" Just before Christmas I returned, after 45 years absence, the country I knew as a child and Nyasaland. Today is Malawi. I traveled there with a small trans-and intersex Pump known as British Aid (www.pumpaid.org), which helps rural communities to install simple wells to provide clean water to see their work.
This trip also renewed my faith in the organizations for development aid, another belief refreshed me against which I tried in vain to banish from my life, which creates confusion in my ideology, stubbornly refuses to fit into my world view and left in the wrong place my idea that God does not exist.
Although I am an atheist, I have to acknowledge the enormous contribution that Christianity made in Africa, totally different from the world of oenegés secular government projects and international aid efforts. All of the above, by itself, not enough. In Africa, Christianity change the hearts of the people and brings a spiritual transformation, a new birth and a change is real.
Years ago I tried to avoid confrontations with this really limiting myself to applaud the practical work of missions in Africa. I used to think : it's a shame that salvation is part of this work, because black and white Christians, working in Africa heal the sick, help people to read and write, and only the most radical secularists could see a hospital or a mission school and say that the world would be better off without these institutions.
At the time I conceded that if faith motivated the missionaries, very well, but what counted was assistance, not faith. But I realize that this does not correspond to reality. We had missionary friends, and when I was young we often stayed with them in the African village. In the city, we had employees Africans who had converted and were a great believers.
Christians were always different. His faith, cowering away if any, seemed to have relaxed and released. These were people who had a vibrancy, a curiosity, a commitment to the world and a direct way to treat others that appeared to be absent in traditional African life.
When he was 24, a long trip across the continent I reaffirmed this impression. Algeria to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya. I traveled overland in a Land Rover with four fellow students. Every time we in a territory where missionaries had had to recognize that something changed in the faces of people who were and with whom we spoke, something present in their eyes, how to approach you directly, without lowering his head and looked to have lost.
This time in Malawi was the same. I did not find any missionary. No one finds them in the halls of the luxury hotels discussing strategic development documents, as with the great trans-and intersex. However, I realized that a handful of Africa's most active members of Pump Aid confessed privately to be people of strong Christian convictions. I say "private" because it is trans-and intersex totally secular and never say anything about religion during his work in the villages. But I picked up some references about Christianity during our conversation. One of them read a devotional book during the drive. Another, on Sunday went to church to attend prayers, which lasted two hours.
would fit better in my mind to think that honesty, diligence and exuded optimism that their work had no connection with his personal faith. But though his work was secular, was influenced by what they were, and his being was influenced by a conception of man's place in the universe that has taught Christians.
Anxiety fear of evil spirits ... deeply penetrates the entire structure of traditional African thought, where a huge weight falls on the individual, stifling their curiosity and making people do not take the initiative and not take charge of your life ...
Christianity, the post-reform and after Luther, with his teaching of a personal and direct link between the individual and God, without going through any other human authority, breaking the spiritual-philosophical framework, and provides a basis on which to support those who want to get rid of the tribal mentality. That is why Christianity freed.
Africa Those who want to walk with our heads high in the century XXI deberian think that the Media Request a materials and what the development, does not make the exchange for same. First, there is a system that supplanted all beliefs. Christianity stops without an African Continent in the merced the disastrous merger between Nike, the sorcerer, the phone numbers and the machete.
This trip also renewed my faith in the organizations for development aid, another belief refreshed me against which I tried in vain to banish from my life, which creates confusion in my ideology, stubbornly refuses to fit into my world view and left in the wrong place my idea that God does not exist.
Although I am an atheist, I have to acknowledge the enormous contribution that Christianity made in Africa, totally different from the world of oenegés secular government projects and international aid efforts. All of the above, by itself, not enough. In Africa, Christianity change the hearts of the people and brings a spiritual transformation, a new birth and a change is real.
Years ago I tried to avoid confrontations with this really limiting myself to applaud the practical work of missions in Africa. I used to think : it's a shame that salvation is part of this work, because black and white Christians, working in Africa heal the sick, help people to read and write, and only the most radical secularists could see a hospital or a mission school and say that the world would be better off without these institutions.
At the time I conceded that if faith motivated the missionaries, very well, but what counted was assistance, not faith. But I realize that this does not correspond to reality. We had missionary friends, and when I was young we often stayed with them in the African village. In the city, we had employees Africans who had converted and were a great believers.
Christians were always different. His faith, cowering away if any, seemed to have relaxed and released. These were people who had a vibrancy, a curiosity, a commitment to the world and a direct way to treat others that appeared to be absent in traditional African life.
When he was 24, a long trip across the continent I reaffirmed this impression. Algeria to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya. I traveled overland in a Land Rover with four fellow students. Every time we in a territory where missionaries had had to recognize that something changed in the faces of people who were and with whom we spoke, something present in their eyes, how to approach you directly, without lowering his head and looked to have lost.
This time in Malawi was the same. I did not find any missionary. No one finds them in the halls of the luxury hotels discussing strategic development documents, as with the great trans-and intersex. However, I realized that a handful of Africa's most active members of Pump Aid confessed privately to be people of strong Christian convictions. I say "private" because it is trans-and intersex totally secular and never say anything about religion during his work in the villages. But I picked up some references about Christianity during our conversation. One of them read a devotional book during the drive. Another, on Sunday went to church to attend prayers, which lasted two hours.
would fit better in my mind to think that honesty, diligence and exuded optimism that their work had no connection with his personal faith. But though his work was secular, was influenced by what they were, and his being was influenced by a conception of man's place in the universe that has taught Christians.
Anxiety fear of evil spirits ... deeply penetrates the entire structure of traditional African thought, where a huge weight falls on the individual, stifling their curiosity and making people do not take the initiative and not take charge of your life ...
Christianity, the post-reform and after Luther, with his teaching of a personal and direct link between the individual and God, without going through any other human authority, breaking the spiritual-philosophical framework, and provides a basis on which to support those who want to get rid of the tribal mentality. That is why Christianity freed.
Africa Those who want to walk with our heads high in the century XXI deberian think that the Media Request a materials and what the development, does not make the exchange for same. First, there is a system that supplanted all beliefs. Christianity stops without an African Continent in the merced the disastrous merger between Nike, the sorcerer, the phone numbers and the machete.
Matthew Parris
columnist for The Times (1988 )
British MP (1979 to 1986)
Orwell Prize Winner of Journalism (2005)
columnist for The Times (1988 )
British MP (1979 to 1986)
Orwell Prize Winner of Journalism (2005)
"I can not change the wind direction, but to fit the candles always arrive at my destiny." JD 
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