Back in the day when you dared someone to a school yard fight you drew a line in the sand and dared them to cross at the risk of a through beating while in actual fact you were lily livered cowards. It didn’t matter how many times that line was breached because you would draw another and another until light faded or your parents came to pick you up from school sparing you further blushes as the champion school yard coward of the day!
Sometimes I’m not sure whether to laugh at religious zealots who follow their religious leaders with puppy dog devotion lapping up all the content spewed at them or to weep at what I would consider their naïveté for signing up for something that they cannot now exit peacefully without being labeled a charlatan somewhat like the school yard bully who keeps drawing lines in the sand while awaiting a tactical time to retreat without losing face.
I recently wrote about religion and it seems that the excesses of that sensitive subject never quite disappear, they only fade away only to resurface at the most inopportune of times. This time we had unwittingly exposed a bishop of a church to ridicule in the eyes of his flock to the chagrin of the lay leadership of the church who couldn’t understand how we could fail to recognize the authority of a whole bishop of the church.
Let me digress a little with a narration of an incident that happened to me many years back. I was in Form 6 and the deputy head boy of a predominantly Asian school in Nairobi. The practice of having an Asian head boy/girl and an African deputy head boy/girl had been part of the tradition in the school to bring in some semblance of inclusivity of the African for a few years and seemed to be working well and this was my year.
One fine day we received an important guest in the school, the Begum Salima the wife to the spiritual head of the millions of Ismailia Muslims across the world his holiness the Aga Khan himself. This event had been preceded by a lot of excitement by the Ismailia students and staff at the school and the mood was palpable and the air pregnant with expectation. As was the tradition the visitor was introduced to the student leadership in the school and I got to solemnly shake her highnesses hand a gesture probably considered blasphemous given that the teachers were swooning all over themselves to bow their heads in supplication and get that all important touch on their heads!
“How could these upstart Africans get to hold hands with royalty” must have been on the thoughts of many because the immediate reaction after she left was for them to approach me to find out how it felt like! Other than being soft to the touch and quite cool her handshake didn’t feel any different from anyone else’s but of course they were having none of that. Didn’t I know that I had been blessed a million times more by that small hand shake than those whose heads had been touched? No I didn’t……..! Would I wash my hands anytime soon? Sure I would to disbelieving gasps from the assembled teachers and students alike who affirmed that they would never wash their hands for the rest of their lives if they were in the same situation that I found myself in. At that moment the fact that I had been blessed by the Aga Khan himself by the simple gesture of a handshake from his wife was lost on me.
Fast forward to today 35 years later! We open a church account for a specific church recently and get all necessary documents including a letter from the Chairman of the Church Central Committee confirming no objection. A few months later all hell breaks loose after an abortive and volatile election of the church where the outgoing committee who happen to be signatories to the account in our books dispute the outcome of the elections and inform the bank accordingly. The next day, another group of people come to the bank armed with a letter from the church and the bishop informing us that they are the new signatories to the account. By whatever definition this is a full blown dispute pitting different factions of a church that I have so far only ever read about in the press.
Now this is a delicate situation by any standards and we need to move fast to retain the banks reputation and more importantly safeguard the money in the account so we freeze the account. No money can be deposited or withdrawn from the account for the time being and then we write an official letter to the church as our client with a copy to the bishop asking that they resolve their issues and then advise us to change signatories with the full knowledge of all factions.
Our letter seemed to be the last straw as a fuming chairman then accuses us of undermining the name of the bishop by subjecting it to ridicule by the congregation of the church that had held the abortive elections with our letter to them asking them to resolve their disputes!
The questions that arise are these. How am I expected to understand the authority of a bishop of a church that I don’t follow? What gives a member of a congregation the right to accuse me of disrespecting the authority of the bishop? Why in the first place have disputes within your church that you cannot manage yet want to drag the name of a bank into internal disputes?
The hierarchical structures in place in any church are an internal matter and should not be confused with the acceptable practices employed in financial establishments where our motives are neither emotional nor dictated by the authority of the highest office in that organisation. Whether the Begum Salima, the Dalai Lama, the Syedna the bishop and so on I should not be expected to kow tow to the faith of the believers and blindly be expected to pay homage and practice reverence when I am in their exalted presence or to instruction in letters written in their exalted hands.
On a similar note I was once phoned by an all-powerful civil servant for daring to subject one of our highly connected clients with a letter of default on his loan facilities and threatening to auction his property. As calmly as my shaking voice could muster I told him that the party had defaulted on his obligations with the bank and I was not at liberty to disclose issues relating to a client of the bank against all my sinews urging me to reveal all and live with the consequences. Thankfully he disconnected the line before my sweaty hands had dropped the handset whereupon I contacted my superiors and informed them of the earth shattering phone call for them to handle.
A well-known and powerful public civil servant contacting a lowly me sitting in my modest office could get me all riled up and standing to attention almost saluting as I responded to his phone call but I still managed to convey the banks position on a sensitive issue so why would a person unknown to me cause me to suffer the same tremens delirium?
The long and the short is that issues relating to a church or congregation should not compel one to insist that others behave the same way to their chosen beholden mami and dadi because religion is a personal choice.
