Social holiness and personal holiness... and the color purple

Today I had the joy of meeting with about 20 students and faculty from Methodist Theological School in Ohio. I had the privelage of meeting their group leader, Professor Lisa Withrow in Chicago in 2005, and then again in Oxford at the Oxford Institute in 2007.

Lisa and another mutual friend (Professor Joer Rieger, who I also first met at Oxford, and then got to know quite well when he and his family visited with us in Pretoria in 2008) very kindly asked me to contribute a chapter to their new book Alienation and Connection: Suffering in a global age. (Lexington books, 2010).  I wrote a chapter in which I discussed how 'empire, economics and apathy' compound the suffering of persons with HIV AIDS in Southern Africa and elsewhere in the world.

Lisa and her group are doing an immersion visit in South Africa to consider some of the complexity of the relationship between the social situation in our context and our Christian faith.  As part of that visit they set up an opportunity for us to be together to discuss our perspectives on being Christian in an HIV+ world.  If you would like to read some of my thoughts on this subject please follow this link.

I was struck by two things.  First, through our conversation I was reminded that one can never separate devotion to Christ from a desire to be part of God's plan to transform the world. Personal holiness, no matter how sincere, if it is not expressed in tangible acts of transforming Christian love, is simply not authentic.  If you love God you have to express that love by loving the people that God loves and loving engaging the world that God loves.

Second, the venue for our meeting was a wonderful reminder of the richness of our South African history.  Here's what I posted on my tumbrl blog.  The Purple shall govern.

No, it is not a typographical error - ‘the purple shall govern’

This memorial is placed on the corner of Burg and Church streets in Cape Town. In 1989 a group of protesters were on their way to Parliament when they were stopped by police. So they staged a sit down in the street. The police unleashed a new weapon - a water canon that contained a permanent purple dye. It stained the skin of the protesters so that they could be marked - visible to the Apartheid police. One of the protesters managed to get onto the canon, spraying the police and buildings (even the National Party headquarters!)

That week a graffiti slogan was sprayed throughout the city saying ‘The purple shall govern!’

11 days later a crowd of 30 000 persons marched unretrained through the city. In 1994 Apartheid ended in South Africa.

Let us remember and give thanks for their courage that won our freedom!

Indeed, I was reminded of the relationship between work and worship, between spirituality and everday life, between personal holiness and social holiness!