Dear Kingsland,
All the very best to the church in 2009, a year with some new challenges
for you, as well as old ones – and then there are the ones God ‘bounces’ on us,
if we dare to think we have the future sewn up!
I spent my precious 2 weeks winter holiday with a serious lung infection
and yet more massive doses of antibiotics which has been the pattern for the
last few months. Thank God for much improved hospitals and their facilities
(the previous ones were a bit frightening) and an excellent couple of Christian
British GPs with 10 years experience in Bangladesh who are now in a clinic
in the capital. They and a CT scan of my lungs, informed me that the state of
my lungs was not a 'time to retire from Bangladesh, Angela!" matter so I
mop my brow and can keep going for another year or two, God willing.
At last the Church of Bangladesh has formed a committee to look at my
idea of founding a new church in the diplomatic, foreigner and ‘rich’ zone in North Dhaka (although the poor live in
all available corners here too so we are never entirely separated….) This area
was only developed since independence (1971) and so lacks the old-fashioned ‘Anglican
chaplaincy’ and, in fact, there is no congregation for the traditional
Christian 'middlies' (ie between the Roman Catholics and the more extreme
Evangelicals) to go, including the foreigners who come and work here for a year
or two. This is a totally revolutionary idea for the COB as they are focussed
(as are their donors) on being the 'church for the poor' - which is fine except
that it is the behaviour of the rising middle and upper classes (and the
government, particularly the corruption, including, it has emerged, the
stealing of building materials donated for the poor….) – not to mention their devotion to consumerism!
- which is a major reason for many of the problems of poverty in Bangladesh. Interestingly,
many foreign organisations, missions and donors are not allowed to do any work,
especially in education, except for the poorest of the poor. No breath of
criticism must come near 'the rich'. Moreover, too many Christians have
absorbed one of the dictums of materialism – that those with money do not have
any needs and, if they have, they can be ‘self-supporting’! Yer what?
The church has to be the church for everyone and 'being poor' can
include having lots of money in your pocket but no attitudes, life-style or
morals that stand any inspection at all! The church here does not seem to have woken
up to what the Victorian Churches knew too well - that when people come from
poverty, get some education and enter the workforce, they have to be taught how
to behave so they do not become part of the problem rather than part of the
solution by bringing all sorts of shady practices to their new environment or follow
the bad values that are already there! I think of how both my grandparents came
from nothing in Victorian times but came via the church which did a terrific
job teaching its members what behaviour the upwardly mobile had to practice. I
sometimes glare at the rich kids I teach and ask, “If the middle class and rich
do not behave properly, how do you expect the poor to behave?”
Bangladesh has been holding its breath over the General Election which
we had on December 29th. Thank God it went off peacefully and almost
without corruption although we are not home and dry until the Bangladesh
National Party, who were almost wiped out by the Awami League, graciously
accepts defeat and agrees to work with the new government - which would be
unprecedented. (The usual pattern is that the Opposition refuses to take its
seats in Parliament and takes to the streets with endless life-stopping strikes
in which the odd person gets killed……The schools have to close, of course…) The
two women who head up both parties have a long-term hatred for one another…..
The Caretaker Government that took over in January 2007 (because it
looked as though the Gen El. planned then would be a walk-over for the BNP
because they had sewn everything up) did a terrific job (apart from imprisoning
both previous Prime Ministers and many of their leading politicians and
uncovering God knows what) cleaning up the voting list and giving everyone a
computerised voter ID .12.7 million ‘false’ voters’ names were wiped off
the list! (It could only happen in Bangladesh!) 32 % were new voters and over
50% were women! 85% voted in a climate (generally) of joy and responsibility
and despite huge sums of money available for bribing voters, the considerable
presence of soldiers and policeman at voting centres ensured the most ‘free and
fair’ election Bangladesh has ever had.
Several of the candidates of both major parties were not allowed to
stand because they had been charged with offences, imprisoned, produced false
income tax numbers or had vast possessions that they could not answer for!
Many of such who did stand were not voted for as the idea took root in
some voters that one is able to vote for the candidate whose character one
trusts rather than the political party that one belongs to - or that gives one
a few pence to march in their demonstrations or threatens one if one does not.
Quite a new idea!
The great relief is not least because the BNP has been allied to one of
the Islaamic parties which has some very unsavoury characters and policies,
linked to like-minded people in other Muslim countries that sent huge sums of
money for bribing voters. This seems to have had little effect as only two of their candidates became
MPs instead of the 38 they had in the previous government. Bangladeshis voters
seem to have said a very firm ‘yes’ to the separation of politics and religion
– which is how they define ‘secularism’ here, one of the policies on which the
Liberation War was fought but which has crept back in the form of ‘religious’
political parties which, in Islam, get up to all sorts of stuff including
assassination and bomb outrages. (At last, those who threw a bomb at the last
British High Commissioner – Bangaldeshi-born - in 2005 have been brought to
trial and found guilty. The guilty were being protected!) Besides, such parties
always carry the danger of seeming to define, in political terms, what it means
to be ‘religious’. I remember when lots of keen Christians came out of their
Pietism in the 1970s, wanted to get involved in politics and, thank God, found
Christian organisations (like the Jubilee Centre and Care) who firmly advised us
to ‘join the political party of your choice and be active in it’. This spared
the UK from the difficulties the USA got into when so many Christians of that
generation allied themselves with the Republican Party …………
Anyway, there is huge relief here – and God bless Bangladesh!
My love and greetings to you all. I pray for Kingsland every Thursday,
having a photo of Neil in my ‘Intercessions’ folder to remind me!
Angela
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