Africa’s new colonists: American evangelical Christians

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/arti...american-evangelical-christians/#.Un_eQflQFzo

The Reverend Kapya Kaoma is a short, dapper man of unfailing politeness, excusing himself apologetically every time he rises from our table at a Cape Town hotel. It’s generally in search of more tea. “How much tea do you drink?” asks his companion, the filmmaker Roger Ross Williams, with incredulous good humour. “Too much,” Kaoma says wryly.

It’s understandable that Kaoma needs a strong tea transfusion to start the day, because he and Williams have been on what sounds like a gruelling tour throughout Africa to screen their documentary on the rise of the US Christian Right’s influence on the continent, God Loves Uganda. Williams was the first African-American director to win an Oscar in the category of Documentary Shorts, in 2010, for Music by Prudence, and also the first African-American to win an Oscar for directing and producing a film, regardless of length. But despite Williams’ impressive CV, if it wasn’t for Kaoma, there might not be any film.

Kaoma wrote a report in 2012 called “Colonizing African values: How the US Christian Right is transforming sexual politics in Africa”, which is what introduced Williams to the subject of his documentary. Kaoma, who is originally Zambian, had observed with concern the extension and intensification of anti-gay legislation in Africa over the past decade. From 2006, when Zimbabwe expanded its sodomy laws, Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria and the DRC have all either mooted or implemented more extreme homophobic laws. Kaoma went undercover for months of research to try to figure out what was going on.

“There were Christian missionaries in Africa since the nineteenth century,” Kaoma explains between bites of breakfast. “It was in the 70s and 80s that a new wave of Christianity starting arriving that was charismatic, evangelical. In the past, we used to see the kind of missionary who would come and stay for a long time and become part of a community. Now… you have 10 minutes? You can come to Africa.”

Uganda was particularly targeted after the fall of dictator Idi Amin in 1979. Kaoma and Williams say this was twofold: because US Christian organisations wanted to safeguard Ugandan Christians, reportedly persecuted under Amin’s reign; and because US Christian organisations wanted to ensure that the Soviet Union did not procure a foothold within Africa from which to spread Communism. In the post-Cold War era, the infrastructure used to spread the message of anti-Communism could be used for other messages.

To make his documentary, Williams spent a lot of time with the leaders and missionaries of an evangelical group called the International House of Prayer (IHOP), which sends very young-looking Americans to Uganda to proselytize. Leader Lou Engle, a well-known opponent of abortion and homosexuality, tells the camera: “The West has been in decline. Africa is the fire-pod of spiritual renewal and revival.”

In the USA, recent shifts in public attitudes towards homosexuality, together with growing legislative permissiveness on issues like gay marriage and abortion, has left the American religious right “on the losing side of a battle that it now seems incapable of winning”, to quote a report released by civil rights NGO the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) in July.

And so their attention has shifted to other parts of the world, beyond US borders, where they believe they can still make an impact. They’re focusing on Africa and the Caribbean. Uganda is popular with US evangelicals today because it is already a religious country, with an estimated 85% of the population identifying as Christian, and because it is the youngest population in the world, with 50% under the age of 15. IHOP calls Uganda “the pearl of Africa”, and their missionaries encourage Ugandans to believe that their country is the most important nation in Africa – or could be, if Ugandans stick to strict Biblical principles.

“They say Uganda will rule the world eventually,” Williams explains. “They give examples of their victories. For instance they say they prayed [warlord Joseph] Kony away.”

Later I mention that Rebecca Kadaga, the speaker of the Ugandan parliament and public champion of Uganda’s kill-the-gays bill, has just been elected chairperson of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians, a role she was nominated to, incidentally, by South Africa. Williams and Kaoma hadn’t heard the news, as they have been touring Malawi, and both are shocked.

“But you see how this works for their plan!” Williams says, wide-eyed. “Now they can point to that too, and say see, Uganda will rule Africa!”

In his documentary, there is footage of US far-right preacher Scott Lively addressing an Ugandan audience, which was filmed by Kaoma. Writing on a flip chart, Lively instructs his audience that gays are pederasts, that gays were responsible for Nazi Germany, that gays have taken over the UN and that gays are coming to Uganda to “recruit your children”. But, Lively says, “Uganda can be the first country to stop them” if they implement “public policy that discourages homosexuality”.

