I do love Jerusalem, and I do want peace with her walls. But my prayers don’t stop there; this psalm leads me on a journey that circles the world, touching down in other places, especially those I know and love, where strife threatens the peace and prosperity of their peoples.
The Kenya Government presented its second periodic report on compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 2005, to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, and cited the differences and conflicts within the Anglican Church and communion and the strong homophobic stance of the African Anglican Bishops as one of the factors it was considering in framing its policy towards same sex relations.
How can most of us comprehend a death toll of 45,000-50,000? My parish has 800 members. My high school had 1600 students. My hometown had roughly 5000 residents. A nearby community has approximately 55,000 citizens. Even after making those comparisons, I struggle to grasp the immensity of the earthquake’s human cost.
Many Episcopalians would be surprised to learn that Haiti is home to the largest and, by some measures, the strongest diocese within the Church. This certainly came as a surprise to me when I accompanied Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori on her pastoral visit to the Diocese of Haiti last November. Our five-day pilgrimage, in fact, was filled with the unexpected.
In the middle of the wonderful, bright, flashy displays that I see while walking the streets of New York, I struggle. I want to find a place within myself to enjoy that which I see without forgetting the other part of my life, the one grounded in serving Christ in a faraway place where we don’t have enough of anything, much less the extra needed to decorate lavishly.
I pointed to our contractor, Mohammed, and his two assistants, Solomon and Idriss. Normally, the three men dig pit latrines. But the idea of storing water in underground cisterns, where it will stay cool and clean, instead of in 55-gallon plastic barrels or rusted metal tanks, appeals to them. Already, they are thinking of how all this clean water will change the lives of all the people who have access to it.
After witnessing the vitality and diversity of religious expressions in Asia, the Global South Anglican advocacy group’s claims to be representative voices of this vast segment of the developing world appear increasingly thin. Nor does the oft-invoked North/South divide hold up under scrutiny. Instead, a careful look at different countries reveals multiple social, ethnic, and religious groups defying easy generalization.
Malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases kill many children born in Africa. But that is not the explanation these economists give for depravation in Africa. For European colonialists malaria was extremely deadly. To avoid being bitten they made a choice: they avoided settling in Africa and settled in safer places, places we now know as the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Both as a Christian believer and as a U.S. Episcopal priest, I want the church in the global North to hear voices like Fletcher Kaiya’s. Secular media’s simplistic reporting of the great church divide – North vs. South, liberal vs. orthodox, culture Christians vs. Biblically faithful Christians – misses the real anguish and struggle of Christian leaders like Fletcher coming to terms with AIDS.