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Church and State must always talk
By
Our Reporter - 30-10-2002 |
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The meeting yesterday between President Bakili Muluzi and leaders of the General Synod of the CCAP easily invokes memories of the cordial relations between the Church and the State.
Malawi’s history is replete with examples of communities benefiting from the symbiotic relationship between the two sides. Indeed, there are many remote areas in the country which owe their semi-urban status to the Church’s contribution to national development mainly through the provision of schools and hospitals.
Today, many Malawians owe their education to mission schools and, in some areas, the only health centres available were, and maybe still are, owned by one church or the other. People made use of these services without making much fuss about who owned what. This is the ideal situation.
We note with sadness, however, that this relationship is now being threatened by several factors.
The current government fought alongside the Church to bring in democracy and we later saw new players in the name of the non-governmental organisations joining the efforts in uplifting the living standards of the people. But the unity of purpose is now on the wane.
In the last few years we have seen churches making one demand or the other, setting conditions for their institutions or, in the extreme case, resorting to wholly privatising services that were at one time enjoyed by every Malawian without regard to religion. Now faith is a serious issue and a potential threat to our democracy and, more especially, national development.
The current constitutional debate has made a simmering cat-and-mouse relationship between the Church and civil society, on the one hand, and the State, on the other, even worse. This is lamentable.
It did not have to take a visiting delegation to have Church leaders sit down with the President. Examples abound of volatile situations that were solved by swallowing one’s pride and accepting to sit at a round table. It is a give-and-take situation that may involve losing some face but necessary for national development.
We want to urge both sides to seize opportunities like yesterday’s to tackle pertinent issues affecting their common constituency because, after all, the impact of their actions today will outlive the current impasse which is not inevitable. |
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