Mainline Christianity: Key development partner

Stanely Mushava Features Correspondent
Zimbabwe maintains the middle wall between church and state but the two bodies share a sustained development partnership.

Mainline churches, involved in community interventions such as health care and educational work since the missionary beginnings, have extended their development initiatives further afield.

The denominations have stood up to new challenges corresponding such as HIV/AIDS and the socially corrosive downgrading of the family institution. They have also provided relief services in response to adverse phenomena such as the current food shortages.

In recent times, some mainline denominations have been weaned from financial support by their mother institutions, with several instances concurring with Zimbabwe’s economic downturn.

However, there are no indications that their missionary commitments have run dry, with some churches opening missions and scaling up their educational work to the tertiary level.

The Herald Review speaks to main players on the front for an inside picture of their community work in an evolving setting. Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops Conference (ZCBC) secretary general Father Fradereck Chiromba said his denomination remains informed by the missionary mandate.

“We continue with the same work today, from small beginnings to the current situation where our development institutions are spread throughout the country,” Father Chiromba said.

“The church complements the work of Government in the provision of health care and education apart from rendering various other social services,” he said.

The Catholic Church runs several mission schools in every province, some of which are the most academically competitive in the country.

Its mission hospitals also provide much-needed health services in rural areas, often from strategically situated points.

While the services of mainline churches are paid for, and in the cases where only boarding places are offered, seen as marginalising poor host communities, the denominations are making up for the contradiction with charity initiatives.

“Some of the services under education include catch-up education for disadvantaged youths, skills training, rehabilitation, promoting child protection, school feeding and production of education materials,” Chiromba told The Herald Review.

The ZCBC acknowledges the development partnership between churches and the Government that has made key services accessible to most rural communities.

“Under health, the church runs its own fully fledged hospitals and clinics. However, salaries for both teaching staff and medical staff are paid by Government.

“There is close collaboration between church and state in serving the people. The church interacts continuously with the ministries of education and health,” he said.

Churches have been involved in food aid and used to maintain food banks for utilisation in times of shortage. Recent assessments by Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZimVAC) revealed that 2,82 million Zimbabweans, equivalent to one third of the country’s rural population, are food-insecure as the cropping season was jeopardised by the most debilitating El Nino in years.

Both the Zimbabwean Government and the Southern Africa Development Community have declared and drought and opened their doors relief services.

In the sub-region, 28 million did not have enough food to eat as at the close of 2015 and the outlook is bleak as most crops have already failed. ZCBC has responded to the call according to its own means. The Catholic Church normally responds to droughts through its relief arm, Caritas Zimbabwe

The relief arm addresses issues to do with food security, water and sanitation, livelihoods, emergency responses, developmental programmes and income-generating projects.

“In the current drought situation, the church is mobilising funds and food relief for needy communities,” Chiromba said.

“In the face of emerging challenges such as climate change, Pope Francis published a document in 2015 on ‘Care for Our Common Home.’ The document describes how everything depends on the other and urges humanity to take care of the environment,” he said.

“Man is the main culprit in the worsening climate change and can be the main agent in reversing or at least slowing it down. The local church is raising awareness of climate change within the communities and how to mitigate it.

“The church is seeking to promote the construction of dams for irrigation given the current erratic rains,” he said.

There have been significant changes from the missionary beginnings to the present. HIV/AIDS, the downgrade of the family institution and debilitating effects of drug abuse among the youths which have come at a heavy social cost.

“The challenges of the times are the challenges of the church. Youths are the future of any society and the church pays special attention to them through its schools and youth associations,” Chiromba said.

“The HIV/AIDS pandemic has been handled through raising awareness in schools, churches and mission hospitals,” he said.

Mainline denominations are mostly headquartered outside Zimbabwe and several of them have been weaned from the funding by their mother organisations.

In the new dispensation, they are but are instead expected to take care of their own needs including sustenance of the clergy and missionary work.

Chiromba said the Catholic Church sources funds for its missionary work both locally and universally, but adheres to the principle of a self-supporting, self-ministering and self-propagating church.

“The Catholic Church in Zimbabwe is still in the transitional period in terms of funding, which has been worsened by our national economic environment. Whereas most urban parishes may be self-supporting, the rural parishes are still dependent,” he said.

“Most of the faithful are not in formal employment and most struggle for their sustenance. Fortunately, the Catholic clergy are celibate and are not on a salary but voluntarily offer themselves to the service of the people. This minimises costs and helps channel all resources to the neediest communities,” Chiromba said.

The exponential rise in new denominations, a boon for evangelistic outreach, has brought with it burning controversies on how much is handled and where it stands in the order of doctrine.

Young churches do not share the missionary orientation of their mainline counterparts and appear bent on squeezing members to fatten pastors.

Chiromba said the Catholic Church collaborates with mainline churches and emerging denominations without compromising its doctrine.

“The Catholic Church is concerned where people are manipulated financially or otherwise in the name of God. The church tries to raise awareness among potential victims through its civic and public education efforts,” he said.

Chiromba said the church is currently engaged in promoting the well-being of families, following the recent publication of the post-synodal apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis, ‘The Joy of Love.’

“It is also ‘The Year of Mercy’ and this comes at a good time for Zimbabwe, where the Commission for National Peace and Reconciliation has just been instituted,” he said.

In an earlier interview for these columns, University of Zimbabwe (UZ) church historian Dr Munetsi Ruziva said Christian denominations have a long-standing commitment to improve the society in which they operate.

“Churches run more orphanages than Government and receive subsidies for their charity work from the latter. The two have always been development partners in Zimbabwe, beginning in colonial times,” Dr Ruziva said.

“Because Protestants are more organised and more established, they do their work at community level and also lobby for social justice to address issues of poverty and social injustice at a broader level,” he said.

“With mainline denominations you have the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCBC) and the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops Conference (ZCBC) speaking out on matters of justice for the poor and the vulnerable but such a task takes the kind of organisation which the new preachers currently lack,” he said.

The new preachers, however, are also awake to the challenge and organisations like the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe (EFZ) and the Council of African Apostles (CAA) are taking a holistic approach to positive social change. In all, Dr Ruziva argues that no sectarian commitment is to be preferred over the other as their works feed into and complement each other.

UZ Old Testament scholar Dr Obvious Vengeyi said Christ’s ministry is consistent with the Old Testament tradition of divine intervention for the disadvantaged as evidenced by His pro-poor teachings and the miracle accounts. Dr Vengeyi is, however, critical of the profit motive by which missionary work is sometimes executed, saying it is a deviation from the biblically demonstrated prophetic mandate.

“We commend the church for being socially involved, for their work in health care and education, but why is it that profit seems to be the basis of otherwise great initiatives?” he said.

“Some church-run universities are more expensive than state universities. Africa University and Solusi University, for example, are elite universities. What you have in the end are Christian services which are out of the reach of the majority, only accessible to a minority. This is a deviation,” Dr Vengeyi said.

The development partnership between the church and the state merits credit for some of the most enduring accomplishments such as literacy and rural health care and emerging churches would do well to make this a central part of their operations.

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