On that same visit to Uganda, Lively was given permission to address the Ugandan parliament for five hours. It was after this that MP David Bahati introduced the kill-the-gays bill in October 2009. Bahati claims that after the bill was introduced, donations to Uganda from Western churches tripled. In 2010, Uganda’s Rolling Stone newspaper published the names, addresses and photos of “Uganda’s Top Homos” with an exhortation to “Hang them”. Less than six months later, Ugandan gay activist David Kato was murdered in his home.

Williams asks the young American missionaries of IHOP on camera what they think about the anti-gay bill, and they shrug it off, saying they haven’t read it. In the face of pressure, most US evangelical groups have denounced the bill. But Scott Lively described it as “an encouraging step in the right direction”, and Lou Engle is shown on film calling for prayers of strength for the Ugandan government and their “statement of righteousness”.

Barack Obama was among the world leaders to condemn the anti-gay bill. In the documentary, Ugandan preacher Martin Ssempa, who was trained by evangelicals in the US, bitterly denounces Obama for “coming to Africa and telling us what to do”. It is, Ssempa says, “hypocrisy of the highest order”. But the fact that Ssempa’s own anti-gay rhetoric has been adopted straight from the States too doesn’t seem to worry him.

“It is factually incorrect to say we never had gays in Africa or that the Europeans trained Africans to be gay,” Kaoma says, and he gives a number of examples of long-tolerated homosexuality from African culture, such as the yan daudu – “men who act like women” – of northern Nigeria. “What is un-African is Western-defined homosexuality. This idea that gays molest kids, for instance. We never saw them like that!”

Williams knows that his documentary runs the risk of being interpreted as anti-Christian, and he’s at pains to state that a lot of American religious groups do “an incredible amount of good work” in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa. Williams’ own family ran a mega-church when he was growing up.

“I spent three years with fundamentalists [while making the documentary],” Williams says. “They weren’t these evil bogeymen. I had a lot of fun, I really liked some of them.” Kaoma, meanwhile, has retained his religious faith. “We don’t have to demonise [evangelicals],” he says. “They really believe in what they are doing. Christianity is all about convictions… They can have all the views they want but what I denounce is that they want to use that as the basis for [government] policy. We condemn Islamic fundamentalists, but if we do that how are we different?”

Kaoma fears that the influence of US evangelicals will continue to grow unless Christians in sub-Saharan Africa start defining issues from their own perspective. “Africa is caught in the middle of a battle between Western conservatives and Western liberals,” Kaoma says. “Ideas that didn’t work in the West are now being dumped on Africa.” And he says South Africa isn’t helping matters.

“Most of the [evangelical] groups have sister churches in South Africa,” Kaoma says. “South Africa is the training ground if [would-be Ugandan preachers] can’t go to America. If you would expose them, we would read about that…South Africa has the moral responsibility to try to defy these guys.” DM

Two relevant groups with apparent South African ties:

Human Life International, which Kaoma’s report notes spends almost a quarter of its overseas budget – $400,000 annually – on “anti-abortion and anti-gay activities in sub-Saharan Africa alone”. A former PR director for the group said in 2006 that “homosexuals reproduce sexually by molesting children”. According to its website, there’s a South African chapter in Milnerton, Cape Town.

The Family Research Council, which reportedly lobbied Congress against denouncing Uganda’s kill-the-gays bill, and which the SPLC describes as one of “the largest Christian right heavyweights”. The Family Research Council trained notorious Cape Town pastor Errol Naidoo, who interned with them in the States after South Africa passed its gay marriage law, and then returned home to set up the Family Policy Institute (you can read it in his own words here. It was Naidoo, you might recall, who managed to blame gays for Marikana.

----------------------------------------------------------

The rabid Christianity that fueled the Inquisitions, crusades, and Salem Witch Trials never fully died, and now its back in force in parts of the world where real education systems are weak or non existent. Like a poison it has spread across Sub Sahara Africa over the past several decades, and we are now starting to see the consequences. The people funding this are wealthy, educated, and power hungry monsters from evangelical groups in the U.S.. Men like Pat Robertson who only seek to gather more power and influence for themselves. Men who would just love to do the same thing in the U.S.

