By Tazoacha Asonganyi in Yaounde.
It is Bishop Albert Ndongmo who used to say that the Church cannot pretend to prepare people for Heaven as if life on earth does not exist. The Episcopal Council of Cameroon has shown some bizarre solidarity with the Biya regime since the flawed election of October 9 in Cameroon, as if they do not care how Cameroonians live their life on earth. Apart from the mass they organized following the consolidation of Biya’s declared victory by official swearing in, the Episcopal Council of Cameroon “accompanied” Cameroonians in the election by deploying 378 Christian election observers to the field during the last presidential election in Cameroon, and they reached the conclusion, like many other observers, that like in the past, electoral robbery rather than an equitable contest was still the order of the day.
Their conclusions, written up in the preliminary report of the observers included the following:
1) Flawed electoral rolls characterized by many multiple entries, the presence of the names of deceased person;
2) The incorrect identification of voters characterized by omission or addition of certain items of identification, leading to 2 or more different identities;
3) Attribution of several polling stations to some voters;
4) Omission of names of some duly registered persons in the electoral list of their constituencies;
5) Absence of political party representatives in some polling stations;
6) Multiple voting by some voters;
7) Undistributed voters card massed up in nearly all polling stations.
Interestingly, when it came to the public presentation of the report, the President of the Episcopal Council of Cameroon, Bishop Atanga instead read a document which at best was a diatribe against opposition political leaders who had called for their members and sympathizers to carry out peaceful demonstrations against the injustices of the October 9, 2011 elections. The Bishop said among other things that “Whatever the outcome of the ballot boxes and the ballot papers, the expression of our choices and convictions, let us accept these results (because) Jesus said to his disciples ‘peace be with you’ so the peace which the apostles received from their master must be transmitted to future generations … because it is a sign of progress, prosperity and development…let us preserve peace in our country and say no to all types of violence…”
All this is in contrast to the Rev. Martin Luther King who, in 1963 led black people who suffered injustices in the USA in nonviolent marches for their civic rights. To the likes of Bishop Atanga – clergymen – who described King’s action as "unwise and untimely," King wrote his famous letter from Birmingham to explain why he was in Birmingham marching. The letter provides fitting answers even to the Bishop Atangas of Cameroon as follows.
1) I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.
2) Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
3) You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement…fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.
4) Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers; but the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.
5) We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community.
6) Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.
7) The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation.
8) We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
9) There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.
10) One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."
11) Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application.
12) I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block …(is) the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice
13) Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.
14) In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion?
15) Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro.
16) I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies….but all too many have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.
17) In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities.
Apparently, Bishop Atanga was prepared for all the agitations of the Church we have witnessed around the Presidential election. The corridors of power seem to have believed that Bishop Kleda, a close associate of Cardinal Tumi would not be too malleable. Indeed, Cardinal Tumi tells us in the recent book Le Cardianl Tumi ou le courage de la foi by Guy Ernest Sanga (p.221) that when it came to election of the President of the Episcopal Council of Cameroon, “I was very shocked by a scene, which does us no honour. I can understand that people in the public service or private enterprise fight for posts, but not that Bishops play the same game. There has always been an unwritten custom in the Episcopal Council that the vice president takes over from the president after two mandates. The main reason was to ensure continuity of projects initiated by the president, whom the vice knows very well. Last year 2009, there was renewal of the bureau with the election of a new president. Strangely, Bishop Samuel KLEDA, the archbishop of Douala who was the vice of Bishop Victor Tonye, the outgoing president, was set aside for that of a different candidate, Bishop Atanga, today Archbishop of Bertoua. What marked me was the speed with which all this was done. All this left most Bishops bitter. In my opinion, for Bishops usually known for their intelligence and prudence in their declarations to destabilize the candidature of Bishop Kleda in this way is very serious. I had information from credible sources that there was a password circulating among many Bishops, supported by influential Christians that said ‘anybody except Bishop Kleda.’ It is in this atmosphere that the name of Bishop Atanga emerged and was made president.”
These schemers of the Church forgot that the basis of society is justice. The motto of Cameroon is “Peace Work Fatherland.” Of course, the “peace” here was not meant to create resignation and apathy in a people cowed by violence to legitimise detested regimes; it was meant to create an environment of justice that would allow the God-given talents and creative spirits of citizens to bloom for us to develop the country to the benefit of all. Invoking religious texts about “peace” and giving the impression that Paul Biya is the architect of “peace” in Cameroon takes us nowhere. True peace can only prevail in a just society. I am sure that if religious texts were to be consulted fully on the issue of “peace,” they would be on Martin Luther King’s side, not on that of Bishop Atanga.
It is the place of the Church to always rise above the state, judge it, and serve as a beacon of proper moral conduct. The Church should always remain the supreme moral judge and critic of government, in order to make life on earth relevant to its flock, in preparation for the ultimate life in Heaven. The Bishop Atangas of the Episcopal Council of Cameroon should rethink their flirtations with an immoral state, and reclaim the moral high ground.
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