Bowing to Kigali

Importing orthodoxy—and cultural baggage

Ask members of the Anglican Mission in America (AMIA) what they like about their association of churches, and you're likely to hear two answers. It's orthodox—unlike much of the Episcopal church that AMIA was founded to counteract—and it's African, or, more specifically, Rwandan.
Indeed, when Church of Rwanda archbishop Emmanuel Kolini talks about the American mission he leads (started in 2000, it now has more than 100 congregations), he often draws parallels between the Rwandan genocide and Episcopalian apostasy. "When Rwanda cried out to the world for help, no one answered," he said. "So when we heard the American church crying out for help, we decided to answer." It's not just former Episcopalians who are drawn to the Rwandan church. AMIA parishes are full of members who want to connect to the Christianity of the Global South, the Christianity of a church that has suffered, the Christianity of a church that is working to heal its country.
So it's little surprise that, in seeking to raise funds for a Rwandan school, a prominent AMIA congregation scheduled Paul Rusesabagina (the subject of the 2004 film Hotel Rwanda) to speak. "We're going a bit Hollywood with this, but oh well, it's for the good of the kingdom," pastor J. Martin Johnson thought.
Being a bit Hollywood didn't turn out to be the problem. Rusesabagina is a critic of the current Rwandan government. When Rwandan president Paul Kagame found out about the appearance, he contacted Kolini, who contacted AMIA leadership in the U.S., who contacted Johnson and asked that Rusesabagina be uninvited. The archbishop explained that the event could create a strain between the Anglican Church of Rwanda and the Rwandan government. "I had no idea this was a controversial issue," said Johnson. "The bigger reality for us is having to accept the whole concept of obedience, and that is a harder cultural pill to swallow than I realized. I'm forced to encounter my own resistance and bias."
Waynesburg College historian Phillip A. Cantrell reported on the relationship between Rwandan and American evangelicals in the Journal of Modern African Studies. "While the relationship offers great support for Rwanda's recovery, the Anglican church has presented to American evangelicals a misleading narrative of Rwanda's past and present political situation," he wrote. "Because of its close alignment with the ruling [Rwandan Patriotic Front], the church has allowed itself to become a political mouthpiece for the regime."
In other words, while Americans get biblical orthodoxy and inspiring tales from Global South leaders, they also get some cultural baggage, such as foreign understandings of the relationship of church and state.
I saw this five years ago at a Sunday morning worship service for the Denver area's AMIA congregations. A young Ugandan king was the guest of honor, and his consort asked the audience to bow in his honor. I was attending with my parents, who still successfully get my goat by referring to AMIA as "that church that worships 10-year-olds."
Still, I'm thrilled to attend an AMIA parish. One reason is because I know how much cultural baggage my country has exported with its theology (and still does). And I'm encouraged by seeing AMIA's American leaders submit to Rwandan authority.
Jennifer Merck, who helped organize the Rusesabagina event, said that before the controversy the church didn't really know "what it meant for us to be connected to Rwanda." "Frankly, we're beginning to find that out," she said. "It raises questions about what does it mean to live in the global church."
And it demonstrates that American Christians like those in AMIA are committed to being part of that global body.
"I don't know if we'll simply have to get master's degrees in political science to keep working in the church," Johnson joked to CT. "I've never even been to Rwanda, but we are Rwandans now."

The Excitement of Hope

Olympians have something to teach us about this cardinal virtue

Athletes in the Olympic Games have invested considerable time not just in physical but also in mental training. We'll see them listening to their iPods, huffing, glowering, and meditating before their events. Mentally overriding physical distress and refusing to entertain the possibility of failure is called "championship thinking," and it has paid off for countless athletes. Studies and everyday experience suggest that athletes who convince themselves that they have the potential to reach their goals are much more likely to.
"We believe we are invincible," remarks an unnamed track Olympian in a recording at New York's National Track and Field Hall of Fame. "Because if we go in there with any other thought, there's no chance of us accomplishing our goal."
Such optimism is an amalgam of selective awareness and hope. Psychologists Joanna Starek and Caroline Keating studied how competitive swimmers filter out unpleasant truths—such as the first signs of an injury or the possibility of failure—before they're aware of them. Their conscious minds never come into contact with certain discouraging facts, or if they do, they are able to dismiss those facts quickly.
Those who are better at that kind of filtering tend to be more successful in life—and happier, according to Columbia psychology professor Harold Sackeim. Without a healthy sense of optimism—which seems to depend on passing reality through a sieve—we perish. The apostle Paul was apparently as fond of athletic competition as we are, and he often used it to impart spiritual lessons: "Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training" (1 Cor. 9:25-27). "If anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor's crown unless he competes according to the rules" (2 Tim. 2:5). Similarly, Olympians are examples of Christian hope—with some important differences.
Christian hope, for example, does not have to filter out all that negativity, but in fact absorbs it and redeems it, through Christ's death and resurrection. Our hope—for salvation and redemption and the kingdom fully realized—is not grounded in thoughts of our invincibility but of our vulnerability, not on the strength of our will to accomplish our goals, but on the strength and finished work of Christ. World-class athletes, though, are filled with an abiding confidence and expectation that is very much like Christian hope. Paul tells us that if we hope, we wait patiently for something currently out of our reach (Rom. 8: 25), but hope is more than just waiting. In 1 Peter 1, the apostle talks about the confidence we have in hoping, but hope is more than faith. Hope includes faith and patience, but it also consists of desire for that which we await. Our experience of hope, then, is not that different from what we see on the faces of athletes. Nor, says Matthew Elliott, the author of Feel, should it be any less intense. "There should be the excitement that you experience when you hope for non-spiritual things. If we hope less, it's because our concept of God is too small."
We who hope in Christ, then, are both realists and optimists, refusing the temptation of both the pessimist and of Pollyanna. Neither are we merely confident rationalists, who give intellectual assent to the future that awaits us. We are like the athletes who have that deep and abiding confidence, but in ultimate things, because we know intimately the author and perfecter of our hope: "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27), who enables us, like the ideal athlete, to run the race and not grow weary (Isa. 40:31).
Source: Christianity Today