wfn.org | Tutu scolds church leaders

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2000-005

Tutu scolds church leaders for their complicit role in creating 
divisions

by James Solheim

     (ENS) Standing in the pulpit of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 
Atlanta's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, Archbishop Desmond 
Tutu reminded his audience that the greatest evils of the 20th 
century--including the racist apartheid policy in his native 
South Africa--were wrought by Christians, not pagans.

     "It was Christians, you know, not pagans, who were 
responsible for the Holocaust. It was Christians, not pagans, who 
lynched people here in the South. who burned people at the 
stake, frequently in the name of this Jesus Christ," the Nobel 
laureate told participants in the annual meeting of the U.S. 
Conference for the World Council of Churches (WCC).

     Christians should seek unity and reject the divisions that 
make reconciliation difficult, he argued. "We should cringe with 
shame at the chaotic situation in Jerusalem at the Church of the 
Holy Sepulcher," he said, using the tension among different 
groups who claim space in the church as an example. "It has taken 
three years to get the Christian custodians to agree that a sewer 
cover should be removed and the sewer replaced," Tutu said. "We 
should hang our heads in shame that it could happen on the site 
of the Crucifixion." He added, with that famous twinkle in his 
eyes, "If Christ had not risen from the dead we would say that he 
is turning in his grave."

     Tutu thanked the WCC for its support of the fight against 
apartheid in South Africa. Pointing to Pamela Chinnis, president 
of the Episcopal Church's House of Deputies, he said that she was 
"one of those who came when the South African Council of Churches 
was being investigated by the South African government." As a 
result of international support by the churches, "We in South 
Africa are now an extraordinary thing, a free country, trying to 
be non-racist and non-sexist. You are responsible for this 
victory."

No cheap reconciliation

     Tutu joined church leaders at the meeting for a visit to the 
crypt of King, placing a wreath in honor of the slain civil 
rights leader. King was slated to address the fourth assembly of 
the WCC in Sweden in July of 1968 but was assassinated three 
months before the meeting. Participants said that he was 
profoundly missed and his absence led the WCC to form the Program 
to Combat Racism and other justice programs. 

     Prof. Miroslav Volf of Yale Divinity School warned 
participants against seeking "cheap reconciliation," suggesting that there 
are some crimes so horrible that reconciliation seems 
almost impossible. The Nazis may have been "masters of death" but 
the Holocaust is not an anomaly in today's world. The systematic 
genocide in Kosovo and Rwanda "is a brutal and horrid testimony 
of exclusion. Reconciliation must be at the center of what 
Christians pursue. But how can Nazi and Jew, Kosovar and Serb, 
Hutu and Tutsi reconcile?" he asked.

     Some seek "false ways" of resolving tensions, including 
"cheap reconciliation" that "gives up on justice." He quoted 
Nietzche's observation that "all pursuit of justice rests on 
partial injustices and results in new injustices." Reconciliation 
is possible only if factions are "unconditionally" willing to 
embrace one another," he said. "The will to embrace includes the 
will to rectify the wrong that has been done."

     The Rev. Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the WCC, said 
that there are dangers in uncovering truth in the search for 
reconciliation. "It can open wounds and thus reinforce division," 
he said. "While it is true that truth can liberate, it can also 
become a burden that crushes both the victim and the victimizer."

     Reconciliation is not a technique but "remains a gift of God 
and therefore the source of new life. May the churches learn 
again to be reconciled with God so that they can become agents of 
reconciliation in today's world," he said.

-James Solheim is director of the Episcopal Church's Office of 
News and Information.