The clergy and politics (II)
Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Ojeifo Given their public status, the clergy owe the society the duty of championing the demand for a better life and the promotion of peace, justice and equity. To speak about these issues is to delve into the realm of politics, since politics is basically concerned with the proper organisation of society […]
Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Ojeifo
Given their public status, the clergy owe the society the duty of championing the demand for a better life and the promotion of peace, justice and equity. To speak about these issues is to delve into the realm of politics, since politics is basically concerned with the proper organisation of society and how public resources are put at the service of the common good. It is a totally different matter when a clergyman puts his prophetic responsibility to obtuse use in partisanship, or in making prophetic utterances and declarations about political outcomes, and claiming that such prophecies come from God. When it reaches this point, the clergyman has run foul of what his prophetic calling entails. But to insist that on account of their vocational orientation, clergymen should not talk about disturbing public issues, is a backdoor attempt to muzzle the voices of reason and common sense in the public square.
In the history of humanity, religion has played a vital role in political and social development. We only need to re-read our history books to see how much positive impact religion and religious leaders have had on the progress of human and material civilization. A cursory look at the twentieth century presents us with powerful examples of religious leaders such as Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, The Dalai Lama, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Archbishop Oscar Romero, Archbishop Dom Helder Camara, Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer and many others who became the moral consciences of their people. Each one in his or her unique way took the battle of human emancipation from the house of religion to the theatre of society. We cannot choose to venerate the memory of these heroes and heroines and enjoy the benefits of their great accomplishments for humanity, while choosing to ignore the fact that they were men and women who put their faith into active use for the good of their societies.
The lesson, however, for today’s religious leaders is to maintain the healthy separation between the realms of politics and religion. Right from the days of the Biblical prophets, history is replete with pathologies on both sides of the divide. In essence, every society has a duty to guard against the corruption of politics by religion, and the pollution of religion by politics. Those who advocate that religion should be a purely private affair, reduced to the sphere of the personal and lacking a public face, are only seeking to impose the impossible on society, namely the compartmentalisation of life into neat categories of matter and spirit. The temporal concerns of the human person always impact on the spiritual concerns and vice versa. No system can comfortably separate the two without doing irreparable damage to the nature of the human person.
The low level of political morality in Nigeria affects all Nigerians adversely, and those who are clergy, on account of their education and experience, have a greater social and prophetic role to speak out. When Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah was accused by a renowned Nigerian literary genius many years ago for meddling into politics to the detriment of his priestly calling, Kukah replied with a piece published in a Nigerian daily explaining how he sees his priestly calling in the light of Nigeria’s socio-political realities. “I consider myself a public intellectual with a duty to interrogate politics and political behaviour as part of the process of nation building. I am political because I am human, but not a politician because I am a Catholic priest.”In his 18-minute TEDxEuston speech in 2010, Kukah distilled the centre-point of his political anthropology when he said: “My definition of a priest is that it is impossible to be a priest and not be concerned about the social issues of the moment.”
The evangelical witness that Christianity offers in public life is distinctive because it flows from both discipleship and citizenship and reflects that rich tradition of ethical thinking about public affairs, which touches the moral bedrock of society, and has been part of Christianity since biblical times. In doing this, Christian clergy and members have to take politics seriously because the goal of politics is the promotion of peace and justice. While it is the principal responsible of Christian disciples of today to bring the unchanging values of the Gospel and the perennial treasure of Christian social thought into the culture, the economy and the political community, the members of the clergy have the important role of teaching, conscientizing, mobilizing, inspiring and encouraging the faithful to take the socio-political dimension of their Christian faith seriously.
Properly catechized, formed and informed lay Christians are the church’s principal agents of transformation in public life. Only when these foot soldiers are properly mobilised can the church effectively champion the cause of restoring sanity to the socio-political order in Nigeria. Sadly, for many years, we seem to be breeding a generation of Christians who have avoided politics like a plague under the guise that politics is a dirty game. We have to work to change this attitude. As Pope Francis once said, “Involvement in politics is an obligation for the Christian. We Christians cannot ‘play the role of Pilate’, washing our hands off it; we cannot. We must be involved in politics because politics is one of the highest forms of charity, for it seeks the common good.” If politics has become dirty, Pope Francis continued, it is because Christians who are involved in politics have failed to enter into it “with an evangelical spirit.” We cannot effect the potentially transformative contribution that the church has to make in the political arena when we do not encourage and mobilise Christians to take politics as a religious duty.
Christians of today need to know that active involvement in politics can be turned into a very high instrument of personal sanctification, especially when their participation in politics promotes the common good and contributes to the establishment of God’s kingdom of justice, love and peace here on earth. In addition to this, Christian leaders in Nigeria have to move beyond merely issuing statements of political expediency only when the need arises. The perennial value of Christian social teaching lies in its capacity for long-term moral clarification of disturbing public issues. Religious leaders should reclaim their duty as teachers of faith to their people. Their credibility as teachers will give the moral framework proposed by Christian social doctrine a chance to be heard and received by the people of the church and by the general public.
Again, if Gospel truths and the moral reasoning that inform Christian social thought are to be brought to bear on questions of first principles in the society, those responsible for the church’s public witness must restrategize and redeploy their resources. If the only things that many public officials understand are money and power, then Christian public policy advocates must focus intensified energy on educating and mobilising Christians, so that the people of the church are capable of bringing real pressure to bear on political leaders. I believe that a major factor responsible for the poor Christian turnout in public life is that many Christians in politics do not enjoy the support of their religious bodies.
Consequently, we have had many Christians in politics that identify with the church only when it is politically expedient for the furtherance of their political ambitions. For these politicians, Christianity is more or less a religion of political convenience. We must work to change this attitude. Christian leaders must devise new ways and methods of providing spiritual care for their members in public life. In this way, Christian politicians can count on the support of the Christian community in furthering the common good, which is at the heart of their public Christian witness. In the end, the whole concern is to help Christian politicians of today to give their task and their work a Christian hallmark and to permeate their political vocation with an evangelical countenance.
Father Ojeifo is a priest of the Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja.