Valentine's Day Sermon

So, the 14th of February is the day of love, St. Valentine's Day. No one really knows who St. Valentine really was, or if he was particularly into love, but, somehow, we've wound up with St. Valentine's Day, and it's good. Chocolate sales go way up, florists rake in money (check out the difference in Rose prices between Feb 13 and Feb 15) and lots of people take advantage of the day and propose to their romantic partners (in fact, I heard someone proposed today, right in the middle of a church service..which I think is risky, unless you are 100% sure she's gonna say yes..still then, it's very inappropriate I think, but that's just me)

This year's Valentine's Day happened to land on a Sunday, so the sermon should have been about romantic love, or at least some sort of love in the Bible (you'd think)

WRONG!

we went Old Testament today, the book of Judges to be exact, and read about the awesome warrior that was Samson, and how he killed a thousand Philistines with a donkey's jawbone, and all he said after was "I'm Thirsty".....he even had time to compose a witty poem after slaying them:

"With a donkey's jawbone

I have made donkeys of them.

With a donkey's jawbone

I have killed a thousand men."

Samson was the perfect action hero. The sermon was a lot more serious than I portray, and it was mainly about being a Christian in a world that is not just increasingly anti-Christian, but anti-religious in general, and one part of the sermon that struck me was "If the current's against me, I know I'm going the right way"

So where was I? well, yeah..it's Valentine's Day, couple's are all loved up, and the vicar is talking about Samson smiting people, in fact, in terms of love and relationship, the passage is quite dire, Samson's wife is given to some other dude by her dad, who then offers Samson his wife's younger sister, saying "Is not her younger sister better than she? Please, take her instead.” (a very stupid statement in hindsight*) Samson doesn't take the loss of his wife well, and proceeds to burn the Philistine (his wife was a Philistine) farms in the most ingenious way ever...get this, he ties torches to the tails of three hundred foxes and let them loose on the farms! (we don't know what happened to the foxes, but my guess was that it wasn't a happy ending)...okay, back to his wife, the Philistines are not to happy with their burnt farms, so they burn Samson's wife and her father (as you do)...on the whole, not very Valentiny.

So, here ends my first blog of February, expect another really soon.

Shalom

*well he died, so he doesn't really have hindsight anymore

Dreaming of a White Christmas: The Awkwardness of European notions of Christmas in a Nigerian Setting

I remember when I was about 14, sitting around with some American friends (in school in the Netherlands) discussing Christmas, one of them asked another at what age they stopped believing in Santa Claus. I was taken aback, was this some kind of joke, did people actually believe in Santa Claus. Did kids grow up thinking that a fat guy actually could fit into their chimney unnoticed and leave gifts? I found it unbelievable that at any age, someone would believe such a fantastical story, but I guess I had no idea about the cult of Santa Claus in the west, particularly in America.

See, I grew up in Nigeria, and Santa Claus, or Father Christmas as we call him is well known there, he adorns Christmas cards and Christmas decorations and can be seen all over TV adverts during Christmas time. But as a child I knew of no one like me who actually believed Father Christmas was real, real in the sense that it was he not your parents who delivered your gifts on Christmas day.

Although during Christmas time we were saturated with images of this foreign benevolent gift distributor we just could not identify with him on many levels. Not only is the idea of a white man dressed in winter clothes in the sweltering heat of Nigeria quite strange, but all the iconic apparatus that supported the myth of Santa Claus were very unfamiliar to us, we had no concept of what a chimney was, or mistletoe, or snow, sleighs or even reindeers. All these things were apparently common in Europe and America but they were and are alien to us, and it happened that during Christmas we threw out our cultures and traditions and adopted this strange fitting idea of a ‘White Christmas’ with mistletoe, pine trees, snow and eggnog, for a brief period in the year we were European, we were like those people on the TV with their knitted cardigans around the fireplace. The feeling I have is that we as a culture felt it was impossible to have an authentic Nigerian Christmas.

