Alexander Chula has a very interesting Critic piece on Bishop Charles Mackenzie.
In search of forgotten heroes
The Church has consigned to oblivion those who risked all to end the slave trade
The grave was buried in dry silt and foliage, and it took an hour of hacking and digging in the stifling midday heat before steel chinked on stone. Slowly, amidst the clatter of hoes and machetes, six pillars emerged from the earth. The grave revealed, our excavation party set down their tools to say the Lord’s Prayer in Chichewa, the dust still hanging round them in the windless air.
We were in Mozambique, at the confluence of the Ruo and Shire rivers just across the border from Malawi. We had set off before dawn, travelling by dugout canoe along a stretch of water busy with crocodiles and known locally as Mtayamoyo — the place where you lose your life.
Here, on 31 January 1862, Charles Mackenzie lost his. The last warrior bishop of the Anglican Church, Mackenzie died horribly of blackwater fever whilst leading a campaign against slavery which has been consigned to oblivion in Britain, but deserves to be remembered as amongst our greatest moral crusades.
The whole piece is well worth reading, especially comments by Justin Welby as archbishop of Canterbury.
Earlier this year Justin Welby, as archbishop of Canterbury, gave a sermon in Zanzibar but chose to emphasise the faults of the early missionaries over their achievements and sacrifices. “They did not change their attitudes,” he averred. “They treated Africans as inferior.”
I am curious to know who exactly the former Archbishop had in mind. Mackenzie’s successors gave everything they had to the region, and their graves litter Malawi, still venerated today. They committed to sharing the lives of local peoples and — as I argue in my recent book (Goodbye, Dr Banda) — approached their cultures with a curiosity and respect seldom matched by Western visitors today. The imputation that they treated Africans as inferior dishonours men who died precisely because they considered Africans as worthy of that sacrifice as anyone else.
8 comments:
Welby seems well fitted to that crude American dismissive expression PoS.
dearieme - he does seem well fitted for it, a damaging appointment.
Welby seems to be committed to opening his mouth and proving that his twattery is chronic.
On the contrary Welby was a good pick for the CofE - if you were looking for an exemplar. And recruiters tend to pick people "to join the existing club".
What the CofE needed was a disruptor or subversive. Like the needs of so many other organisations captured by the careerists within.
In those far off times, Welby supposes the white expatriates had contempt for the Africans. Nowadays he has contempt for whites. Lovely.
Jannie - yes, nobody seem to be impressed by him.
DJ - I agree, a disruptor or subversive would have been better, someone to hold the line with a dash of wit, imagination and flair. Not Welby.
Tammly - good point, his comments on such issues do express that progressive guilty contempt he should have risen above a long time ago.
What a contrast between Bishops Mackenzie and Welby. The Victorian was complex in a compelling and vivid way. Welby is certainly complex, but barely exists as an autonomous human being.
Whatever one might think of Mckenzie, that's a meaningful and dramatic life, which ended with him fighting real evil. Welby's career ended because he made administrative errors regarding a bit of consensual public-school spanking. Despite the enormous hyperbole surrounding that, it's basically Frankie Howerd meets the safeguarding harridans.
Sam - yes it is a contrast and you are right, Welby has been barely autonomous in the role. Whether there is anyone capable of replacing him and correcting that, I'm not in a position to know. I hope so.
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