WHAT DO THE POPE, TRUMP, ZUMA & JESUS HAVE IN COMMON?

Take a bow Fake News.

I know you’ve been around since that darned snake whispered in Eve’s ear and she passed the false info to her hubby, but you are now possibly more famous than the Kardashians.

Admittedly, when you consider the fake stories even cynical journalists have fallen for, social media has given you wings that an Archangel would give her halo for. As the Trump dust settles and the pundits analyse the USA presidential election to death, you have emerged as the villain of a bitter campaign that kicked sand in pollster and commentator faces alike. 

A convenient scapegoat

Amidst wails of “information warfare”, warnings that “the first casualty of war is truth” and talk of “the collapse of world order”, you Fake News are the perfect scapegoat. 

It’s frightfully biblical my dear, and we must not forget the clever role you played in Pilate’s condemnation of Jesus. The baying mob who influenced his decision was as misinformed as so many electorates are today.

A global phenomenon

In modern time your undue influence spreads well beyond the good old US of A. 

Take, for instance, your story about Jacob Zuma’s presidential pardon of Oscar Pistorius. It made headlines in respected newspapers across the world. 

I can imagine your glee when you tricked the social media fraternity into believing that dear Pope Francis had endorsed The Donald. Then there’s the old, but often repeated, one about the pastor who is about to be crucified by Isis. We’ve gone through that dramatic countdown so many times I’m surprised Hollywood hasn’t made the movie. Who knows how many shares and amens it’s had on Facebook. All the while fueling anti-Islamic hysteria.

 Feeling neglected?

There is one arena where you haven’t attracted the attention you probably think you deserve – the Anglican Church. While pundits pontificate and Google and Facebook threaten to shut your bogus news accounts, I’m wondering how many sermons you have featured in? It seems that, along with other insidious sins like racism, gender violence and cyber bullying, you are seldom taught in a Confirmation class. Nor are the adults in our pews reminded of our Christian responsibility in all this.

Words of a conservative

I must give the Executive Director of the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism at Wheaton College, his due. Eighteen months ago, Dr Ed Stetzer wrote about an ‘Embarrassing Week for Christians Sharing Fake News’.

Dr Ed Stetzer

His opening gambit was: “Don't believe everything you read on the Internet. You embarrass us all when you do.”  He has even written a series called "Faux Christian Controversy of the Week". 

As he says, “it just keeps happening”.

Two 'news' stories doing the rounds that week were: ‘Pastor Arrested for Refusing a Same-Sex Marriage’ and a report about a homosexual man who had filed a $70 million lawsuit against Bible publishers Zondervan and Thomas Nelson, alleging that their version of the Bible referred to homosexuality as a sin and violated his constitutional rights.

What to do

Essentially, Ed Stetzer’s message is: Stop it!  Importantly, he offers practical advice:

If something sounds crazy, check the URL. The lawsuit story was on NBC.com.co

Did you notice the extra .co on the end? That’s the giveaway. It’s a fake site. (I often Google the gist of the headline and add ‘Hoax? And http://www.snopes.com/,  which features trending false stories, is a great help.)

Dr Setzer reminds that it’s OUR job—yes OURS—to check the facts. Our websites should do that as well, but most are more concerned with gaining page views than earning credibility.

He adds, “There are real issues about religious liberty right now. Posting links to fake ones just make all of us look gullible.” (By implication we'd be easily fooled by theology as well.)

So, if you realise you have posted a fake story, here are a few things you can do:

1. Be humble and post a retraction. As he points out “Integrity is important for the Christian. The Scriptures are clear, especially in Proverbs 2:20-21 which says:

So, follow the way of good people,
and keep to the paths of the righteous.
For the upright will inhabit the land,
and those of integrity will remain in it;

Later, Proverbs 28:18 says:

The one who lives with integrity will be helped,
but one who distorts right and wrong
will suddenly fall.

We are duty bound to protect our friends from being tricked as we were.

2. Don’t excuse a falsehood by saying, “Well, it might be true.” Or, “Well, there is something like that." "Or, well, it will be true soon." Or even, “It should be true.”

No, if you were wrong, say it and move on.

