A majority of Christian leaders have been providing ethical and impactful leadership in environments where they were exposed to diverse cultural and economic conditions.
It is no exaggeration to state the obvious fact that Christian leaders are unparalleled in the degree of exposure to the most vulnerable and abject conditions as they interact with their immediate congregants and communities. more often, Christian leaders have been entrusted with intimate and tragic family experiences, from marriages, divorces, reconciling broken families and funerals.
And Christians leaders have been performing these tasks with no or very bare financial rewards whatever impressive rewards may be suggested are a very recent development, riding on the crest of the mushrooming charismatic movement.
It is a historical fact that Christian leaders have always been deeply immersed in communities and their charismatic leadership has exceeded the narrow confines of the pulpit, touching communities through involvement in education, development and livelihood initiatives.
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The long history of deep community involvement has enabled Christian leaders to accrue a lot of moral capital from society, to the extent that even the generally accepted trend of loss of trust by people on those entrusted with leadership seem to make an exception of Christian leaders, at least in degree. The accrued moral capital is, however, currently being an object of a fierce tug of war as antagonised political actors seek the endorsement of Christian leaders to legitimise their respective courses.
It must be said that the accrued moral capital is also to a greater extent, attributable to the fact that Christian leaders superintend a sector that has the highest institutionalisation level. this is manifested in the following features, roots in society, autonomy , consistency, accountability, value infusion (the degree to which people feel they need the organisation). none of the political protagonists can claim this magnitude of traction within the Swati society.
Some Christian leaders seem less conscious of this historically accrued moral capital if the conduct of some leaders to be easily drawn into the quagmire of uncivil diatribes is anything to go by; these leaders have begun the unfortunate course of squandering the moral capital won by generations of Christian leaders, from the ascetic missionaries to African converts who dedicated their lives to the Christian faith.
We believe this is the right time to highlight and hopefully reassert, the esteemed position of Christian leaders especially in light of the prevailing antagonistic political climate.
Values-based Politics
Perhaps it would be very illustrative to start with the words of former US vice president, Mike Pence. first, let us look at how he presents himself in his twitter account- the former president introduces himself as; husband, father, grandfather, christian, conservative, Republican – in that order.
“But I think they long for leadership that could unite our country around our highest ideals and demonstrate the kind of respect and civility that the American people show each other everyday .’’
Christian leaders in the country need to urgently re-establish their moral and faith values as they engage with society and respond to unfolding events, but most importantly as they proactively provide the kind of ethical and visionary leadership that our people so desperately need right now.
These leaders must show more respect to their own platform. it is very unproductive and disheartening to observe some of these leaders abandoning their impartial platform as they respond to enchantments of bloodthirsty and rebellious political actors. Christian leaders need to be clear about the principled position of our faith on the issue of rebellions, the respect to authorities taught by the Bible, which Christ demonstrated when he held Caesar’s coin in his hand over 2 000 years ago.
Our Lord urged his Jewish audience to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God`s. the core of the issue was submission to an occupying power, which was far from being righteous in its conduct, but still the Lord urged submission/respect.
Christians know that God does not give a blank cheque to authorities to do as they please, instead every leader of every nation is subject to the sovereign judgment of God and it is the judge who decides when and how to deliver the judgment.
This certainly doesn’t mean that Christian leaders should be complicit where and when corruption, violence and poor governance are rampant, instead they should go beyond just being mere commentators but provide proactive leadership/solutions.
The church has seen too many rebellions in its over 2 000 years of history, we are witnessing the mushrooming of charismatic ministries even in our frontiers, whose inception and growth is largely driven by hostile defections from traditional churches.
Pastors can attest to how these rebellious defections ruin relations, with some church leaders becoming sworn lifetime enemies, which contradicts everything about the virtues of our faith. Christian leaders are therefore better equipped to lead society in a manner that demonstrates humility and servant leadership, in a period where political arrogance and intolerance have become an enduring culture. Political protagonists have demonstrated a painful inability to de-escalate the political tensions, instead radicals are still frothing in the mouth, calling for a revolution, a violent rebellion.
Christian leaders have not been convincing and conspicuous enough in rejecting and sanctioning the creeping culture of political murders. the opportunity to reaffirm the Christian faith value of holding life as sacred and thus fiercely opposed to murder, has not been fully exploited.
Christian leaders have not been loud enough in letting political protagonists know that there’s absolutely no justification for murder. these leaders have a very visible credible platform to sanction the excessive use of force by state security agents where it occurs.
But any sanction emanating from the Christian leaders must be able to demonstrate the sharp contrast between their values and those of the protagonists.
None of the political actors should be allowed to forget the almost hundred lives lost in the recent past. moral leaders need to vividly paint the teary images of the murdered emaswati to awaken the joint conscience of our nation.
moral leaders must be loud in expressing their total disgust and utter rejection of violence and the string of political murders.
We need to raise a strong number of Christian leaders who will boldly say, Never Again! to political ambiguity when matters that contradict/attack Christian values are carried out with impunity. This commitment mean that Christian leaders must be fervent defenders of the rule of law. the state of lawlessness that accompanied these political murders must never be allowed to rear it ugly head ever again.
Honest political engagement can only occur where men and women of character demonstrate more dedication to finding solutions to the manifold problems besieging our society, the prevailing obsession with power and positions politics reflects no passion for helping the poorest of the poor of our people.
The growing concern over the use of state resources and the often-decried unmitigated environmental degradation are both issues that touch on the Christian virtue of good stewardship. Christian leaders, not tainted by the opulence displayed by some church leaders, can help guide society on the proper utilisation of state and natural resources, Godly stewardship.
We see trailblasing Christian leaders in the corporate sector, leading profitable and growing companies that, beyond just generating healthy returns for shareholders, also increase their capacity to create more job opportunities for our youth.
Christian leaders in the public sector appear to be lagging far behind their trailblasing brethren’s in the private sector. this could be attributable to a range of factors like, differences in organisational cultures and leadership development systems.
Perhaps the time has come for Christian leaders across the economic spectrum to create spaces where they can facilitate growth and celebrate each other`s leadership successes. Christian leaders in politics continue to face the most criticism, the perceived or real corruption in government and wasteful expenditure suggests less than ideal impact of Christian politicians.
It’s not clear whether the lack of impact is due to poor exertion or simple indicative of the sheer size of the problem, that Christian politicians are simply overwhelmed.
The environment issue has become a highly divisive matter, with environmental activists accused of radical extremism; Christian leaders have not been loud enough in presenting a healthy alternative to this extremism. we believe the stewardship over creation value held by Christian can and should provide the needed solutions in the management and tricky balance of profits and nature.
The weak presence of Christian leaders in this space has created or enabled the hijacking of this noble agenda by environmental extremist. it was really interesting to see the French government actually suspending the operations of an environmental NGO last week, the entity is accused of radicalism and promoting violence.
It is clear that wherever Christian leadership is poor in reiterating its values, radical entities usurp the space to promote their own doomsday politics. the only way to realise any prospects in de-escalation in the hatred-charged political climate is the proactive intervention of Christian leaders.
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