By Lauren R. Stanley

RENK, Sudan – On my left wrist, I wear two bracelets that I never take off. One is a black-and-white beaded affair that is quite popular in Sudan right now, called ajok, a symbol of the beauty of contrasting colors. The other is the white ONE campaign bracelet, which I have been wearing for over a year.

Recently, one of Sudan’s Episcopal bishops asked about my bracelets. He knew about the ajok bracelet, for it is part of the Dinka tradition and he is from the Dinka tribe. But this other one, he said, pointing to the ONE campaign, what is that?

So I explained that if everyone in the world actually donated1 percent of his or her income, we could end poverty, feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, provide medicine and education, build up local businesses, reduce child mortality, combat deadly diseases and become real stewards of the environment.

In other words, I said, for mere pennies per person per day, we could change the world and help bring about God’s kingdom.

Where would the money go, the bishop immediately asked.

To programs that are proven to work well and that deliver on their promises.

This is a good idea, he said. How can we teach our people this?

So I pointed him to our newest project, the building of water cisterns to catch rainwater from the roof of St. Michael’s Chapel at the Renk Theological College. I pointed to the seemingly huge hole in the ground, dug by an older man named John Tho who showed up every morning and every evening for five days to dig 2 meters down, 1.5 meters around, with perfectly straight sides. John dug that hole, and is digging three others, all by hand, slowly, surely, with great professionalism.

Then I pointed to our contractor, Mohammed, and his two assistants, Solomon and Idriss, young men who are learning the craft of brick-laying and concrete-pouring. Normally, the three of them dig and build pit latrines. These water cisterns are new to them, 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.

And I pointed to those who gave life to this project: ECWs in two parishes in Winston Salem, N.C.; two congregations in the Diocese of Virginia; one men’s group in Southwestern Virginia; one family in Northern Virginia; and one individual, who combined their resources to finance underground water cisterns that will catch rainwater off the chapel’s zinc roof.

It’s not a huge project; the funding for the initial work was $5,400. And the cisterns, while good ideas, certainly won’t change the world.

But they will make all the difference to the students and staff at the Renk Theological College, to their families, and to the surrounding neighbors who come to take water from the College. During the rainy season, the White Nile River becomes the “Big Muddy;” the water on which all of us depend often is a dirty brown, and that is after it has been “filtered” at the water plant. It can take up to six months for the river to cleanse itself, during which time anyone drinking from the water, or bathing in it, is exposed to at least a dozen different diseases, many of which are deadly.

Catching the water off the zinc roof of the chapel will mean clean water, possibly for up to six months. During the long dry season, water from the taps (which comes intermittently at best) can be stored in the cisterns, where the silt will settle to the bottom, the water will be clean, and those who depend on it will not have to go without.

That’s the idea behind the ONE campaign: To take a little bit of money and make it go a long way to change the lives of as many people as possible. Nothing big needs to be done; grand plans do not need to be made. Instead, the focus is on little actions that change lives quickly and for the better.

Four contractors, working in brutal heat under a searing sun, are combining their professionalism with the funds and prayers and support from approximately 200 Americans who heard the story of the water shortages here in Renk and decided to do something about it.

That, I told the bishop, is how we make the ONE campaign work: We see the need, tell the story, create partnerships, pray constantly, work together.

Are we changing the world?

Not yet.

But we are changing one small piece of the world, and we are helping a whole lot of people here in Renk.

We think this is a good start.

And we hope – we pray – that once people see how well these cisterns work, they will want to do the same thing, which means we can start a small company here that will specialize in this work, thus providing jobs and training for one group of people, and clean water for another group.

Will we need more partners in this?

Yes. But that’s part of the ONE campaign: Bringing people together in the community in which they have been created, crossing all boundaries because there are no boundaries in God’s very good creation.

Our little informal portion of the ONE campaign is based on our hopes and dreams: We began this project in the hope that it will join people together across 8,000 miles. We are continuing it to help the people in most need right here in Renk. And we dream it continues to grow, with future partners who will fund the purchase of pumps to replace the ropes and buckets we will use at first. Perhaps we will even find the start-up money for a new company.

Whatever happens, we know that with these cisterns, we’ve begun something new among the people of God in the name of God.

