When Father Trevor Huddleston was once asked if he was a political priest, he said he was, and that his mission as a vicar was “to save lives knowing that each one of them is a child of God”.
Huddleston, an Anglican monk who originally was sent by his religious community in Mirfield England, to minister and take charge of an Anglican parish, Christ the King, in Sophiatown, Joburg, said the following words when he reflected on his ministry in apartheid South Africa in the early 1950s: “In addition to my responsibilities as a priest, I was expected to trace husbands, wives, brothers, sisters and other family members who were arrested because of a violation of the pass laws and other pieces of apartheid legislation.
“I was awakened to the plight of black people in South Africa. They lived with danger every hour of the day and every day of the week. I came to recognise apartheid as an intolerable evil. I saw it as a crime against humanity, an evil, a demonic power that violated the image of God in people.
“In this sense, it is a blasphemy, needing to be eradicated at almost any cost.”
To illustrate what courage the church required to get rid of evil in the present crisis facing our country, this is what Huddleston said about the injustices of the apartheid system.
“I am still convinced that the Bantu Education Act was the most iniquitous of all apartheid laws. It sought systematically to destroy the potential and therefore the image of God in innocent children.
“I still believe that if only the churches had dug their heels in and spoken with a single voice the horrors of Bantu Education could have been curtailed. Instead, there was whispering within the church against those of us who opposed the bill.
“This convinced the authorities that the church would capitulate. They were right,” said Huddleston, as quoted by Prof Charles Villa-Vicentio in his tribute after Huddleston’s death in 1998.
“The church’s silence, indifference and submission were deafening,” recalled Huddleston.
His words, published in the Observer under the rubric “The Church Sleeps On”, have haunted the church ever since.
The church of Desmond Tutu, of the Reverend Frank Chikane, of the Reverend Dr Allan Boesak, of the Reverend Beyers Naude, of Fr Smangaliso Mkhatshwa and Archbishop Denis Hurley, among others, no longer exists.
It was a church that challenged the iniquities of an unjust political system and all that went with it.
The bigger question that ought to be answered is, if the church seems less concerned about unjust societal problems, what ought we think of it in relation to what Huddleston more than 70 years ago that the “church sleeps on” while the country is burdened by high crime rate and corruption in high places.
In the last quarter, the number of murders in the country has exceeded 7 000 per annum while cases of sexual offences hover around 15 000 cases.
While crime is escalating, the country is also beset by high level of corruption in public and private sectors.
Adding to the woes of the church, Bishop Paul Verryn, the veteran apartheid and human rights activist, and a minister of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa in Soweto, addressing a memorial service in honour of the late Tutu at the Anglican Cathedral Church of St Dunston, Benoni, nearly three years ago, decried the fact that the church has fallen far behind in terms of social action – a ministry which demands of the church to be part of the struggling masses.
Verryn’s has consistently raised as an issue the shameful act of the Marikana massacre when the police of the democratic state fired live bullets that claimed the lives of 34 protesting miners.
At that time, 12 years ago, Verryn said “if the government is no longer willing to consider the needs of the poor, offshore activists should consider calling for sanctions” because the Marikana killings indicated to him that the plight of the poorly paid mineworkers did not seem to be the concern of former president Jacob Zuma’s administration.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, at the time non-executive director of Lonmin Platinum, was held personally liable by the family and mineworkers for the death of the miners mobilising for a better wage deal.
Considering claims of a weaker and irrelevant church that is in slumberland, what does the South African Council of Churches propose to do to invigorate the “sleeping church” to become relatable to societal plight, and the vanguard of the struggling masses?
- Mdhlela is a freelance journalist, an Anglican priest, an ex-trade unionist and former editor of the South African Human Rights Commission journals
