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Dr Masimba Mavaza
Across denominations, churches serve as a liminal space between the secular and sacred; they embody religious practices and eternal symbols while operating.
Being a Christian in the diaspora exposes the entanglements foreign churches have with local churches.
Many Zimbabweans are shocked by the way God is worshipped in England and if he is worshipped at all.
John Matereke, a devout Methodist member from Luton, was shocked when the church reverend told him that his preaching was too loud.
He said that “it felt like you were shouting at the congregation”. The Zimbabwean type of preaching which is more shouting is viewed as aggressive and frowned upon.
The whole congregation of the Zimbabwean Anglican Church in Burrypark, Luton, were asked to vacate a church building because their loud singing was disturbing peace. The drum-beating deacons and jumping dancers were told to stop the “insanity”.
This is actually the way of worship in Zimbabwe, but obviously frowned upon by the English church goers who are the founders of the Anglican Church which is known as Church of England.
The Church of England is headed by the King deputised by the Archbishop of Canterbury. They have not seen the exuberance exhibited by their fellow African Anglican dancing worshippers.
The police had to be called in Nottingham at another Pentecostal church when its members started talking in tongues.
The noise shook the neighbourhood who thought that a war was underway in the building. Armed officers surrounded the church and burst inside only to see genuinely crying worshippers.
The method of worship in Zimbabwe is more aggressive, said James Mandel of Manchester United Kingdom.
Ngoni Matarire of Croydon was arrested by armed officers when passersby reported an armed white gowned man talking to himself. They were so sure the man was angry and could attack anyone at anytime.
The poor man was arrested and only released after a gruelling unholy three hours.
Never Matemera, a bus driver in Wales, was arrested by armed officers and referred to a psychiatric ward after he started his prayers over lunch.
He prayed using a knife which he was thrusting in the air as the custom with Nguwo Tsvuku apostolic sect.
He was released and slapped with a charge of carrying a dangerous weapon in public. This was accompanied with a suspension from his work for endangering the passengers.
The Johanne Marange sect was requested to leave their worshipping tools like tsvimbo at home as it was a potential weapon.
The exuberant worshipping endeavours we are used in Zimbabwe is clearly regarded as dangerous worship.
In Corby, the Johanne Mazowe weChishanu were ordered to stop worshipping in the park as there were no public toilets.
While the police enforce using buildings as a place for worship, the weather itself instructs them otherwise. It will be so called and worshipping in the mountain will be suicide.
Perkins Gombedza, a Seventh Day Adventist was warned to stop harassment of citizens by conducting door-to- door witnessing.
The ways of worshipping are so different that they lean on the side of harassment.
The bible says Jesus responded to Pilate saying: “My kingdom is not of this world…[it] is from another place” (John 18:36).
In this way, he drew a clear boundary between the divine (spiritual) and the worldly (political) realms of existence, highlighting their different character: the first as qualitatively superior to the second, for it is linked to the ultimate criterion and state of truth.
Christian churches, however, despite their self-perception as godly institutions of an eschatological orientation, are historical products.
What is more, in the course of history, they have developed and established themselves as major structures of this world.
The most obvious implication is that they must unavoidably relate to the various domains of the world (e.g. politics, economics, culture), even when they theologically reject, accept or attempt to transform them according to Christian principles and values.
This fact places significant pressure on them; the greatest challenge is finding an appropriate balance between the realm of transcendence, which stands at the core of their identity, and the urgent necessities of the existing social order, avoiding the danger of a total identification with the latter.
However, the boundary between ‘positive’ world-engagement and ‘negative’ worldliness (commonly associated with secularization) is not always easy to identify or maintain,” said Professor Kaderere, of one of the highest university in the UK.
This becomes more evident when churches adopt methods and strategies of the contemporary broader social environment in order to disseminate more effectively their own message and increase their members.
The difficult part arises from the fact that these ‘tools’ and practices are not neutral.
On the contrary, they are closely intertwined with secular, pragmatic, and individualistic ideas and values (e.g. market ones), which are in opposition to the religious, metaphysical, and holistic beliefs and values of the ecclesiastical organisations (e.g. salvation, eternal life, temperance, repentance, personal relationships based on love, philanthropy, and solidarity), commented Michael Matema a lecturer at a university in Bedford.
Although the challenge of worldliness mostly concerns Western Christianity, particularly in its Evangelical forms, it is not unknown for orthodox Christianity too.
This should come as no surprise, since orthodox churches participate actively in the modern world and are also affected by the socio-economic transformations of the latter.
Two illustrative cases are the development of profitable religious tourism by orthodox churches and modernisation that is presently occurring in the monastic community of Mount Athos; contrary to what might have been expected from such traditional monasteries, they use modern technology to digitize their cultural heritage and provide their various monastery products for online selling.
However, for the orthodox world, it is the identification with the nation-state that poses the greatest threat to its liturgical and mystical spirituality.
As it is well-known, Zimbabweans in the diaspora find in Orthodoxy a significant means of creating and preserving a sense of spiritual identity.
This is an embedded self-image that mutatis mutandis places the nation as another ‘holy entity’ next to that of the religious sacred.
Here, religious transcendence is not pushed into the margins because of accommodations of the churches to the worldly spirit of the time (secularization, modernization, etc.), but it acquires a Siamese twin that has the same holy blood, namely the nation.
As both kinds of the sacred result from and serve the same collectivity to which they refer to, their entanglement can be functional – and actually, it has been in specific historical periods, for example, the Greek case in the context of the 19th and early 20th century nationalism is a prime example) Christianity.
On the other side, the national character of the Orthodox Churches comes under severe criticism especially from actors in Western multicultural societies, who wish Orthodox Churches and theology to become more open.
It is hard to be a Christian from Zimbabwe in the diaspora. Most people have been disappointed when they realise that the ways they were using to pray as being viewed as satanic.
Online Reporter