Feast of All Saints

For Christians in the West, November 1st is All Saints Day.  This is the origin of Halloween, for sometimes the feast is called All Hallows, venerating those who have reached Paradise.  It is a national holiday in many historically Catholic countries.  In the Catholic Church and Church of England, the next day (All Souls) specifically commemorates the departed faithful.  This of course relates to Purgatory.  At the base of this is a sense that there is a link between the living (militant) and the dead and for some, between those still in Purgatory (suffering) and those who already reached Paradise (triumphant).  The all-in-one term is “cloud of witnesses” from Hebrews.  This is a day to celebrate just that.

Oh when the saints
Go marchin in
Oh when the saints go marchin in
Lord, I wanna be in that number!
When the saints go marchin in

The festival was retained after the Reformation in the calendar of the Church of England and in many Lutheran churches.  In the Swedish calendar, the observance takes place on the Saturday between 31 October and 6 November. That would be this Saturday!  In many Lutheran Churches, it is moved to the first Sunday of November. In the Anglican church it may be celebrated either on 1 November or on the Sunday between 30 October and 5 November. That would be this Sunday!  It is also celebrated by other Protestants of the English tradition, such as the United Church of Canada, the Methodist churches, and the Wesleyan church.

The African “church triumphant”
Time for a commercial break!  Don’t forget to order your 2014 desktop calendar from C4L.  Its theme is speaking truth to power.  So it is a self-financing attempt to influence leaders. 

Original portraits were commissioned for this project by a local White River artist - of no less than a dozen departed African saints.  I have it on good authority that not one of these is stuck in Purgatory.  Plus you get three living legends – all African bishops.

The calendar is $12 plus freight which is unfortunately $11 into Canada.  We can drop the price per calendar to $8 if you order quantities, but the postage remains the same.  It makes a nice Christmas gift, or a year-end corporate gift.  It is designed to use for many years as the full colour portrait side of the display has no shelf life.

Order from publications@C4L.org

Only three of the 12 months are dedicated to women, which has more to say about Africa and church history than anything.  So to do my penance as editor of the calendar, for this lack of gender balance, allow me to salute a few more in the run-up to All Saints.

• Eve – first African woman
• Charlotte Maxeke – first African woman to get a university degree
• “Ma” Albertina Sisulu – Walter’s wife

From Africa’s “church militant” - Africa’s Leading Women
First I have to register an apology.  In the last C4L Bulletin I mentioned that there had only been one woman President in Africa – ever.  Not so!  I stand corrected.  In fact there have been five, as follows:

Carmen Perreira	Guinea Bissau	2 days
Sylvie Kinigi	Burundi	101 days
Ruth Perry	Liberia	332 days
Ellen Sirleaf	Liberia	8 years
Joyce Banda	Malawi	1 year

Malawi President Joyce Banda deserves a medal for selling the presidential jet for $15 million and using the money to avert a food crisis. It was estimated that the proceeds of the sale could feed up to a million people.  She also dissolved her entire cabinet because of corruption.

Graca Machel deserves honourable mention for staying at Nelson Mandela’s side throughout his recent hospital stay.  She is an amazing role model who belies all the xenophobia and machismo that manifests itself in local cultures.  She certainly deserves to be among the Elders with the likes of Kofi Annan and Desmond Tutu.

Leah Tutu is the proverbial great woman behind the great man.  She says that he proposed to her by saying, "My parents want me to get married." She calls it the most unromantic proposal ever made.  She responded, "I will help you to be obedient to your parents."

Most people do not know that she was, at first, the family activist, the co-founder of the South African Domestic Workers Association, which brought relief to many women working in that once unregulated space in which black maids were often left to the mercy of the white madams. The legacy of SADWA is celebrated to this day.
She felt the heat herself, during the Struggle.  Not to mention standing beside Father Desmond.  All through this, she raised a family.  All her children have been highly educated.
In a country where leaders are so often charged with corruption, where family love relationships dissolve in such spectacular public fashion, and where one-time activists fight shamelessly to acquire for themselves the spoils of war, we love Desmond and Leah because they represent so powerfully the kind of country we wish we had.

From Desmond Tutu’s collection of poems called AN AFRICAN PRAYER BOOK, comes this one from Bread for Tomorrow in Kenya - called DELIVER ME:


From the cowardice that dare not face new truths

From the laziness that is contented with half truths

From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth

Good Lord deliver me