Reflections of an ex-Christian at Easter

(Pic - "The Sermon on the Mount" from Ecce Homo. Elizabeth Ohlson Wallin, 1998, Photograph, 79" x 60")

My journey with Christianity has, it needs to be said, been a fairly robust one – on both sides, I suppose. I was born and raised in a fairly ordinary Christian home.  By this, I mean, that we went to a little parish Church within walking distance of our house.  We cooked a turkey at Christmas and had Christmas pudding aflame with brandy.  We had Easter Eggs at Easter and otherwise lived fairly ordinary, middle-of-the-road lives.  My parents were standard parents, with fairly standard ideas.  It was a happy home and the Church was a reasonable part of it.  We got baptised as infants and confirmed on reaching puberty.  If we got married, it was in the parish church. If you died, that is where you got buried from.  It was just the way you did things.

My siblings were much older than me and had gone their separate ways by the time my hormones started raging.  And when they did, they raged within the fairly safe confines of Church youth groups and choir practise – so generally, it was all relatively safe and sound.

I knew from an early age that I wanted to become a Priest.  I used to explain to my easily bewildered students, many years down the track, that it was primarily the gorgeous clothes the priest wore that had initially attracted me to the priesthood.  Of course, my motives all got dressed up in stuff the bishops wanted to hear, like calling and vocation and things like that – but actually, it was the glamour – the sheer outright drama of the thing, which did it.

I went to study theology at Rhodes University and Cambridge and Manchester.  I loved it all! I loved the academic rigour, the debate, the sheer, glorious liberation of being able to think things through and to discard the nonsense and hold on to what made rational sense.  I had some pretty amazing teachers – I think of the extraordinary Canon John Suggit.  I think of Bishop John Robinson, who was quite happy to throw the baby out with the bathwater and still was able to maintain some kind of link with both the religion and the institution of the Church (and more amazingly, was allowed to do so!)

I worked for a while as a priest in Lesotho.  In reality, it was a convenient cover for political activity.  But it was also character-moulding in all sorts of ways.  If I close my eyes, I can still remember the day I was made Deacon in the Cathedral of St Mary and St James, Maseru.  There is a point in the service, where the Deacon is required to prostrate himself before the altar.  I remember the freezing cold of the stone floor, the smell of the incense mixed with wood smoke.  I remember the overwhelming drama of the thing and the sense of dignity and communion as the massive congregation welcomed me.

I was ordained Priest in Manchester Cathedral, after long negotiations with the ecclesiastical authorities, because of my refusal to swear any oath of allegiance to the Queen.  I remember the growl of the organ and the triumphant procession.  I remember the taste of the wine at the first Mass where I was the celebrant.

So when I call myself an ex-Christian, it is not an easy thing.  I have so much of the religion etched in my brain, in my consciousness and my unconsciousness.  The images, the sights the sounds, the smells – these are a significant part of me. And I entered into it, for a massive chunk of my life, fully and passionately.  Doubtless, I would still be there, if it were in any way possible.

When a new Archbishop of Canterbury is enthroned – something happens inside me.  It is difficult to explain – but I am still connected to it long enough to remember that I have since rejected it all.  When a Pope resigns and a new one is chosen, something in my inner being awakens and reacts.  When we approach Eastertide and my child asks me about the plagues in Egypt, I react with something much more than passing interest.

And it is not that I believe in any kind of objective God, really, it is not.  And it is not that I regret not believing in God.  It is something quite aside from that.  It is a strange and eerie connection with the rich past which has made me who I am.  It is impossible to pretend that it means nothing, or that it achieved nothing or that it is worth nothing.  And I would not want to do that.

In the end, we, as a same-sex family with two adopted children, decided to cut ties with the Church once and for all, for reasons which have nothing to do with belief.  It was simply impossible to continue in it as second-class citizens and for our children to be brought up in an environment where we were not fully and completely accepted. It became abundantly clear that it would be asking too much of an institution, riven with its own lies and contradictions, on the question of sexuality – (let alone theology!).

And so, I live my life without the Church any more.  There are some things I miss intensely and many more things I don’t.  I miss the drama and the ritual and the rumble of the organ.  I miss the hieratic language and the powerful, living poetry which accompanies it.  I don’t miss the bigotry and the anti-intellectual conservatism and the lies and the all-pervading, inescapable hypocrisy, which is allowed to grow and flourish and flower and seed, without any hinder or check.

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that for all of it, my children – in their particular circumstance are better - much better - without it.  I am not sure I will be able to protect them from its worst excesses forever, but I am going to do my best to shield them, for as long as possible.  So they will have to be content with Easter eggs rather than the extraordinary story of hope rising from the darkness of the tomb.

What were we thinking?

The End Conscription Campaign (ECC) is about to celebrate, in rather grand style, its 25th anniversary. For those too young to remember, the ECC was formed as a platform for white (male, as they all were at the time) conscripts to resist conscription into, what was then, the South African Defence Force (SADF). It was never a large organisation, but it sure as hell was a brave one! Names such as Ivan Toms, David Bruce, Saul Batzofin, Charles Bester, Mike Evans, Billy Paddock, Richard Steele, Peter Hathorn and Brett Myrdal immediately come to mind.

It was not an easy thing to stand up against virtually all of one’s cohorts and face the real wrath of the state. These, amongst others, did just that. And their contribution is certainly worth saluting and reflecting upon. For myself, I took a different path. I left the country and went to live with my then spouse, in Lesotho. For the record, if there is one, I thought it might be interesting to reflect on some of the impulses which made me do that.

