Global Poverty Monitor

So there is still the issue of some of us being really really upset with what went on at the church services. In the hype of all of us discussing what had happened, I started to believe that it had upset me that much too. Its like there were two camps – fully religious and participating in the service; and not religious at all and not wanting to be at the service or even witness any Christian activities. It was like I had to choose one of the camps, and the obvious side to choose was the later, given that I don’t attend Church. But during [the] conversations I realized that I hadn’t been affected as much as other people had, and that there is a middle ground to the argument. The only thing that had worried me during the services was that I would be asked to stand up and speak about my religion, or asked to say a prayer. But it really didn’t bother me that we were at a religious service. We came here to touch Africa, and people have been saying that they wanted to experience it more and to be more involved with the authentic African life, but then seem to draw a line when it comes to seeing something that they didn’t want to see. We were all prepared to see sick and dying children, and living conditions that we know we couldn’t handle, but when it comes to seeing traditional religious practices, we don’t want to see it. In that way I feel what we’ve been a bit hypocritical. In a way we are discriminating on the basis of religion. We are happy for our sponsorship money and fundraising money to go to helping the Mozambican people further their food supplies, in their own way, and not dictating to them the way in which they do this, but at the same time we want to dictate to them the ways in which they can and can not practice their religion. While I am completely against preaching Christianity in order to convert people, I don’t think that we have any right to tell the Mozambique people that they can’t preach, solely because we are giving them money. If it was any other issue apart from religion, this would not even be being discussed. But because people feel so strongly about religious practices, it seems almost acceptable for this to happen.

The other thing that I have been thinking about is that we went to the Church group on the first night, and then we knew that we were going back there the next day. In other words, we knew what it was like the first time, and we knew we were going back there, and we had a whole night and half a day to get out of it if we wanted to. In our program it said ‘Prayers and sharing of the Gospel including Christian songs’. What else could that be? If we knew that we didn’t want to go to Church services while we were here, we had plenty of time to at least try to get out of it, rather than waiting till we were there and being really upset about it. I don’t believe that anyone there saw anything that was not to be expected from any activity called ‘Prayers and sharing of the Gospel including Christian songs’.