The Martyrs of Uganda

Yesterday was the feast day for the Martyrs of Uganda according to the Episcopal Church calendar of saints. I hadn't realized that until I arrived at church early yesterday morning to prepare for our 7 am Eucharist. Seemed awfully convenient for that one to pop up on my first Wednesday back from Africa. Now I have to say that I'm struggling a bit with how much to talk about my recent experiences in Africa. I don't want to lose touch with them. I want to continue to learn everything I can from them. But I don't want people rolling their eyes saying "Does this guy ever talk about anything but Africa?!" It's still a little early for that, but I want to make sure I don't do that to people.

I didn't have to worry about that yesterday. I had the perfect excuse -- the lectionary. Most of what I know about the Martyrs of Uganda comes from the one page description in Lesser Feasts and Fasts (a supplement to the Book of Common Prayer that has all of the lesser feast and fast days of the liturgical year in it). I'll have to change that and do some more reading about them. What I had known for years was just how important these martyrs were for the explosive growth of Christianity in Uganda over a century ago.

The Martyrs of Uganda were a group of thirty-two young men who were pages in the court of King Mwanga of Buganda. On June 1, 1886, they were burned to death for their refusal to renounce the way of Jesus. Many others died for their faith either by fire or spear in the following months. Roman Catholic and Anglican missionaries had introduced the Christian faith beginning in 1877, but only to the members of the royal household, by order of King Mutesa. His successor was annoyed that the converts put loyalty to God ahead of loyalty to the king.

That's kind of what Jesus had in mind when he talked about the kingdom of God. It was a radical alternative to the kingdoms of this world, and their universally failed programs of domination and control. Jesus talked about a kingdom where the poor are the blessed ones, the meek inherit the earth, peacemakers will see God. He intentionally went outside the circles of power and made the people on the margins the focus of his attention -- lepers, bleeding women, uncircumsized pagans, the blind, deaf, dumb, and even the dead. He knew that whether the allegiance being demanded came from an emperor in Rome, or Herod, the Sadducees or the Pharisees, or Kings Mwanga or George, they were all based on a domination system that fell short of God's desire for the human family.

But back to Uganda in 1886 for a minute. Now, I know that there are a lot of people who would say, "that's what happens when Christians go messing with traditional cultures. Those people would never have been killed if those missionaries hadn't bothered to go and convert those people." And I have to confess just how nervous I get whenever the whole topic of missionaries and evangelism of non-Christian peoples comes up. I'm way too aware of some of the history of the unholy alliances of church and state, the confusion of evangelism and colonialism, the problem of religious imperialism, the failure to differentiate between Christ and culture, and in some cases the outright destruction of native cultures in the name of God -- all of which has been done at various times and in various places in the name of "spreading the good news." The methods (if not the message) has been bad news to lots of people, for sure. I'm aware of these problems both from the standpoint of the history of the missionary enterprise and also from personal experience.

As missionary associates in Japan with a certain pentecostal denomination in the 1970s, Carolyn and I witnessed it firsthand -- old-time missionaries who made statements like, "I wish these people would stop worrying about being Japanese and just be Christians." Don't get me started.

It's a well documented fact that despite all the often very good and noble intentions of Christian missionaries throughout the centuries, and the undisputed good that many of them have actually done, the "gospel" has too often been bad news in the hands of zealous people whose motivations had more to do with the love of power than the power of love.

That doesn't seem to have been the case, however, with the missionaries in Uganda. They respected the king's wishes to introduce the faith only to members of the court. In some ways, however, that was the most dangerous place it could possibly be introduced. Maybe the king thought he could control it there in his court. But the kind of authority Jesus talked about ("the one who is first will be last, and the last will be first") is almost always a threat to people in authority. The martyrs of Uganda died for the principle that no human power can be greater than God's power, no authority greater than the authority of love.

That principle gets tested all the time, not the least in our own time. Guantanamo Bay is in the news again today with the military tribunals for five of the alleged 9/11 conspirators. No one has any sympathy for anyone who masterminded such attacks on the United States. But the tactics that have been used at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and other (some secret) prisons around the world are not the way to bring justice or right these terrible wrongs. They are making our world less safe, not more, in my humble opinion. Guantanamo is just another reminder of the many ways in which we are being asked by the "kingdoms of this world" (our own imperial government) to "just trust us" -- even as the well established principles of human rights and international law are being ignored and violated.

The Martyrs of Uganda teach us by their example about the courage of conviction that is needed in our own day and in our own culture to stand up to the power of the domination system (as Walter Wink calls it). Those martyrs, converts to the way of Jesus, had been given a taste of a different way of being. Then, as now, Jesus' message of the kingdom of God provided a different way of being human community together.

The blood of the martyrs truly was the seed of the church in Uganda. Ugandans saw in the courage and convictions of these martyrs that this way of Jesus wasn't just a white man's religion -- it was as African as they were. They didn't have to stop being African to be Christians. What really had to change was the same thing that needed to change in every culture if people are to follow this way. They had to begin to let the power of love take precedence over the systems of power based on domination and control. The people of Uganda are still working on that one, just like the rest of us. But the message has been widely accepted, to the point that Uganda is, statistically speaking, the most Christian country in all of Africa.

Just two quick vignettes from Amahoro about some of the Ugandan Christians I met. Emmanuel Ofumbi is an Episcopal layman, and Director of a Community Development Corporation in Tororo, Uganda. The motto on his card says, "Working with Rural Communities to improve their social-economic conditions leading to life of dignity by to ensure [sic] we all have the means to make our world an amazing place." I had quite a few wonderful conversations with this man, who was willing to put aside the differences his own Episcopal Church has with the American Episcopal Church for the sake of our fellowship. I respected that greatly. The other person was a man whose nametag said only "James Nasak" on it. Toward the end of the conference, he came to me and introduced himself as a Bishop of the Episcopal Church of Uganda. He had learned that I was an Episcopal priest from the US, and he went out of his way to come to me and befriend me. He did so in spite of the fact that his church and ours are at odds during this difficult time in the Anglican Communion. I appreciated it very much. We had some good natured conversation and a bit of banter about our beloved but fractured Anglican Communion. He came to me several other times during the conference to touch base and initiate further conversation. We agreed to stay in touch, and he sent his greetings to my bishop.

I think these two Ugandans really get this kingdom of God stuff.