I did not come from any kind of activist background. I grew up in a white neighbourhood, with standard middle class values and perspectives on life. Amongst some of these “values” was the firm belief that white people were better than black people. That was just a fact of human existence. No one, in our neighbourhood apparently, ever questioned that. (Except perhaps Helen Suzman. And the Harmels, who also lived close by. And Helen Joseph, who was always under house arrest, but lived up the road. And Eli and Violet Weinberg, who lived a few houses away, and who worried my mother, because they sent us Christmas cards, even though they were Jewish.) Generally speaking though – no-one questioned the basic presupposition, that Black people were inferior to white people and that whatever it took, we need to keep them off our patch.

So, what I remember is, that although there was never any question about this belief, dotted around us were these strange people, who for some strange reason, did not appear to agree with that idea. We lived in parallel universes. My parents, good people, not very educated, under exposed, and both of them having run away from being classified “coloured” in Cape Town, were not going to explore the possibility that blacks might be anything other than second-rate citizens. Neither their world, nor their upbringing would allow them to do that. They were captives of apartheid. They knew very well that it was to their benefit to keep it going and to protect it. So when the time came for their sons to get conscripted, they had no qualms about it at all.

My brother, 10 years old than me, and not one for any form of conflict, did his duty. I went as a child to his passing out parade. There was lots of marching and lots of guns and lots of canon-firing. He had “done his duty”. After that he went to work as a Charted Accountant and was annually “called up” for camps thereafter, to keep the military machinery turning and his mind focussed on the fight against Communism.

But I was always rather different from him. I have always been told that I am a natural rebel – a charge I do not accept, but it does allow some easy explanation of my actions. It was not that I had come into contact with Communists, or ANC people, or even the white left. My ex-wife, Jane, and I decided to leave the country, when all other options ended, because we were young and because, being young, we could take risks that would not have been possible if we were not.

That was fundamental. We were young. We were rebellious – but not in the extreme. And both of us shared the highly extraordinary idea, that the SADF was not fighting a just, nor a necessary war. And that, fundamentally, apartheid was wrong. I can’t even remember how we arrived at that position, because neither of us were particularly active in politics at university.

I remember being extremely irritated by Guy Burger – now professor of Journalism at Rhodes University – (which is where we were) – because of his grim and unyielding political perspective. I remember fasting for 8 days in a little group, led by my Philosophy lecturer, James Mulder – as a demonstration to Jimmy Kruger (then minister of Police) that Steve Biko could easily have fasted for 8 days and not died – as was being claimed. But that was about it. One or two skirmishes with the police, demonstrating about something or other – but it was all playful, rather than anything in any way serious.

What did have a fairly profound impact on my life was the Church – both in terms of the liturgy and in terms of the kinds of people I met in it at that time. John Suggit, New Testament Professor. Douglas Bax, who taught me Systematic Theology, together with Felicity Edwards. These were not radicals, theologically or otherwise, but they had a mortal integrity which inevitably led to a sense of and a desire for justice. Alongside them, of course, in the higher political realm, were voices like Desmond Tutu and Allan Boesak, both of whom had profound influences on me.

And when we took the decision to leave the country, we knew, for ourselves, that we were crossing a Rubicon, because there would be no going back. I wish, so very much, that more white people could have had that experience. Because I know for myself, that had I stayed behind and gone into the army, and just put up with it, I would know a great deal less now than had I not had that exile experience. It is something for which I am eternally grateful. And I think it was so meaningful and important precisely because I was not enough politically involved prior to leaving. I simply could not have begun to understand anything of what the consequences were going to be on my life and how I would be remoulded because of it.

When I listen to many white people talking today – new and “born again” democrats – who have so much to criticise the present government about, and so many opinions on so many things – I just feel extremely grateful that I had the experience I did have. I do not feel superior. I am, really, anything but self-satisfied. But I can say this without any shadow of a doubt - I feel immensely privileged to have experienced what I did. And sad for those that did not have the same kind of experience.

This is one of the big problems about our so-called “miracle” revolution. There was no re-education of people. So what happened, by and large, is that we all just carried on, basically unchanged. Whites, breathed a sigh of relief and realised that if they just shifted over slightly from their hard fought position of extraordinary privilege, they could carry on fairly undisturbed. At the same time they started the petulance and insistent moaning which has characterised the group, since liberation perched, as they are, on the summit of Mount Integrity.

Blacks, on the other hand, started heading for the trough and their snouts have been firmly buried there ever since. We all erected a smiling, dancing figure of Mandela in the business hub of the country; Desmond Tutu called us the rainbow nation; everything was just hunky dory.

Certain topics became untouchable – like “culture” and “socialism” and intellectual debate got dumbed down so completely, that we have lost any inkling of what it means. American culture and Chinese goods swept through the country. And high levels of crime, even in the highest places, became the accepted norm. Twenty-five years later, that is where we find ourselves. I suppose it could be a lot worse, but it certainly could be a whole lot better.

What were we thinking back then? I know this much. We wanted a country we could all be proud to belong to. We wanted a non-racial and non-sexist country. We wanted a country where we could live without fear and where the poor, especially, were given houses, education, access to health care, jobs, decent living conditions and security. We wanted peace. That is what we wanted.

And have we got these things now? Not enough, is my view. Not enough. And the clock ticks on. And I can only but ask - what if we reach 20 years of democracy and there are still people with no houses, no jobs, no education, no sense of self-worth, because of the terrible toll that corruption, greed and government inefficiency exact? Do we honestly think they will just keep quiet?