This is Part 1 of a series of an article titled Salt & Light: Christians role in Combating Corruption by Paul Batchelor and Steve Osei-Mensah, taken from Lausanne Global Conversations Community Resources. What part does corruption play in your life? That may seem a strange question to ask an audience such as this. Many may answer that, of course, as Christians, we would have nothing whatsoever to do with it. But others among us live with the dire consequences of corruption every day. Our assertion in this paper is that, whether we recognize it or not, we are all caught up in one form or another of corruption or its consequences and, as Evangelical Christians, we need to do more to prepare and engage in the fight against it. A couple of months ago I was in Zambia with members of my family. During our stay we visited three schools. None was well-equipped. The walls were mostly bare. But I was struck by the fact that, in each one of those schools, there were at least two sets of information painted on the walls to attract the attention of pupils. One was a warning against HIV/AIDS- a simple definition of what it is and an explanation of how to avoid it. The second was a warning about corruption; this time, a simple definition followed by a basic explanation of its consequences. As someone who has spent a significant part of his working life in Africa, I was not shocked to see these warnings but I am struck by the difference in perceptions of the impact of corruption and attitudes towards it that tend to exist in different parts of the world. Much of Africa has, sadly, been massively afflicted by corruption over the past fifty years. Of course it existed long before then; the colonial record is far from unblemished. But its scale and effects have grown hugely and the great optimism that hailed independence in the 1960s, when I first worked in Africa as a volunteer, has all too often given way to dismay and anger as efforts to promote economic and social development have been systematically undermined by corruption which has left a tiny minority with untold, ill-gotten wealth while the great majority still endure grinding poverty. For many of our African brothers and sisters the reality and the painful effects of corruption are every-day facts of life. Some, whether Christians or not get caught up in it; some try to resist it; but none can simply afford to ignore it. No wonder the issue is high on the agenda of those schools. The same can be said of large parts of South Asia and Latin America and parts of SE Asia and E Europe. Here too many face a daily struggle against the impact of corruption. By contrast, many of us in the more affluent parts of the world can indulge in the mistaken belief that corruption does not really affect us. Even if we open our daily newspapers and read of the latest scandal- in the case of the UK it might be about MPs’ expenses or allegations of match-fixing or obscenely high levels of remuneration for a privileged few or a case of corporate bribery- these things do not impinge on our daily lives; they do not threaten our survival and somehow we can persuade ourselves that they do not or need not concern us. We feel complacent or arrogant and ‘pass by on the other side’, thankful perhaps that ‘we are not as those others are’ who indulge in such things. Perhaps that is also why, if you do a simple internet search on the subjects of Christians Combating Corruption, you find that the overwhelming majority of entries relates to Africa, with contributions from Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda featuring particularly prominently. In those countries people feel the effects of corruption acutely every day. Corruption traverses ethnic, class and faith boundaries. Christians are not immune and some churches have succumbed to corrupt practices but many African Christians in positions of influence have become actively engaged in the struggle to arrest the blight of corruption. We will argue that the time has come to make this a truly global effort among evangelicals.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 08:07:47 +0000
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