The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley is an Appointed Missionary of the Episcopal Church serving in the Diocese of Renk, Sudan. She is a lecturer at the Renk Theological College, teaching Theology, Liturgy and English, and serves as chaplain for the students.

By Frederick Quinn

“To win the New Asia for Christ” was a widely employed missionary concept in the immediate World War II years. But half a century later less than two to five per cent of Asia is Christian. The number is still lower if the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines is excluded from the count. Having spent time recently in Myanmar, Indonesia, Singapore (as a tourist), and the Philippines (as a lecturer), and after talking with laity and clergy of different denominations, several observations come to mind:

1.) Asia has become a world-class exporter of theology. With the plateauing of major German and English language theological writers, names like the Sri Lankan Catholic Aloysius Pieris, the Taiwanese Protestant C. S. Song, and the New Zealand Anglican, Jenny Te Paa, have gained global recognition for their different contributions.

Pieris for linking the social-economic emphasis of Latin American Liberation theologians with Asia’s poor, whom he contends must be the center of any missionary effort.

Song as a leader in the widespread contextual theology movement that allows individuals and communities to tell their deeply meaningful stories with religious implications, relate them to the life and teachings of Jesus, and from the ground up build theologies derived from them.

Te Paa as a respected voice in the global Anglican Communion. Her bridging of Maori and white New Zealand cultures and their complex race relations serves as a model for similar efforts elsewhere.

2.) Hunger for contact with Western churches is widespread. Priests and laity often shared details of their lives in long and heartfelt detail. An Episcopal Church “Fulbright Program” would have real benefits. While many American parishes, dioceses, and seminaries already have such exchange programs with overseas partners, they could be greatly increased as a way of promoting wider understanding.

3.) On the one occasion when the subject came up, there was real interest in and support for ordaining women and persons of single sex orientation to ministry and episcopacy. Ex: before discussing these issues with a group Asian church leaders, I spent the previous evening rereading To Set Our Hope on Christ, the Episcopal Church’s much-neglected but comprehensive response to the Windsor Report. I expected questions about the biblical justification for such ordinations, but none were forthcoming. Instead, participants (about half women and half men) wanted to hear details of the Episcopal Church’s half-century struggle toward fuller acceptance of women and gays and lesbians as children of God and ministers of the church.

4.) Asians note that Asia’s major religions were long established centuries before Christianity and Islam arrived. As for the latter, one class in the Philippines described numerous cooperative efforts at the local level, such as jointly sponsored primary schools, credit unions, medical clinics, agricultural cooperatives, etc. Following a period of warfare in the southern Philippines, local Roman Catholic bishops and Muslim leaders created a Bishops-Ulama council that meets four times a year.

5.) 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.

6.) 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. The observation of Pakistan-born Nobel Prize laureate Amartya Sen in Identity and Violence is apt here that such simplistic generalizations reflect “extraordinary descriptive crudeness and historical innocence. Many of the significant diversities within each civilization are effectively ignored, and interactions between them are substantially overlooked.”

7.) Many deeply devout Asian Christians accept the idea that other valid paths to salvation are represented in the different religions around them. Ex: a leading Indian Christian, Rammon Panikkar, wrote metaphorically of his own religious experience, “I ‘left’ as a Christian, I ‘found’ myself a Hindu, and I ‘return’ a Buddhist, without ever having ceased to be a Christian.” Panikkar is a deeply devout Roman Catholic who over a half century has come to appreciate and use elements of the prayer life and wisdom of other religious traditions. Asian religious pluralism is grounded less in doctrine and more in experience. This includes sustained encounters with other religions, building trust among faith communities, and accepting the different histories and contexts from which they emerge. “We are right side of the brain people,” I was often reminded.

A leading voice in the Asian-American religious encounter, Peter Phan, is a Vietnamese priest who teaches world religions at Georgetown University. Recently he wrote in Being Religious Interreligiously, Asian Perspectives on Interfaith Dialogue, “It is useful to recall that Jesus did not and could not reveal everything to his disciples and that it is the Holy Spirit who will lead them to ‘the complete truth’. It is quite possible that the Holy Spirit will lead the church to the complete truth by means of a dialogue with other religions in which the Spirit is actively present.”

