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this page Newsletters - Families at the Frontiers of Faiths
South Africa
It is always easy to gloss over inter faith issues, particularly when we talk in terms of marriage. The reason is that, when two people are in love there does not seem to be anything that can stand in the way. People don't even think or discuss it, yet it is very important to talk about faith in pre-marital counselling. It is even a challenge sometimes when the couple belongs to different denominations, where none is willing to give up their denomination for another. It is even worse with other faiths.
I have a friend, who married a non-Christian; it was fortunate that they discussed it before marriage. The man allows her to go to her church, the children get baptised. He understood (which is rare) that it would not be easy for her. He asked her to respect his faith and its rituals, even though she does not believe in them. She accompanies him to his place of worship even though she does not believe. They agreed to let the children take the decisions about their faith when older. This is a rare case of the two parties understanding each other.
In some cases this becomes such a hopeless issue that even the children become caught up in the battle. Another challenge is that, in our culture, women are always expected to leave their church or faith and go to the man's church or faith. So it is the women who suffer loss all the time without even finding out how much she is attached to her own faith and how active and involved she is. It is always a pity that when a couple is still courting such issues are taken lightly.
I have a problem with Christians, in that we are very easily converted to other faiths. I think we need to build a very strong base in our faith from the beginning so that, like all the other faiths, we firmly build our family life on Christian values. We should not be arguing about whose Church is better than whose. We should concentrate on Christ's values and teachings.
The schools in South Africa have stopped praying in assembly, because there are people of other faiths. The Mothers' Union, have adopted some schools to do prayers with the children in the mornings. Some days which were Christian holidays have been scrapped e.g. Ascension Day. There is even talk to remove Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Christmas. This is because there is no other holiday from any faith which commemorates any of the events. This for me is very scary and homes and churches need to work very hard to cover the gap. My big concern is that families are disbanding very fast. We also have a lot of child-headed families, whose parents died having not taken them to church.
Most Christian communities are poor, so for starving children, there is very little help that they get. The Islamic faith go out to feed these hungry children and thus they gain them to their faith.
I don't know whether to call this a faith, but 'Satanism' is one of the very big problems facing us. These people have evil powers that are destructive. We have some of our youth that are Satanists. This is mostly because of the poverty, and for them to live a comfortable life, they convert to it.
I find it very strange that in all the other faiths except for Christians I observe very strong commitment. Every Friday afternoon from 1200 hours - 1500 hours all the Muslim shops close - however busy it is - and they go to the Mosque. You can not find a Christian shop closed because it is Sunday. Also you will never find people from other faiths who worship on Saturday attending gatherings or funerals because for them it is a sacred day for worship and nothing else. Christians don't mind whether it is Sunday or any special day; as long as they are invited they will choose whatever instead of church.
My fear is that in the case of Christian faith, we need to battle for it or else it will die a natural death. Let us be vigilant: teach, talk about our wonderful Christ who does great things and convince the youth. We have a faith in our country which allows men to be polygamous; more South African blacks are converting to it, so they can get as many wives as they wish.
For inter faith marriages, we need intense pre-marital counselling because in most cases such marriages do not work. In the Province of Southern Africa, the Mothers' Union is working together with an organisation called Family and Marriage in South Africa (FAMSA) to train trainers in Parenting, Marriage Counselling, Divorce Counselling, Human Resource Development, etc. When this is done by the M.U., we use the Bible to illustrate our teachings. We then shall do these workshops in our churches.
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