[Dialogue] {Spam?} Spong 12/26/2007

[KroegerD at aol.com]

December 26, 2007  My Return to South  Africa

For years I have yearned to return to South Africa. I have not been there  
since 1976 when apartheid was still fully enforced. Nelson Mandela was in jail  
on Robin Island, his wife was under house arrest, Desmond Tutu was the Dean of 
 St. Mary's Cathedral in Johannesburg and the Soweto riots, in which between  
200-300 young people had been killed by South African police, were just a 
matter  of days in the past. At that time there was a deep anguish in the land, 
rising  black anger born out of years of abuse and enormous white fear. It was 
also a  time when a tide of freedom was sweeping through history Most of the 
colonial  lands of the third world dominated by European powers had won their 
independence  Names like Pakistan, Indonesia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana 
and Namibia began  to appear on maps. In the United States the civil rights 
movement had finally  begun to redress the terror of our slave and segregation 
history. Church  missionary strategy had changed from the idea of converting the 
heathen in  "darkest Africa" to empowering native people to grasp their own 
future and to  indigenize what had once been the white person's religion. Only 
South Africa  seemed to be resistant to this tide and in 1976 the pain in that 
land was  palpable. I had left this country despairing about its future and 
fearing that a  racially-tinged, bloody civil war was all but inevitable. 
That result, almost universally predicted, did not occur. South Africa,  
rather, emerged from its traumatic past as a multi-racial democracy in which  
power was given up by the white minority without conflict, and taken by the  black 
majority with little rancor. The "Truth and Reconciliation Commission,"  
headed by Desmond Tutu, now the retired Archbishop of Capetown, has made  
forgiveness a powerful political tool. This is a miracle unparalleled in human  
history. I wanted to return to this country once more to heal my own inner  wound. 
One of the sources of my despair about this land was that the Dutch  Reformed 
Church of South Africa had defended apartheid as a way of life  consistent with 
the gospel and had given the ruling regime legitimacy, violating  everything 
I believe about Christianity. My passions were fueled by the fact  that I grew 
up in the segregated south where my church also quoted the Bible to  justify 
its cultural racism and its then legal segregation. Removing it had been  a 
painful chapter in my life and yet in South Africa in 1976 I had been forced  to 
relive it. The new South Africa was, therefore, a place I wanted to see and  
to experience. To make my return even sweeter, the invitation had come from 
two  Afrikaans professors, whose identity had been with the Dutch Reformed 
Church. I  was asked to deliver a series of lectures at the University of South 
Africa in  Pretoria and at the University of Johannesburg. I was also invited to  
participate in a one day University of South Africa seminar in which I was to 
 respond to three lectures-on the Virgin Birth, the resurrection and misogyny 
in  the Christian Church. I accepted immediately. 
It is hard to shrink the history of apartheid in South Africa into a brief  
essay. Suffice it to say that South Africa had white settlers from the  
Netherlands as early as the 1600's. When gold and diamonds were discovered in  the 
19th century, British merchants and colonists also came to seek their  fortunes. 
They recognized that the tip of Africa was the place that could  dominate the 
lucrative trade routes linking Europe, India and Asia. South Africa  now 
became part of the British plan for global trade domination. England, better  than 
any other country, had learned that to control the sea lanes was to control  
world commerce. With the power of its navy, the British Empire became a 
reality  with South Africa destined to be part of it. 
Inevitably, competition between the British settlers and the descendants of  
the original Dutch settlers, known as the Afrikaans, led to the conflict of 
the  Boer Wars in1880-81 and 1899- 1902, which ended in British victory and 
control,  but with a still seething Dutch minority. The indigenous African natives 
had  been easily defeated by superior weapons and subsequently driven far 
from the  coast where they remained a perennial threat to white security. 