Asia has moved to a new place religiously during the last half-century. New theological voices are emerging, as compelling as their European and American predecessors. It is not a fading West/ Rising East scenario, but one of Westerners broadening their study of and respect for the riches of Asian religions. Rooted deeply in tradition, yet adapted to local settings, Asian Christians seek a wider understanding of the life and ministry of Jesus and a broader exploration of the central concept of the Reign of God.

Focusing on current controversies in the Anglican Communion distorts the wider possibilities of such a potentially rich religious encounter, one that can benefit all participants.

The Rev. Dr. Frederick Quinn is a former chaplain at Washington National Cathedral, a retired Foreign Service Officer, and the author of numerous books on law, history, and religion. His most recent work is The Sum of All Heresies, the Image of Islam in Western Thought (Oxford University Press).

By John Chilton

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

Sherlock Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."

Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

Economists Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson examine African poverty and identify the mosquito as the culprit, of sorts. Their analysis is explained for a wider audience in Tim Harford’s new book, The Logic of Life. It is a rather reductive theory and there is no doubt much more complexity to the problem of poverty in Africa. But it is a powerful story none the less.

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. Instead, it is the curious incident of the mosquito that did not bite. 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.

Lest the reader draw any false conclusions about where this logic is taking us, a detour into the history of economic thought is in order.

We all know that economics is known as the dismal science because it deals with the reality that we live in a world of limited resources. Even so, I have never found economics dismal. The reason is that I understand it to be about how to make the most of our limits. What brightens my outlook even more is that "the how" is most likely to be achieved in a classically liberal context of individual freedom of choice – the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

However, contrary to what we "know," economics was not labeled the dismal science because it deals with the world of limited resources. It was given that label because economists during the period of classic liberalism assumed that all men (at least) were created equal. Economic science rejected the assumption that some races were superior to others; it rejected drawing the easy but false inference that those who fell behind were either stupid, lazy or lacked virtue. The economists of the classically liberal tradition – Smith, Mill – said, no, the explanation for differences in the wealth of nations (aside, of course, for differences in natural resource endowments) has to do the development of institutions that facilitate mutually beneficial exchange and teamwork. This news was dismal to those who preferred to assume that the economic advancement of their society was explained by their racial superiority – and justified slavery. Economists joined Christian evangelicals of the day in the fight against slavery; they agreed all humans share the same nature and have the same rights.

The institutions that foster mutually beneficial exchange include government-facilitated institutions like property rights, the rule of law, and enforcement of contracts. But government can also hinder beneficial economic exchange. In the extreme, think of a kleptocracy designed to extract wealth any time it is created – it destroys economic incentives to trade or invest. Limiting the power of government to take is part of the formula of the wealth of nations.

The story that the economists Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson tell lines up with the views of the classical liberal economists about the source of the wealth of nations. In countries where Europeans settled they demanded creation of institutions that fostered mutually beneficial exchange so that all (Europeans, n.b.) had a shot at benefiting. The consequences for indigenous people in these region was clearly adverse. (Aside: the Pilgrims did try a system of communal sharing for a few years; the abandonment of that system is another story, perhaps.)

In countries subject to European colonization, but little European settlement, Europeans set up very different institutions. There, as Harford puts it, they "made the … selfishly rational decision to establish the slave trade … and set up abusive economic systems to exploit the land and people or scrape up as much gold and ivory in the shortest time…. The plantation economies became independent with a political system designed to suck out every cent of short-term gain and funnel it to the guys in charge." (p. 205)

Such systems are corrupt and corrupting – just imagine what it is like to grow up in such a society and how, for example, it influences your attitude towards trusting others and deflates your aspirations for fulfillment. Or consider what it does to the incentive to build a professional reputation. Or consider how the financial disintermediation we are experiencing in the U.S. is influencing our economy at this moment, and imagine how a wariness to invest or make loans is an everyday fact of life in many African countries.

Social systems, particularly abusive ones, are hard to change. The gulf between North and South created by the mosquito has persisted due to the plantation system inherited in Africa from when it was under Northern rule. The next time you find yourself wondering why Africans – be they journalists or farmers or politicians or civil servants or religious leaders – are different, remind yourself they are not different. People are just people. Rather ask yourself how institutions are different, and remind yourself different institutions create different attitudes and incentives. How righteous are you, really?