3. Be less gullible next time.

Wisdom is valuable:

Get wisdom—
how much better it is than gold!
And get understanding—
it is preferable to silver. (Prov 16:16)

"But," you may think, "I'm not wise. I get fooled by this stuff all the time." That's okay, Scripture accounts for people like us. James 1:5 says:“Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and without criticizing, and it will be given to him.”, Thanksgiving

Finally, the Bible makes it clear: Lying is wrong. Don't lie, even if you don't mean to. And make it right if you do.

Thank-you Dr Ed.

Talking turkey:

This weekend an emotional Brian Stelter, CNN’s host of ‘Reliable Sources’, predicted that many Thanksgiving dinners would be ruined by people whipping out their iPhones to prove a fake point. He urged viewers to be more discerning and to help each other to resist you Fake News. Facebook users, he said, should refuse to be used, journalists must be more vigilant.

A South African pundit was saying much the same on Aljazeera and President Obama was warning European heads of state of the dire consequences of social media propaganda.

Better than real news?

Interestingly, in the last weeks of the US election campaign revealed that you – whether claiming that the Pope had endorsed Trump, or that Clinton sold weapons to Isis – actually outperformed real news, with more shares, reactions and comments.

Another widely shared story used a young picture of Donald Trump with variations on a quote he reportedly gave People magazine in 1998:  “If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific.”

It’s a serious situation and we can’t just tweet about it or angst on Facebook. Social media has enabled you, Fake News, to assume pandemic proportions but it’s far from a new phenomenon and I believe it’s time for all of us to take ownership of the situation to fend you off.

Not my fault.

We can’t afford to do the Garden of Eden thing, where Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the snake and we blame you. Because just as countries across the globe are experiencing a swing to conservatism and populist leaders the Anglican Church could be sharing that experience.

The KISS principle (keep it simple stupid)

According to Harry Farley, a Junior Staff Writer for Christian Today, conservative Anglican churches have bucked the trend of decline to show an increase in attendance over the past five years.

He claims the Church of England, as a whole, has seen a seven percent drop in the number of people at weekly services since 2010. But those churches with stricter teaching on issues such as the infallibility of the Bible, women priests and same-sex marriage report a dramatic increase in regular attendance.

If he is right, it means people don’t want reasoned religion. They don’t want to unpack the Bible by taking author, history and culture into consideration. They want their Christianity packaged as a no-nonsense brand.

Just checking

I’m waiting for the outcome of a global conference that is exploring the growth and decline of our Anglican communion. 

The key resource being a published study prepared by an international team of researchers across the five continents. There are 12 detailed case studies of Anglican churches in Australia, Congo, England, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa, South America, South India, South Korea, and the US.

Grace Davie, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Exeter, describes the book as “a veritable goldmine”, adding: “it contains a huge amount of mostly numerical information on the Anglican Communion in all its fullness.

“Quite rightly it eschews easy generalisations, probing instead the complex and evolving mosaic that constitutes modern Anglicanism. Almost every reader will be surprised about something.”

Guilty as charged

Not sure whether you’ve noticed but I have quoted conservative Christians to make this blog’s point. Yet I have previously slammed their stance on homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Have I cherry picked to suit myself?  We all do it, determined to stay in the corners of our diversity unless it suits us.

It’s time to break that cycle.

I’d like to suggest that the starting point in the task of eradicating the Fake News pandemic is for religions to renew its focus on teaching about the importance of truth.  We must stretch across the raging river of diversity.

We also need to stop using the Scriptures like a hoax site or a literal dictation from heaven. From an Anglican perspective, good theological education comes to mind. It should also be compulsory for our priests to follow news in order to identify relevant issues.

Let us remember that Anglicanism rests on the pillars of Faith, Scripture and Reason. Fortunately, or unfortunately, this makes it complex and not for the faint hearted. It’s why the Anglican Church always seems to be teetering on the edge of schism.

I also think it’s high time education curricula included social media and aspects such as cyber bullying and soft porn. To be sandwiched between ethics and how to fact check information.

Bizarre

So much for us to do, so little time.  I think I’ll pop outside and smell a rose or two if the drought hasn’t killed them off. 

Besides, I need to meditate on a comment regarding Fake News in South Africa. William Bird of Media Monitoring Africa, says, "Much of our news is so bizarre that it could actually be fake." 

