Pray that Mvume Dandala will COPE

On Friday my digsmate James, his girlfriend Jo and I were driving to East London. As we were chatting, James mentioned that he had heard somewhere that a Methodist ex-bishop was going to run as the Congress of the People's presidential candidate. I thought about it for a moment and then laughed it off: "Naah, that's a long shot."

Well, it turned out the long shot was right. A bit later in the trip we heard a press release on the radio news announcing Mvume Dandala's candidacy. Immediately, I was excited. I met Mvume about ten years ago when he was the presiding bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. He came to preach at a church event in Springs, and my father was the superintendent minister in charge of the Methodist churches in Springs at the time. He gave an amazing sermon, dripping with passion for God's people to get out and do the work of making disciples in the world. After the sermon, he came back to our house for tea and was really friendly.

That was just a brief encounter long ago, but what I've heard about Mvume from other sources since then has only been good. He went on to become general secretary of the All-Africa Council of Churches, based in Kenya. I take that as a sign that he has a heart for church unity just as I do. He's been involved in political peace negotiations both in South Africa in the bad old days of apartheid, and in Kenya after their more recent bout of post-election violence.

Imagine what such a leader of real integrity could do to the South African political scene right now? My mind reeled at the thoughts. But I was brought harshly back to reality when I remembered the last Methodist presiding bishop to enter political leadership, Stanley Mogoba. He became the leader of the deeply divided Pan-Africanist Congress in 1997 and while the party seemed to have enjoyed a short period of growth under his leadership, it remained pretty much divided and in political oblivion when his term ended in 2003. He seems to be remembered more for some injudicious remarks he apparently made about gays and lesbians, and for advocating amputation as a punishment for criminals, than for any good he did for the PAC or the country while leading the party. It seemed like a sad ending to Mogoba's great career of service.

I started feeling still more ambivalent when I talked with the family friends I was staying with in East London that evening. One said that men of the cloth had no business getting involved in partisan politics. Of course, it's right that the Church should be seen to transcend party politics, and the Methodist Church's current presiding bishop, Ivan Abrahams, did a good thing when he said that the church does not support any one party. As Jim Wallis in the USA loves to remind people, God does not belong to any one political party, and his people should be the ultimate swing voters, ready to vote for any party they believe best represents what is on his heart.

Despite all this, we're not going to have any Christian voice in political parties at all if we believers choose to remain outside the messiness of party politics, and Mvume has every right to get involved in a political party if that's where God is calling him. I'm sure he'd be one of the last people to suggest that COPE is the only party that Christians should vote for.

At the end of the day, Mvume Dandala, like Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and George Bush for that matter, is just a brother in Christ who has been sent into the harsh world of politics, where he requires much wisdom to retain his integrity and lead by following Jesus. So, as one of my father's colleagues said recently, we who are his brothers and sisters need to be praying hard for him. Let's not let our political leaders down in our duty to "pray... for kings and all others who are in authority, so that we can live in peace and quietness, in godliness and dignity." (1 Timothy 2:2) May our brothers and sisters in politics be able to live this way too!