And this feeling of ‘White is Right’ was subconsciously ingrained into my little-head when I was young. My dad worked at an international agricultural agency, and so he had many colleagues from Europe and North America. At the annual Christmas party, one of his white colleagues was the Santa Claus for the day, and it felt right as a kid, for this white costumed man corresponded with the white Santa Claus from the Coca-Cola adverts and Christmas cards. I remember quite clearly as a kid feeling some sort of superiority over my friends who did not enjoy this ‘white privilege’ and thus had to endure a counterfeit ‘Black Santa Claus’, through a complex media and commercial machinery I had been indoctrinated that Santa Claus could only be white, and any other depiction was vulgar and illegitimate.

And I think to a large extent, these things are still true in Nigeria and other parts of the non-white Christian world today. It’s beautiful to see how other cultures have adapted and adjusted Christian practices to fit their respective cultures. There was once a point when exuberant singing and dancing was frowned upon in Anglican churches in West Africa, now you’d be hard pressed to walk into any Anglican church where dancing and jubilant singing is not part of the service.

This ownership of the Christian religion should also apply to Christian festivals that now have a larger secular meaning; we can create a genuinely Nigerian Christmas without having to borrow strange customs from the west. It’s about time we put our own unique stamp on Christmas.

On Thomas Jefferson and America as a Christian nation

Is America a Christian nation? That is another question that is preoccuping the American media since Barack Obama returnded from his tour of Europe. While in Turkey, Obama said that although most Americans were Christians, there are also sizeable communities of Jews, Muslims etc. He stated that America does not consider itself a Christian nation, nor a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation, they are a nation bound by common ideals.
Of course, Fox News considered this statement tantamount to treason How dare he misrepresnt us like that? How dare he say that? The usual Anti-Obama vitriol flowed from the likes of Hannity and Rove.
I wonder what Madeleine Albright or Henry Kissenger would say about this idea of America as a Christian nation, two very prominent Americans, two former Secretaries of State, both Jewsih. Of course the anti-Obamans are quick to point out the term 'Judeo-Christian' they say America was created on Judeo-Christian values.
I have two points, the first one is about this concept of Christian values, no such concept exists, Christianity is not a uniform religion, it has been and is been interpreted in very many different ways. The complexity of what Christianity is is evidenced by the myriad of denominations that exist, with many denominations in stark contrast with each other. So what is a Christian nation then, if some say America is a Christian nation, then what about the Philippines, where 90% of the population is Christian, the values of these countries should be identical if they are found on this so called Christian values. Of course one can have the argument that the Philippines is a Catholic nation, and yes that argument holds water, so it would seem that in order to claim a state religion, the wide umbrella of Christianity needs to be fractionalized into denomintions. So is America an Episcopalian country, or a Baptist nation, or Methodist or Seventh Day Adventist.
The many ways in which Jesus Christ's words are interpreted make the concept of Christianity a very contentious one, yes the hatred and violence between Protestant and Catholic has reduced over the centuries but still one would accuse the other for not being Christian. When we add Mormonism and Jehovah's Witness and various strands of Pentecostalism, the issue of what exactly Christianity is becomes even more complex.
This brings me to Thomas Jefferson, one of the most revered American statesmen, a founding father of the great nation, his face graces the very rare 2 dollar bill.
He is still quoted today by many American politicians. He authored the Declaration of Independence, arguably the most important document in American history. The words on that document have framed American civic life and made it the unique country it is today, so this, and The Bill of Rights, authored by Jefferson's protégé James Madison, must be the source of the so-called Judeo-Christian values.
But a simple study of Thomas Jefferson would reveal his interesting brand of Christianity. Thomas Jefferson, unhappy with the divine Jesus, set about to write his own bible, removing all of Jesus' miracles and supernatural events during his life, claiming that these events were added by the authors of the gospels.
My point is that Jefferson saw Jesus Christ merely as a great philosopher, not as God as 'Christians' should believe. Yet despite his views, views that no self respecting Christian American politician today dare have, he is still revered today, and his Declaration of Independence is deeply cherished, and widely quoted.
The philosophy on which America is built does not stem from a religion, research tells us that most of Americans founding fathers were Deists and not Christians. It is a philosophy based on freedom and equality, a philosophy that was strengthened during the American struggle against Britsh Aristocracy and Monarchy.
While it is a fact that most Americans are Christians, and unlike in many European countries faith plays a prominent role in American political life, it is simply illogical to use those facts to claim that America is a Christian nation.

America is a Godly nation, however, would be a more truthful statement.

Nous avons confiance en Dieu