The parish church of St Ignatius in Rhodes Park, Lusaka, Zambia, in southern Africa, is home to a fine musical tradition, but many of its parishioners say it is at the 10am Sunday Mass that you hear truly celestial music. Both the Folk Choir and the Classical Choir have admirers across international frontiers, and the former has recently performed twice in Sweden in a global music festival. But it is the Classical Choir which is truly extraordin-ary in its beautiful and eclectic music, a blend of the most original new African music and the Gregorian music, sung in Latin, of the medieval Christian world.

That choir is under the direction of Sonia Mumba Somwe and her husband, Michael Somwe, the organist, who between them have created a remarkable group of talented, committed and professional singers.

There are many paths to faith and understanding, and though it may not be fashionable to say it out loud, music can be the medium in which a Divine message finds its expression and through which God’s meaning can be understood.

In the 1940s the then General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Douglas Hyde, must have seemed armour-plated against Roman Catholicism, yet it was through sacred music accidentally encountered in a London church on his lunchtime meanderings that the process which led to his apostacy began.

If music runs like a thread through the life of this Zambian parish of St Ignatius of Loyola, then so is the life of the nation reflected in this Jesuit parish.

It is a well-heeled parish among whose worshippers are many people who are influential in Zambian society. Ambassadors and members of the government, some of whom drive up to 50kms to Sunday Mass, are sprinkled among a congregation who would look at home in Brompton Oratory in Kensington. But as Fr Chiti SJ (one of six priests who run this urban parish) notes, even in a country in which more than 60 per cent of the population are poor or very poor, Christ does not exclude anyone – He is open to all, rich or poor. After all, the rich need to be saved too.

Zambia’s Catholics, led by Archbishop Telesphore Mpundu, are the largest single religious group in the country at around 23 per cent of the population. Other Christian churches, including the mainstream Anglican, as well as a vigorous Evangelical sector with more than 70 different sects, make up 60 per cent, while Muslims and others the remaining 17 per cent.

Collectively, the Christian community plays a significant role in Zambian society, and the Roman Catholic Church commands a position of great respect, partly because it is a trusted and prestigious Western institution. And because the Church is also seen to shoulder a burden of moral responsibility in this diverse society of more than 70 indigenous ethnic groups (and as many languages), it has gained a reputation as a voice of justice.

There is a strong ecumenical tradition among the Roman Catholic and the mainstream Protestant churches in Zambia, and they are linked together in the Council of Churches. Together these churches play a crucial part in the nation’s public life in a variety of ways. At election time (coming up again within the year), Zambians look to representatives of the Catholic and Anglican churches to promote, encourage and ensure the integrity of the electoral process in their role in monitoring the elections.

If music runs like a thread through the life of this Zambian Jesuit parish, so is the life of the nation reflected in it

The Jubilee 2000 Campaign for debt cancellation, which was spearheaded by the Roman Catholic Church, achieved the debt cancellation of the late 1990s, a considerable economic coup for Zambia.

And in the extremely difficult area of lesbian, gay and transgender recognition in this country, where homosexual practices are a criminal offence, the churches have made heroic efforts to encourage more tolerant attitudes, though these have not always met with success partly due to traditional attitudes, as well as adherence to a strict interpretation of Christian scriptures .

The Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia , the Evangelical counterpart of the Council of Churches, is the umbrella organisation representing the vibrant and growing community of Evangelical churches in the country. But although Evangelical Christ-ianity is the rapidly-expanding rainbow element of Christian life in Zambia, Evangelical Christians play a much lesser part in the nation’s public life, preferring to focus on membership growth through a vigorous programme of recruitment often using TV and radio.

Participation in the public life of the nation is a responsibility which lies at the heart of parish life at St Ignatius. This is no ordinary parish, and in this deeply-Christian country it has come to be a trusted voice to which Zambia’s secular leadership often listens, even if they do not always welcome the message.