POLITICS, SEX AND BRIDGE

I am certain that if one grows up with Gentle Jesus on one shoulder and a cute guardian angel on the other your entry to priesthood would be quite different to mine. God was not an issue in my home so I’m not sure whether my family were agnostic or atheist. Dinner table conversations tended to revolve around politics, economics, topics such as the Kinsey Report on male sexual behaviour and my grandmother’s latest ‘brainless’ bridge bid.



The tone was often heated but never boring.

THE END IS NIGH
Perhaps the reason I’ve remained optimistic about South Africa is that I’ve been hearing predictions about my homeland’s demise ever since I was five years old. As with so many diet fads, it just hasn’t happened.

How clearly I remember my grandfather, who’d just failed to win a United Party seat in parliament, declaring in 1948 that the end was nigh. The Nationalist Party, architects of legislated apartheid, had clocked a landslide win.

My grandmother was more concerned about being raped by black men. This did require a basic sex lesson over breakfast which went largely over my five year old head. But I loved the hat pin she gave me as my very own weapon to carry in my school satchel.

A RELIGIOUS SMORGASBORD
The nuns at the nearest convent had accepted me at ‘big’ school early because I could read and knew my times tables.

They also offered a smorgasbord of Mary, Jesus, God (in that order) and a host of useful saints. It is a credit to my doting family that there were no snorts of derision when I advised my grandmother to consult St Christopher whenever she lost her spectacles.

Ironically it was because I’d been taught by my elders ‘to think’ that  by 14 I was seriously questioning their politics and my own perception of black people. 

My first mentor was a ‘domestic helper’ who used to clean our bathrooms at the convent boarding school I later attended. How patiently she answered my questions about life in the township and her family.

We’d always had ‘help’ in our home but I’d never perceived them as having a life beyond my personal needs.

BEWARE GERMS
Although our domestic helpers (note the plural) lived on our property I was not allowed into their quarters. A while before I started school my mother had shown me a tiny bug in a basin and explained that germs were a thousand times smaller which was why we couldn’t see them. 

And, she added, there were lots in those rooms in the backyard. So I was never to visit them and never to eat off a helper’s plate or take mealie pap out of  a pot. 

 Oh, and it wasn’t a good idea to play touch tongues with the neighbour’s kids either – those damn germs were everywhere!

I wish I could tell you I’ll never forget the name of my first black mentor. I'm not sure if I ever knew it because the friendship ended quite soon. The Irish nun in charge of our boarding section forbade the friendship and the cleaning lady was allocated to another part of the school. As the sister explained, it was ‘a class thing’.

NO COUNTRY CLUB
Not that I had much social clout to spare.

Although my grandfather was a pharmacist, politician and intellectual he’d died when I was about six, having dropped while on a walk along the main Lyndhurst road. 

We had a large property and I still remember a ‘green mamba’, what we used to call the buses for black people, slowly winding its way up our long driveway. The driver had emptied the vehicle of passengers and brought his body to us.

My father inherited the family canvas business but left most of the shares in his mother’s name so that when my mother divorced him there wasn’t a very generous maintenance settlement. 

As a single-parent my mother couldn’t afford private school fees so a convent boarding school was our best option. 

I’m sure many who read this will horrified by the overt racism in this tale. Fact is even if we didn’t have Country Club membership, we whites were privileged beyond sensitivity. Even the  kindest, most religious folk lived in blissful ignorance of the cruelties of apartheid. 

Frankly, my dears, many were of the opinion that the early missionaries hadn’t done much to civilise the locals. 

Religious folk, including our Prime Minister, a pastor, were really clever at quoting the Bible to justify legislated segregation.

Most of us probably knew more about other planets than we did about the nearest township that provided our labour. Incidentally those townships were spatially designed so that if the ‘natives’ became troublesome they could be easily closed off with half a dozen tanks.

I’m not going to take you too deep down that atrocious pit. You may not be able to bear the pain. 

Suffice to say that by the time I matriculated my political genes had kicked in. I was, and still am, aware that sorry doesn’t do the trick.

BYE BYE PARTY POLITICS
As I look back on my priesting I am reminded of the pain of having to disassociate myself from party politics. I cannot tell you what it meant to serve as an observer in our first democratic elections in 1994. The hopes, the dreams, the path towards a rainbow nation. Our beloved Madiba.