 

Godless progressives have killed their share also.

Hitler and Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

 

Edit/Rule 2/Insulting "rabid Christianity".

Are you aware that nearly all middle eastern countries share the same intense hatred of homosexuals? Some enjoy public executions of homosexuals. Are you going to tell me that Christianity is to blame there as well?

I feel so sorry that you have been so amazingly brainwashed by the liberal hate machine that you would come here and make such a statement.

 

Actually, Hitler was a Christian. He was doing what he thought God had ordained him to do. You offer no excuse for these zealots by claiming non-religious people harm others in power grabs. Do you denounce these Christian groups for trying to bring about their Holy War? Where is your outrage for what these groups are doing?

 

Nice red herring, now how about you address the OP.

 

Oh I am completely aware. Conservative and extremist Muslims are a threat too, but they go about their violence and depravity in a much more straight forward way than these fundie Christians do (shadow puppetry). And no, chistians are not to blame for that, unless we want to get into the topic of retarded Europeans making up borders with no regards to cultures after WW1, breaking up the Ottoman Empire, etc...

I feel so sorry you can't comprehend that there are extremely bad Christians in the world who only lust for power.

 

Hitler was a Christian and a supernaturalist

Stalin was a former seminary student....

 

Good, the muslims finally have a counter-balance in Africa.

 

If figures someone who would pick "Franco" as a forum name would say something like that.

 

Lets not get ahead of ourselves. Hitler was religious, but Stalin... lol no. Dude straight up made the USSR an atheist state. However he did employ religion. He saw it for what is. A tool for controlling the masses, so he created is religion-like cult of personality, and made back room deals with high ranking members of the East Orthodox Church who would support him in exchange for favors (which would eventually lead to a rift forming between the church in Russia, and outside of it).

 

Ya, Hitler wasn't devout in any sense of the word. If you read any of Martin Boarman or Albert Speers accounts, you know that Christianity was a useful tool for Hitler, and if he would have won WWII Christianity would have been replaced by some brand of nazi deism.

 

I kind of regret it now; I should have gone with Pinochet.

Besides, there is nothing wrong with what I said.

 

Yes there is, because when it comes to religious extremism, two wrongs don't make a right. Recklessly violent and ignorant Christians are no better than recklessly violent and ignorant Muslims.

 

To be fair, Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were all massively authoritarian on social issues, and this was in large part what led to their respective mass purges.

I don't think the above were Progressives, although they definitely share a lot of the ideology; for example, German Fascism and modern Progressivism both share a propensity toward a cartelized society organized around state control and collusion with industry, while Stalinism and Maoism both share a lot of the rhetoric and justification behind their ideology.

Personally I think Progressivism is best understood as the American interpretation of the "new ideologies" of Europe during the early 20th Century. In many ways the Progressive ideology on offer at the election of 1912 preempted European Fascism by several decades in economic policy (and some social) policy. Like all things this was viewed through the lens of American history - so it takes on a distinct American flavor; it's much less abhorrent to personal liberty than European Fascism.

If you read the Fascist Manifesto, written in 1919, you'll see an almost mirror image of Wilson's policy platform:

• Universal suffrage (desirable, but it shows that Fascism wasn't as extreme as it's often portrayed)
• Representation at government level of newly created national councils by economic sector (think: Lever Fuel and Food Act, Pure Food and Drug Act, Federal Reserve Act, War Industries Board)
• The abolition of the Italian Senate (the 17th amendment turned the Senate into a second HOR and abolished bicameralism in the legislature)
• The formation of a national council of experts for labor, for industry, for transportation, for the public health, for communications, etc. Selections to be made of professionals or of tradesmen with legislative powers, and elected directly to a general commission with ministerial powers (Food, Fuel and Railroad Administrations)

The rest could be found virtually verbatim in Progressive policy:

• The quick enactment of a law of the state that sanctions an eight-hour workday for all workers
• A minimum wage
• The participation of workers' representatives in the functions of industry commissions
• To show the same confidence in the labor unions (that prove to be technically and morally worthy) as is given to industry executives or public servants
• Reorganisation of the railways and the transport sector
• Reduction of the retirement age from 65 to 55
• A strong progressive tax on capital

 

Amazing that you have the temerity to use the term bigot when you admit to an intense hatred of homosexuals. You're ignorance is only surpassed by your bigotry.

