An unlikely author argues that Christianity can save Africa

Matthew Parris, an atheist, argues that only Christianity can save Africa from "the crushing passivity of the people's mindset."

[T]the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosophical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.


Posted by Jim Naughton on January 2, 2009 11:00 AM | |
Comments (1)

A trip to Virtue(lessness) On Line will give one an idea how yellow journalism can spin this man's words into an attack on the Presiding Bishop, TEC and the MDGs.

Posted by David Allen |dah • veed| [TypeKey Profile Page] | January 2, 2009 3:04 PM

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