Looking back entering the priesthood was much like matriculating. So many years focusing on a particular goal. Then you leave school and the door opens on another chapter in your life. The expectations are invariably unrealistic and reality can be harsh.

However, my years in Soweto were a privilege. 

In 2001 there was such a huge sense of new beginnings and of an emerging middle class. I’m often amused by those who are surprised by the growth of the cell phone industry in this country. 

What did they expect? By far the majority of our population had not been served by Telkom, our state owned telecoms provider. There were very few landlines in Diepkloof but I remember so well my first ‘Baptism class’. Of about 15, mostly young unemployed women, by far the majority owned a cell phone.  

For the first time in their lives my young parishioners were experiencing connectivity!

AN INTEREST TREADMILL
Meanwhile Archbishop Njongo was waging his battle to have third world debt cancelled. Among the many lessons I learned from him is that the debt incurred by emerging nations had already been repaid several times over. 

They were on a hamster wheel fueled by interest. 

More money was pouring into the global north than the other way round! Jongo’s allies included the world renowned economist Prof Jeffrey Sachs. They were both part of the Jubilee 2000 movement, named after the Biblical exhortation to observe a Jubilee year once every fifty years, in which debts would be forgiven. 

As they campaigned for the UN’s Millennium Development goals and cancellation of debt for highly indebted poor countries they were joined by U2 frontman Bono. (It was never boring working for Jongo.)

A FOUNDATION
At yet another level, Jongo had Ted Karpf serving under him as an Episcopal Provincial Canon Missioner. This was on a HIV/Aids project called Isiseko Sokomeleza (Building the Foundation). 

You may remember an earlier blog in which I mentioned how the then President of the United States, Bill Clinton had agreed that Ted should be seconded to Africa.

In 2001 Ted was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to develop an international development pilot project under an initiative with the 10-million member Anglican Church of the Province of Southern Africa i.e. Jongo’s domain. (Angola, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and St Helena)  

The project would run for nine years supported by the UK Department for International Development  and the US President's PEPFAR programme. These provided more than USD10 million a year. 

Two years later our ‘Big Gun’, as my son used to call Canon Ted,  was also named HIV/AIDS Coordinator of the world-wide Anglican Communion. He developed faith-based responses and community planning programmes globally. 

Traditionally the SA National Aids Council is chaired by our Deputy State President who at that time was Jacob Zuma. 

It may surprise you that in the midst of the Mbeki denialism and Health Minister Manto Tshabalala’s much derided beetroot campaign he provided Isiseko Sokomeleza with welcome support. 

This included addressing the All African Anglican Conference on HIV/AIDS in 2001.

Zuma lamented that the stigma attached to AIDS had resulted in horrific forms of discrimination and violence including rejection, ridicule and death. He spoke of the many families who had suffered untold pain and discrimination.

Jongo, who opened the conference warned the 130 delegates representing 34 countries, "We have an alarming tendency to be dazzled by statistics and a great need to put a human face to the people who are infected and affected."

It would become his mantra.

FORGET LEVITICUS
Ted was also a gay rights activist with a wonderful son and daughter from a marriage of 13 years. He'd ‘come out’ at age 40 in 1988, reporting that the role models were “few and far” between, but sexual liaisons were not. His partner for 12 years was HIV+ AIDS activist Warren W. Buckingham III.

At that conference I met another gay priest, Jape Heath. HIV positive, he was a founder of INERELA+ an international network of religious leaders, lay and ordained, women and men, living with, or personally affected, by HIV.

Jape with Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Both men would go on to earn global reputations for their work in the HIV/AIDS arena. Both would also underscore the invaluable contribution gay priests can make and why they deserve better from their Church.

Although my lifelong best friend was lesbian, she didn’t move in church circles so I’d never understood the unholy hurt religious lesbian and gay people experience.

In short, I’d discovered another insidious form of discrimination that still runs deep.

My friendship with Ted and Jape would add another dimension to my ministry as I increasingly counselled deeply troubled Christian men and women who had opted for heterosexual marriage in a desperate attempt to deny their sexuality and to please God.

I live in the hope that if we could stop quoting the Scriptures to justify slavery and apartheid this is also possible regarding lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and trans (LGBT) rights.