|
raising their children and should be more responsible with their plentiful resources.
He praised the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly for its vote last year to initiate limited divestment from companies profiting from the violence in Israel/Palestine — but criticized the invasion and occupation of Iraq and other U.S. responses to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Masango praised the PC(USA) for its decision “to divest from Jerusalem,” which he said “is destroying God’s people.” He said the Assembly’s action and the resulting criticism from some American Jews and conservative Presbyterians “at least made the ‘frozen chosen’ start talking truthfully” about the situation.
“What if you were a Middle Eastern father or mother, and your home was about to be bulldozed, or perhaps your children killed? Are their names in your hearts?” Masango asked. “It was divestment that helped South Africa be free. It was this church that helped us to be free.
“I have come to thank you.”
Masango is a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has worked to heal the scars caused by apartheid in South Africa.
Regarding the invasion of Iraq, he asked Americans to stop accepting what they are told to believe, without seeking out the facts.
“If Iraq were selling oranges, the United States would not have gone in there, “ he said, suggesting that the reason for the invasion is that “you use 60 percent of the world’s oil.”
Masango, who is a minister and a past moderator of the Presbyterian Church of South Africa, said he was in Geneva, Switzerland, with the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, the stated clerk of the General Assembly, on Sept. 11, 2001, attending a World Council of Churches event.
“When the towers fell, tears were running down our faces,” Masango said. “I called home and called the moderator of our church. I asked him to send two of our folks to go and weep with Presbyterian Church in the U.S. — two mothers who lost children in the bad days. But the U.S. embassy would not give them visas. So we called for our church to weep for you from home.
“When the towers fell down, the whole Christian church fell down, for there were human beings in there.”
The invasion of Iraq was not the correct response to the terrorist attacks, he said.
“Is it possible to see Jesus in your enemy?” he asked. “ What type of prayers did you say for your children when they went to Iraq? ‘Help them to destroy the terrorists? And help us recover the oil?’”
“In Iraq they pray to get rid of the Americans,” he aid.
The God of all who hears these prayers “loves humanity and hurts when people hurt,” said Masango.
“You are ruled by fear,” he said. “I understand you have to be safe, but teach your sons and daughters ... to love the people of God. ... Not everybody is a terrorist.”
When his life was in danger in South Africa, American Presbyterians helped get Masango out of his native land and bring him to the United States, where he studied at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA.
“I love you. You have made me what I am,” he said. “I would have been killed. You educated me, you loved me and you healed me to love God's people. My duty, however, is that we should stand and talk about the emperor who is naked.”
Regarding the raising of children, he noted the strength of his own extended family: “The only way that we survived the oppression of apartheid was that our parents taught us how to pray.”
However, “in America the family is collapsing,” he said, and parents are letting the children be raised by television — “No wonder they behave like wild animals.”
He also said Americans waste resources held precious by people elsewhere. “You are a blessed country, but are careless one,” he said. “You feed the garbage can more than you feed the people.”
John Sniffen is associate editor of Presbyterians Today magazine. |