Controlling a  massive continent filled with black people, while being a small, 
vulnerable  white minority that was itself split between Dutch and British 
descendants, was  a daunting task. The stakes were high, for failure was perceived to 
be  tantamount to suicide. White insecurity would be permanently epidemic in 
South  Africa and would inevitably manifest itself in various patterns of 
subjugation,  segregation and repression of the black population. Black people were 
legally  defined by Europeans as inferior human beings. It was a 
contemporaneous  expression of the master race mentality that Hitler used to build the 
Third  Reich. When World War II broke out the loyalties of the South African 
whites  were deeply divided with its British population supporting its ancestral 
home,  but the Afrikaans people having deeply pro-German sympathies. President 
Jan  Smuts, though himself an Afrikaner, finally took South Africa into the 
war on  the side of the allies, but the pro-Hitler sentiment remained a powerful 
force  in the land. When the war ended, this tension combined with postwar 
economic  stress to catapult the apartheid-supporting Afrikaans party to 
political victory  in 1948. For the next 46 years, the dehumanizing of the black 
population was  official government policy. A new education act was passed 
mandating that black  people receive only the education that would equip them to be 
useful manual  laborers, as befits subhuman creatures. Next, blacks were 
resettled away from  white communities and could enter these communities only with 
passes and must  depart before sundown. Any action defying the policy of this 
government was  regarded as treason and punished accordingly. The hangman's 
noose swung  frequently. 
Yes, there were some brave and isolated white South African protesters  
against this violence. One was Alan Paton whose novel, Cry the Beloved Country,  
touched so many hearts in the late 1940's, and Helen Suzman, the lone white  
South African politician, representing the United Party in the legislative body,  
who spoke out courageously and often in spite of constant abuse. Opposition 
also  came from Anglican Church leaders like Trevor Huddleston and Ffrench 
Beytagh and  from a Congregational Executive Secretary named Bernard Spong, who 
shared with  me the same grandparents six generations ago. These missionary 
voices were,  however, deported if possible, marginalized if not. 
Of course this oppression inevitably created black clandestine guerilla  
groups. The government designated these groups as terrorists or communists and  
hunted them constantly, forcing them to take refuge in neighboring countries in  
an undeclared civil war. One of these movements, the African National 
Congress,  began to emerge as a genuine political voice for South Africa's black  
population. It had a vision of a united, racially diverse nation. It had leaders  
like the young attorney, Nelson Mandela, who had been deeply influenced by 
the  peaceful resistance tactics of Mahatma Gandhi. While the leadership of the 
ANC  did not forbid self-defense, it was committed to opposing the violence 
done to  black people by peaceful, but uncompromising confrontation. When caught 
ANC  leaders were charged with and tried for treason. Rather than make them 
martyrs,  the government condemned them to life imprisonment on Robin Island. 
Even in  prison, however, Mandela gave direction to this quest for freedom that 
burned  like a fire beneath the surface until it exploded into public 
awareness in those  Soweto riots of June 16, 1976. The police sent trucks into the 
riot area to pick  up the dead teenagers, driving their bodies to the morgue 
where their parents  came to claim them. Interpreting this situation to the 
world's press, was  Desmond Tutu, a resident of Soweto. That was the moment of his 
arrival on the  international stage. Neither Desmond nor the world would ever 
be the same. 
Today 1976 seems like an eternity ago in South Africa. Nelson Mandela has  
served two terms as President and his successor, Thabo Mbeke, has also served  
two terms. South Africa is now on the verge of choosing its third president.  
Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk, the Afrikaans leader who 
helped  to broker the transition, have all been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. An  
apartheid museum has been built in Johannesburg so that the past will never be 
 forgotten. A new constitution has been adopted, a new flag had been created 
and  the Nelson Mandela bridge has been built. I have now seen, touched and 
tasted  this land of miracles and it fulfilled all my dreams. 
No, South Africa is not trouble free. A wide gap still exists between the  
rich and the poor. The political chaos in neighboring Zimbabwe has created a  
flood of refugees placing great stress on South Africa's social fabric. Crime is 
 a major problem. Fences, guard dogs and alarm systems are omnipresent. It 
is,  nevertheless, a country with a vision. The University of South Africa has  
134,000 students, 90% of them black, in a massive attempt to bring this new  
generation into the modern world. Some take classes by extension, some get 
their  education while continuing to work and some take courses for one year then 
drop  out to work for one or two years to get enough money to return for 
another  semester. A ten-year effort to obtain an undergraduate degree is not 
unknown.  The economy, however, is expanding and there will be jobs into which 
these  students can step when their degrees are awarded. It is a country of hope, 
of  courage. It is made up of people who know the meaning of freedom and who 
cherish  it. 