Fr Leonard Chiti, SJ, the Director of the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection, leads 20 staff whose work is related to social and economic issues, especially in education, healthcare and human rights. An important part of the respected Jesuit organisation’s work is advocacy with donor agencies and the central government on behalf of the interest groups it represents.

The urbane and softly-spoken celebrant of the 10am Sunday Mass at St Ignatius makes an unlikely revolutionary, and perhaps he would not describe himself as one. But it seems quite revolutionary in Africa to be able to use the pulpit to stir the conscience of political leaders and to openly and honestly criticise Zambia’s government over issues of justice and morality, areas which are the special province of Christian social seaching.

At a recent 10am Mass Fr Chiti talked of the New Testament story about the woman who had suffered a haemorrhage for 12 years and despaired of ever being well – that is, until she had the courage and the faith to reach out and touch Christ’s cloak. Fr Chiti reminded us that the culture in which that lady lived frowned upon women who even appeared in public in that male-dominated society, certainly if they were unaccompanied, and that to actually touch a man who wasn’t her husband required the courage to set aside those taboos.

She would also have been the object of further disapproval because the illness from which she suffered was probably of menstrual origin and therefore made her ‘unclean’ in the eyes of that intolerant society. Yet she confronted those discriminations with courage and faith.

Her experience of exclusion and inequity was the theme of Fr Chiti’s sermon, and he applied it directly to contemporary Zambian society by raising the recent controversial remarks of the Secretary General of the PF Party (Patriotic Front). Davis Chama, who had declared last week that Hichilenna Hakainde, the leader of Opposition party UPND, could never be part of government because he was a Tonga, shocked polite society in Zambia by evoking the crudest kind of tribal chauvinism.

Mr Chama said that because the Tonga, a people from the southwest of the country, practised polygyny and other ‘backward’ traditional cultural behaviours, they were insufficiently ‘developed’ to take part in the governance of the nation, and thus effectively proposed to exclude the Tonga from their proper democratic representation.

These incendiary remarks not only fly in the face of Christian teaching, but they are in direct contradiction of Zambia’s national policy of breaking down tribal divisions, eloquently expressed in what could be called the country’s mission statement One Zambia, One Nation.

Nor is this crude exclusion aimed only at ethnic differences; the status of women in this very traditional society is woefully inequitable, in spite of the fact that gender parity is a stated objective of the government. The Centre for Theological Reflection is keen to support this somewhat neglected government ambition.

Participation in the nation’s public life lies at the heart of parish life at St Ignatius

But it is the issue of the failure of government to distribute the country’s considerable wealth more widely which exercises almost everyone who is keen to promote Zambia’s development and to see a fairer society. At St Ignatius Fr Chiti told a packed church that Zambia’s resources potentially made it one of the world’s rich countries, and that the existence of poverty in Zambia was an affront to justice. The country is, after all, a major producer of copper ore and has the potential to exploit a number of other mineral deposits. A more equitable distribution of the wealth derived from the country’s resources could eradicate many of the ills that the poorest 60 per cent of Zambians suffer.

There are strong parallels between these contemporary Zambian issues and the kind of discrimination that the woman in the New Testament story confronted. The common thread is exclusion; discrimin-ation against people who aren’t the right gender, who don’t belong to the favoured clique, and who, as a consequence, are deprived of a just share of life.

The fact that these inequities exist is an indictment of society. That these controversial issues can be aired publicly is a welcome indication of a freedom of expression not enjoyed by many African nations. It may well be that Zambia’s leaders calculate that to be seen to be tolerant of the Catholic Church and its justice agenda will enhance the country’s reputation abroad, particularly in the aid-producing West. Doubtless, the government finds its association with the Catholic Church useful in lending it respectability and prestige, and in enhancing its legitimacy. That may be a pragmatic, perhaps even a slightly-cynical modus vivendi, but in a continent defined by tyranny, it is a decent accommodation.

The parish of St Ignatius may not quite be the conscience of the nation, but that celestial music which floats through the doors of the overcrowded church on Sunday mornings is a reminder of what the Church can do as the congregation raise up their hearts and minds to God.

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