LUSAKA, Zambia – “Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.”
The words of King David from his Psalm 133 – a “song of ascent” – greet visitors to the headquarters of the Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia, the mother body of Christian denominations, churches, parachurch organizations and missionary agencies founded here in 1964.
Unity may be the ideal for God’s people, but in the history of humanity – and Christendom in particular – the faithful have fallen far short of speaking from one heart with one voice.
One of the reasons I agreed to travel with our friends at the ONE Campaign to Africa last month was to see the work being done on the ground by home-grown faith-based organizations toward alleviating extreme poverty, preventable diseases and other social ills. As a religion journalist, I’d seen the great strides made by American Christians over the last decade to work together – in unity – to assist the “least of these” suffering from the one-two punch of grinding poverty and the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa.
I figured the African faith leaders I’d meet on this trip would be taking their first tentative steps toward social action, engaging with their own governments, lawmakers and corporations to continue the behemoth work that still needs to be done in tackling poverty and disease in their midst.
As a journalist, I strive to enter new situations without preconceived notions about what the outcome or story might be. And when I am not able to shed all of those notions, I love it when the story – and the people in it – prove me wrong.
Such was the case when I sat down for a visit with a handful of evangelical leaders in Lusaka. Engaging with social ills and working directly to influence their government to act justly is far from an innovation for Zambian faith leaders. In fact, when it comes to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, eradicating extreme poverty, and intervening in the exploitation of natural resources, Zambian evangelical leaders are a generation ahead of many of their American brethren.
“In the ’80s, when a number of social problems were becoming more and more serious in the country, the church began getting involved in the social sector as well, in terms of looking at the issue of integral mission more strongly, so that the church was not just concentrated on the spiritual side of the ministry,” said the Rev. Pukuta Mwanza, executive director of the Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia.
Before that, the fellowship was focused almost solely on the “great commission” in its most literal sense — to spread the Gospel through preaching and teaching the Bible, and by supporting fellow Christians in their efforts to do the same.
The turning point, Mwanza said, came in the mid-1980s when Zambia’s then president sought to introduce principles of “scientific socialism,” perhaps better known as Marxism – a move faith leaders felt would be bad for the future of their country.
“At that point, the church began lashing out very strongly against some of the very serious government policies,” Mwanza said. Evangelicals reached across doctrinal and denominational lines, joining ranks with Anglicans and mainline Protestants in their efforts to suppress the spread of Marxist ideology in Zambia, he said.
The late 1980s and early ’90s brought political unrest, food shortages and subsequent riots. During the first multiparty democratic elections in 1991, Christian leaders acted as mediators – peacemakers, really – between warring political parties, tamping down further unrest.
But it was the arrival of HIV and AIDS in 1983 that presented one of the biggest challenges for Zambian religious leaders.
“The church was really quite judgmental in the early part of HIV and AIDS,” Mwanza explained. “It was the source of stigma and discrimination because without sufficient information about HIV and AIDS, initially it was perceived as being solely linked to promiscuity, sinful behavior and so on.”
By the late 1980s, though, the church started to change its message and become “a very strong contributor to preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS – caring for the people who had AIDS and for orphans,” Mwanza said. “In fact, some of the best practices that have been used in this country are those that the church has been able to adopt, such as home-based care system.
“The church,” he added, “…(is) now much more caring, more loving.”
I asked why attitudes among Zambian evangelical Christians toward HIV/AIDS changed in the late ’80s, and why it took many American evangelicals another decade or more to come around.
“First, the Catholics have been involved in this much longer,” Mwanza said. “Us evangelicals, we were late entrants. But, as we say, better late than not being involved at all. So, the reality of HIV/AIDS became so prevalent here that there was a common saying: If you are not infected, you are affected.”
Mwanza recalled a particularly gruesome period when HIV- and AIDS-related deaths were so common he presided at a dozen funerals in 14 days. He’d be at the graveside of one victim, when his mobile phone would ring to tell him that another member of his flock had perished.
Thanks to availability of antiretroviral drugs across sub-Saharan Africa in the last decade, funded by foreign aid and programs such as PEPFAR (U.S. President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief), the spread of AIDS has slowed significantly across the region, including Zambia, where not too long ago, up to 16 percent of the population was HIV-positive.
Last month, the Zambian government began administering a vaccine against the human papillomavirus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer. Some 50,000 school-aged girls received the vaccine – a move welcomed by religious leaders, Dr. Sharon Mfula, director of the main women’s hospital in Lusaka, told us.
Zambia has the highest incidence of deaths from cervical cancer (36 per 100,000 women) in all of Africa, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Merck, the U.S. pharmaceutical company, contracted with the Zambian government to supply the vaccine, which is being administered for free.
And yet in the States, some religious organizations and their leadership have voiced strong opposition to vaccinating children against HPV.
At the Evangelical Fellowship’s office in Lusaka, printed under the words from Psalm 133 are a number of the organization’s “strategic areas of focus.” These include: missions and church-building, peacemaking, HIV/AIDS and health, gender-based issues (including violence), good governance of extractives, and achieving the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.
How many American faith-based organizations could say the same?
The Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia is one of the key partners in a new ground-breaking effort led by the ONE Campaign’s Africa office, to enlist everyday Africans in having a say in what the future development goals should be after the Millennium Development Goals expire in 2015.
Launched in March, the campaign, called “You Choose,” invited anyone with a cellphone in South Africa, Malawi and Zambia to send a free text where they could say what changes, after 2015, would most affect their family for the better.
By mid-May 180,000 Africans had responded. Good government and access to clean water were among the most common replies. (By the way, did you know that more Africans have access to cellphones than clean water?)
Why would such an effort be important to religious leaders in Zambia or anywhere else?
“We have a religious culture,” Mwanza said. “The fact that we are dealing with a suffering continent, some people may think the only way we can get through this suffering is with God’s help…. Unless God helps us, nothing else will help.”
Contact the writer: cfalsani@ocregister.com or on Twitter @Godgrrl
