, by Tim Morgan, one of the magazine's senior editors, points to the Bush announcement as encouraging to the Save Darfur Coalition, among whose members are a number of evangelical Christian development and advocacy groups.
Simply put -- and it is hard to put Sudanese issues simply, given the civil strife that has prevailed there for several years -- the core of the concern relates to the human rights practices of the Arab-Islamic dominated Sudanese government.
For some years, it related to the civil war in the south, between the Khartoum government on one hand and a broad coalition of Christian and animist independence movements on the other.
When a peace settlement of sorts was announced, the world's attention shifted to Darfur, where it appeared, for all practical purposes, that the struggle was between Muslims -- that is the Khartoum-dominated Arab influence and the Afro Muslims resident in the Darfur area, on the western side of Sudan bordering on Chad.
In his announcement of sanctions, Bush called the tension a "genocide".
The Canadian point person on Darfur, especially with respect to the recruiting of Christian concern and interest, has been David Kilgour, former foreign affairs secretary of state for Africa and Latin America.
He has been active on the Darfur file since leaving politics at the time of the 2006 election. But much of his attention has focused on the Falun Gong issue -- the allegations that the Chinese government permits the "harvesting" of transplantable human organs through the killing of prisoners and dissidents, including Falun Gong members. He has been visiting or otherwise contacting dozens of governments on this issue, to raise awareness for it.
But in all likelihood, he will soon have something to say about Darfur -- probably sooner than the federal government will, given the care it will want to take in a minority situation, not to be seen to be falling in line too quickly with an American Republican president.
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Let's move for a moment to Work Research Foundation, the Christian Calvinist think tank that seeks to help people to develop a theology of work that impacts positively on public policy and social behavior.
Some of WRF's most recent work appeared as an opinion piece in the Calgary Sun, entitled 'Time to Reconnect Church and State.' Dan Postma, the foundation's project co-ordinator, drew my attention to the item, noting that it can be found here.
While it deals mainly with the way in which churches can interplay with civic governments, rather than those at a more "senior" level, it does introduce a trend in some faith-based thinking that calls for co-operation between, rather than separation of, church and state.
Some of this kind of thinking comes out of Reformed theology, which sees the sovereignty of God operating in society in a range of differing ways -- a concept known as "sphere sovereignty." Some of this thinking draws inspiration, if not direct connection, from the Netherlands leader of the late 1800s and early 1900s named Abraham Kuyper (pronounced Kyper). He was, over a period of about 25 years, successively a Reformed church pastor, a daily newspaper publisher and the Netherlands prime minister.
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Lastly, today, let's look at the Franciscans.
This Roman Catholic order, whose founder was St. Francis of Assisi, has caught my attention recently because of the relationship that has been built between the evangelical Trinity Western University and a Catholic affiliate, housed near TWU's Langley campus and known as Redeemer Pacific College.
Catholic students enrolled in Redeemer actually receive a Trinity Western degree for their studies. But the lesser-known point worth noting is that Redeemer models its development after the Franciscan University of Steubenville, in Ohio.
All this quickly passed through my mind during my latest now-wrapping-up visit to Victoria, to provide a bit of editorial help to BC Christian News and Island Insight.
I chose, one afternoon, to take my daily heart-building walk up the hill from the BCCN office to Craigdarroch Castle, a pile of stone constructed in the late 1800s at the direction of Robert Dunsmuir, an early west coast lumber baron.
On the heritage plaque outside the castle is a recognition that it is an example of the way in which the wealthy of the 19th century often used their homes as a showcase for their opulence.
As I returned from the castle, I noted, just down the hill, a modest chapel-dormitory building labeled Franciscan House. Then, rounding the corner I passed an elderly gentleman dressed in a brown robe tied at the waist by a white rope-like belt.
Of course, given what I had just seen, I asked him if he was a Franciscan monk.
We engaged in a congenial conversation in which I recounted the above-described indirect relationship between Trinity Western and Steubenville. His eyes lit up. He spoke of the great work that Steubenville was doing and suggested that evangelicals, like the TWU people, do well to link with the disciples of St. Francis.
He had just one cautionary note. St. Francis believed in and taught simple living. He was not, in the first instance, a great advocate of higher learning, steeped as he was in the simple disciplines required for healthy physical and spiritual living.
He particularly pointed out that the most radical of the post-Reformation pietists were the Anabaptists from which were derived the Baptist, Mennonite and, later, the Believers Church traditions. These were the real simple livers, whose influence grew from spiritual vigor, rather that political muscle.
This conversation, bear in mind, was taking place just down the hill from the obvious opulence of the 19th century wealthy business class.
It was an interesting afternoon.
The man's name, by the way, is simply "Brother Paul."
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| Lloyd Mackey is a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa and the author of Stephen Harper: The Case for Collaborative Governance (ECW Press, 2006). He can be reached at lmackey@canadianchristianity.com. |  |
May 31/2007