Dr. John B. Chilton is an economist on a busman's holiday. He has taught at the University of Western Ontario, the University of South Carolina and the American University of Sharjah. He is keeper of The Emirates Economist, a weblog on economic events in the United Arab Emirates and the Gulf.

By Donald Schell

Traveling in Africa with my wife, Ellen Schell, the International Programs Director of the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance (GAIA www.thegaia.org) last fall, I had the privilege of meeting the Rev. Fletcher Kaiya, General Secretary of the Baptist Convention of Malawi, enjoying tea in his home, and watching a performance by the chorus of AIDS orphans that he and his wife are raising as their own children. It's through the GAIA connection that I saw this note from Fletcher Kaiya to Bill Rankin, Ellen's boss and President of Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance.

Fletcher writes:

I was recently on the radio with an Assemblies of God pastor, an official from National AIDS Commission and also from Ministry of Health. Our on-the-spot-audience included those that were HIV positive. They had no kind words for the church because they said there is rampant stigma and discrimination, made in secret innuendos, yet preaching the opposite. Some of the audience thought as far as stigma is concerned, the church has done nothing. I could also understand their anger and frustration having been targets of these bad habits by so-called “God's people.” We did not try to defend the church but we cleared the name of Jesus as having been compassionate and kind. If His followers are doing this to those living positively [with HIV], then it is a gross misrepresentation of the Master they claim to represent.

Thank God that others called in and saved our faces by reporting that the majority of the pastors who do that are not trained theologically, or if they are then they are not committed to helping those who are suffering.

They gave me an opportunity to be the last to speak and I took the opportunity to apologize for those that have suffered hurt from churches and I also strongly warned my fellow church leaders that if they do that, they have missed the path Jesus is walking now. For He sympathized and had compassion with the outcasts of His day, be they lepers, tax collectors, prostitutes etc. He was setting an example for His true church to follow. "If we are not following Jesus then it is a misnomer for us to be called the ‘Church’”

Later, I met one person who said he thought the Spirit of God led me to say those words, for they struck deep. I now think that we need to be speaking against this vice on the radio for I did not know that other churches are doing this to their own people.

God bless,
Fletcher

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'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 Kaiya coming to terms with AIDS.

In Africa today, just as in our own church and culture twenty years ago, many people are dealing with AIDS by blaming, judging and scapegoating. Fletcher Kaiya, an open-hearted, generous man has suffered personal losses from AIDS (as nearly everyone in Malawi has). He has spoken repeatedly about AIDS education, encouraging people to get voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) and asking that all of us treat those who suffering from the disease with compassion. In his email, the man who has taken 15 AIDS orphans into his own home, and who has spoken more openly than most about family members dying of AIDS, writes of becoming a lightning rod as AIDS patients (in the anonymous safety of their radio voices) tell the painful story of abuse and scorn they have received in Jesus' name, and of rigidity and judgmentalism preached against them in Jesus' name. Fletcher finds words to acknowledge the church's failure and yet insist that what these sufferers have experienced is also the cruelest possible misrepresentation of the compassionate, welcoming Jesus Fletcher knows and calls the whole church to follow.

Sometimes I hear Episcopal Church liberals say, “we should just forget about Africa - they've written us off and we have our own work to do.” Knowing the courage and outspoken compassion of African church leaders like Fletcher Kaiya, I imagine his hearing our words from the North. In our genuinely holy and called concern for justice and the full inclusion of LGBT people in our church's life, can we faithfully say we don't care about Fletcher and the anguishingly slow change that the African churches are making as their people are dying in the worst epidemic in human history? Rather than writing off a continent, stripping people like Fletcher of their humanity, can we listen and claim his voice as a gift to us too?

As North and South both struggle to remember Jesus’ open-armed, forgiving welcome to all, Fletcher’s voice resonates as prophetically in the North as in the South. He preaches Gospel compassion so simply and courageously that we hear he’s ready to listen and learn from any Christian, or for that matter any stigmatized, marginalized, and excluded person. Here is one of the many witnesses from the Global South of the continuing work for a Baptist and a wider Christian witness to real, day-to-day inclusion of all in God's embrace.

The Rev. Donald Schell is founder St. Gregory's Episcopal Church, San Francisco and consultant and creative director of All Saints Company, San Francisco.