 

How about including Robespierre ?

I always laugh when American theists are mentioning Stalin , you are drone killing dissidents abroad under suspicions but Stalin shouldn't had nazi collaborators executed , this is ridiculous .

Hitler was a devoted catholic and his religiousness was the main cause of his madness .

 

Hilter was huge into the Occult... He was hardly Christian.

 

It seems to me that everyone on this thread wants to talk about Hitler and Stalin, but not the subject at hand.

I have long been aware the evangelicals have been plundering the third world (particularly Africa and the Carribean) for souls and cash.

Pat Robertson is well known for his activities in the same part of Africa, as well as his investments in blood diamonds, financed by his televangelical flock in the U.S.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/05/pat-robertson-diamond-fraud-documentary_n_3875345.html

I was also aware of the activities of conservative activists who ran public relations campaigns for African dictator Jonas Savimbe (the guy known chiefly for hacking off people's limbs). The campaign was run by former members of the College Republcians. The foursome included Jack Abramoff, Karl Rove, Grover Nordquist and Ralph Reed. Thanks to them Savimbe was hailed as a liberator by the Reagan adminstration and enjoyed backing from the Heritage Foundation.

I first became aware of this vacationing in Jamacia back in the late 1980's, where I was surprised at the influence and exposure that American televangelists like Falwell, Earnest Aingley and the like had on local people, who all opened their meagher pocketbooks and gave money to these American TV preachers.

I have no doubt that many evangelicals are doing good work. In fact, I know a few.

But this report certainly also supports a trend that I have noted over the years, that is little reported (at least in the US), and commented on even less.

 

Hitler grew up in a Christian family.

So did Stalin.

But they both became godless progressive statists.

Hitler allowed the trappings of the Church in Germany whereas Stalin didnt but they were not men of faith.

So I say again modern godless progressives have killed hundreds of millions of innocent people.

And I don't think they are finished yet.

 

Oh no! The Africans can't see that the new wave of Christians are coming to get their children? Kill the gay ones and send the rest to fight wars against their neighbors? Is that really what they want?

 

You've probably noticed that all the posters are right wingers, and NONE of them want to talk about the subject at hand.

 

I think progressives adapt to the time they happen to live in.

If modern libs were around in the 1930s they would be praising Stalin or Hitler.

Similarly the Hitler and Stalin would have no trouble fitting in with modern libs today.

The common thread is an unshakable belief that government has all the answers and that individuals exist to serve the state.

 

There is absolutely no logic in equating the Inquisition that killed a few hundred people to these secular war machines.

Theocracies that kill "heretics" are doing/have done exactly what the other six forms of Government have always done under the names of killing "traitors" or "Rebels" or "dissidents" and arrest people for "High Treason" or tagged them as "communist," etc.

The RCC was one lone entity for 1000 years simply because the majority if not the entirety of Christendom want that and supported the "Secret Police", (AKA, The FBI of the CIA or SS etc), called the Inquisition near the end of that reign of power over Europe.

- - - Updated - - -

These Libs ARE showing us what they would have done in the past as they do it now with Iran.

 

Right Wingers just need the guts and clarity to explain why Gays and slutty harlots like the West has encouraged and supported should be repressed.

The Politically Correct climate prevented Santorum from making a case out of the sexual immorality which is destroying America and the West because he can't count, yet,... on the good women, married with children.
In 2016 he may have found the words and the Stats and the Facts which show the child abuse resulting from sexual promiscuity.
That will be enough to galvanize half of the women who because women believe everyone must be nice to everyone have not criticized the sexual mores in America.

 

For starters the Inquisition killed thousands, not hundreds, and if we really want to get into big numbers we could totally bring in the unrivaled campaign of genocide and slavery committed in the new world (with "god wills it" being one of the biggest excuses). Which depopulated two continents (arguably three if you want to throw Australia into the mix).