Visiting South Africa closed a circle for me. It demonstrated the power of  
love and non-violence to dispel both cruelty and fear. Its political leaders  
call the people to be their best selves not their worst selves. In 50 years the 
 Republic of South Africa will have made a full transition and will take its  
place among the great nations of the world. I salute them, 
John Shelby Spong
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Harvey Gorrell of Lincoln, California, writes: 
I have read several of your books and as a result have changed my thinking I  
believe to a more rational approach to Christianity and the Old Testament. 
With regard to the Old Testament, I don't recall having read your opinion  
regarding Moses and the birth of the Ten Commandments. Did God speak to Moses  
via a burning bush and dictate the Ten Commandments? I think not. It seems to 
me  Moses and perhaps a group of Jewish elders wrote the Ten Commandments after 
a  great deal of thought and discussion. The idea of course was for the 
purpose of  developing guidelines for the people to follow for the betterment of 
all  concerned. I believe it was decided Moses would spend time in the mountains 
and  then return with the Ten Commandments stating they were given to him by 
God via  a burning bush. The chance of the people following these guidelines 
was much  greater than if Moses told the people he and the elders wrote the Ten 
 Commandments after much thought and discussion and felt as civilized people 
they  should be followed as law. 
If they had followed that path, there would have been endless discussion  
about what should and should not be included. Why Ten Commandments? Should there  
be more? Perhaps less, etc. The Ten Commandments as we know them probably 
would  be nonexistent today. 
The power of religion cannot be over estimated. One only has to look today at 
 what some radical Muslims have been taught from childhood, i.e., to hate and 
 kill Jews and "infidels" truly believing it is God's will to do so. 
Dear Harvey, 
No! God did not dictate the Ten Commandments or the Torah to Moses on Mt.  
Sinai. There are in fact three different versions of the Ten Commandments in the 
 Bible. The oldest one is from the oldest strand of the Torah, and was 
written  around the year 950 BCE. It is found in Exodus 34. It is quite cultic with 
the  last commandment of the ten being "thou shalt not boil a kid in its 
mother's  milk". To my knowledge I have never even been tempted to break that 
commandment!  The familiar version of the Ten Commandments is in Exodus 20 but it 
represents  at least two sources, one from the 9th century or about 850 BCE and 
one from the  period of the Exile, in the 6th century or about 560 BCE. Keep 
in mind that  Moses lived around 1250 BCE. 
The third version of the Ten Commandments is found in Deuteronomy 5 and comes 
 from the late 7th century, or about 625 BCE. This version is similar to the  
Exodus 20 version, but with one striking difference. In Deuteronomy 5 the 
reason  for observing a day of rest on the Sabbath was that the people must 
remember  that they were once slaves and even slaves need a day of rest. In Exodus 
20 the  reason for the Sabbath observance was to follow God's example since 
God rested  from the work of creation on the seventh day. This explanation, we 
now know, is  part of what we identify as the addition of the priestly writers 
to the Exodus  version of the Ten Commandments. The priestly writers did their 
work during the  Babylonian Exile 586-500 B.C.E. and among their other 
contributions to the  biblical text was the six-day creation story with which the 
Bible now opens.  That story was not written when Deuteronomy was composed so 
the author of that  book had to have another reason for the Sabbath. 
Other parts of the commandments have been changed in human practice over the  
years. Christians have, for example, abandoned the seventh day as the Sabbath 
of  rest in favor of the first day of the week as a weekly celebration of the 
 resurrection. The commandment about taking the name of the Lord in vain  
originally had nothing to do with profanity or swearing. It had to do with the  
fact that business deals were secured by the two people clasping hands and  
swearing in the name of the Lord to be true to their word. If they broke their  
word, they had taken the name of the Lord in vain. 
The commandment against murder excluded legal executions, the killing of  
prisoners of war and killing in warfare itself. The commandment against adultery  
was coupled with the practice of polygamy as the style of marriage for  
centuries. Stealing is hard to define since private property was all but unheard  
of in those days. 
The Ten Commandments were in fact the laws of the community. They grew out of 
 the life of the community and the community invoked God to get them 
established  and obeyed. If one broke the law, they said God would punish. In fact it 
was the  community that punished and enforced the rules. 
It seems that Jesus transformed them all when he summed the commandments up  
by saying love God and love your neighbor as yourself. 
John Shelby Spong



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