Postcard from Kampala: Observations on public Christianity

We have now been in Kampala for six Sundays and have been struck by the numbers attending the churches we have visited here. Apparently most churches, at least in the city, are very large - a congregation of as few as 100 in one sitting would be very rare. Hundreds, if not thousands, attending in the one day is quite a normal scenario. As a result, many churches run multiple services back-to-back throughout the day and sometimes also on Saturday night. We experienced for the first time the need to arrive early enough to a Sunday service to get a seat inside, and queuing up outside while the previous service finished! This creates a bit of a 'revolving door' feel - once the service is over, you need to leave as soon as possible so the next lot of people can come in - so it's quite difficult to get opportunities to meet and talk to people before or after the service. The after-church morning tea or supper we are used to in Sydney would be logistically and financially impossible with the numbers here! One church we have been to here might have 20,000 people attending over once weekend (Saturday night and 5 Sunday services)! As with large churches we know of in Sydney, these churches operate on a 'cell-based' structure, where people meet in smaller groups during the week, and this is how you get to know people and become part of a family of fellowship.

The atmosphere here is very different from that of Australia, where Christianity has been marginalised from the public sphere over the last few decades, especially in academia. In contrast, I have heard of lecturers here praying aloud at the beginning and end of each lecture to commit the time to God and ask for his help with the teaching and learning of the content. If I did anything like that in Australia I would likely be thrown out of the university! Here, you hardly have to convince anyone that there is a God - this is a widely acknowledged fact of life, from the city to the smallest village. The difference is in which God, god/s or spirit/s people worship.

Uganda is statistically 84% Christian, about half of which is Protestant and half Catholic. I gather that this total includes a degree of 'nominalism' (as it does in Australia) and also a degree of mixing Christianity with traditional tribal religions and ancestor worship. But, whether sincere or not, the language of faith is everywhere: from the taxi-buses that hurtle around the city with slogans such as 'God's Blessing' or 'Jesus Saves' emblazoned across the windscreen, to the Bible verses on the majority of greeting cards that you find for sale, to the way many people greet each other saying 'Praise the Lord' or 'God bless you'.

Interestingly, although only a small percentage are Muslim, some Muslim festivals are marked as public holidays (such as Idd, which was celebrated last Friday) - apparently this is a legacy of the dictatorship of Idi Amin (in office 1971-1979), who was of the Muslim faith. The majority who are not Muslim are not averse to the extra public holiday, though! It caused me to reflect on what might happen if, as the Muslim population of Australia increases, a suggestion were put forward to make some Muslim festivals public holidays. I imagine there would be considerable resistance.

Soundbites and cliches (part 2)

Last week I wrote some thoughts about the unhelpful effect of media ‘soundbites’ or uses of labels in un-thought-through ways. Referring to the perpetrator of the Norwegian bombing and shootings as a ‘Christian’ in early reports added to the public misunderstanding of what Christianity is actually all about (and see this article for a comparison with the effect of 9/11 on the public perception of Muslims). It also left its legacy of giving religion sceptics a foothold to say ‘well, see? It’s not just Islam that makes people violent – it’s all religions!’ In fact, you can take religion out of the equation and it turns out that people are often just inclined to be violent and treat one another badly (compare obvious examples such as Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao). But I digress...

I recently rewatched some episodes of ‘The Vicar of Dibley’, which I remember enjoying watching with my family when I was younger. Now I find it rather cringe-worthy, not just in terms of the humour that often descends into the slapstick, but in terms of the way the Dibley church (including church services, the Vicar’s conduct, relationships between parishioners, and lack of knowledge of the Bible) is presented. Obviously it’s a fictional church, and the characters and storylines are designed to be humorous, but it makes me wonder why that would be considered legitimately humorous material. Fiction or not, it’s no laughing matter when people who are supposed to be followers of Jesus behave like that.

But what I think is most unhelpful, in terms of the public understanding of Christianity, is that the mismatch of the characters and storylines with biblical Christianity is not being pointed out as something funny or strange in itself. I think viewers (particularly British viewers) are supposed to feel like that community is perhaps not far from their experience at all, and so the humour comes from the caricature of people you might almost have met before or could imagine in small village life. That is, there is supposed to be a degree of closeness to reality in it to make the humour work. And because the viewers are supposed to feel like that is what village church life is like (with some exaggeration), it plants untrue and unhelpful ideas about what the life in the church of Christ is like. A much more helpful picture of church can be discovered in the pages of the Bible (especially Acts 2:42-47, 1 Corinthians, 1 Timothy 3-4), but few seem willing to discover it for themselves.

Currently, Australian comedian Judith Lucy is appearing in a series called ‘Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey’ which I haven’t seen yet (and it’s on the wrong night for me to be able to watch it) but I don’t anticipate that her treatment of Christianity will be any more helpful to those who might seriously want to know. I don’t doubt Lucy’s personal sincerity in wanting to discover the answers to her questions “Why are we here? What happens when we die? How do you find a reason to get out of bed in the morning”, but given that her spiritual journey has been produced as a television program, I can’t help but be cynical about how the religions will be presented and how much value that will have for public understanding. Entertainment, yes, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with entertainment. But entertainment based on religious exploration by those who are not in a position to properly understand or accurately present the crucial features requires critical viewing, which I fear is lacking to a large extent.