By Jameson Kurasha

This reflection is timely because something is not right. Modern inventors and thinkers have made memorable tools, observations, statements and social dreams. These inventions and statements have, in turn, been fruitful. Dr. Schwartz’s paper and reality both evidence this. We have our medicines and other material comforts and we have great institutions such as our churches, firms, and colleges. However, it is very disturbing that those institutions which are the source of our pride as the human race are also mediums of real or potential evil. Something reminds us that things are not right. We can all see ‘it’ and feel it with the eye and finger of the mind and heart but we are helpless.

From the classical philosophers we know that man is a social being. Christ came three and half centuries later and showed men and women how to live good lives. The first Christians powerfully illustrated his patterns. For centuries Christians demonstrated the multi-cultural ideals of the early believers. However, at very crucial moments throughout history, people and institutions fail to live up to their ideals in spite of prophetic reminders of the same ideals. Did not John Locke remind them of something already known to them: "that all men are created equal"? Why did the founding fathers in America have to make it a constitutional matter to remind the world of what is so self-evident and then go even further by making it a legal affair? Why was the Union endangered and why did so many soldiers die only to be reminded by President Lincoln of what the Greek philosophers had said 350 years before Christ — what St. Paul had reminded all generations to come: that "we are one in Christ" — when he said that the nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are made equal? Why did the institutions relapse for one hundred years before Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded them of his dream?

Just in case the reader and the listener misunderstands the speaker as being provincial in his observations and cases, a pardon ought to be sought because the cases that are all-American are used basically for communication purposes. Modernity is the same everywhere. It is similar in Africa. The ideals of the American founders are very similar to the ideals of African liberators such as Dr. Kwame Nkurumah and run constant all the way to Nelson Mandela. Christian institutions and educational institutions have moved into the realm of these great ideals but, like their counterparts world over, have undermined those ideals in practice. In his doctoral thesis, the African philosopher Kaulemu tries to make sense of African modernity and the morality of its institutions. He finds it a confounding paradox. Kaulemu discovers the same problem in African modernity — memorable ideals but there is something wrong and it carries deadly consequences.

The point is that Dr Schwartz’s paper has a universal appeal in spite of our contextual metaphors. It is valuable because it reminds us that our institutions are products of a rich cultural tradition rooted in Christian belief. I agree with his observations that Christianity has been very influential and is intertwined with developments including the spreading of the gospel. In its high moments Christianity teamed up with modern institutions on mission to educate, to fight against disease, above all to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. In its lower moments it was part of the colonial teams. During the colonization of Africa there was hardly a colonial expedition without a missionary. On the other hand Christianity contributed to developments against colonial interests by ‘educating’ slaves into deep spirituality and by educating and healing African liberators who stood, and in many instances still stand, for great ideals but from time to time are inclined to undermine those ideals — the paradox of modernity.

Moral Intermission & Hypertension

However, if we do not take note of what Dr. Schwartz is saying, our great institutions in America and in many parts of the world will once again experience long and painful moral intermissions or recessions similar to those experienced after the Greek philosophers, after the fall of Rome, after several revolutions in Europe, after the Civil War in America and now after the release of Mandela. I call these intermissions — evil systems modern institutions walk in and out of — hypertensions. Both medically speaking and philosophically speaking, hypertension is a silent killer. It is also genetically transmitted.

Hypertension was so deadly to modern ideals that it killed the ideal of Locke. When Jefferson and the founding fathers cloned Locke’s ideal in the constitution the silent killer struck again. Historically, there followed a long moral recession where the hypertension could have been complicated by diabetes — the Union lost its "weight" until Lincoln’s declarations at Gettysburg. "It" quietly steals the health of the human family almost 100 years later. We hear the voices of Gandhi, King, and Mandela calling 911. By the time Mandela was rescued, the situation was very critical. Next time it is a stroke.

The Consequences of Dr Schwartz’s Vision

security of zebra stripes & fate moral altruists.

Dr. Schwartz, like Dr. King, has identified very serious problems with our institutions. Those problems have religious, moral, political, strategic, and philosophical implications.

The religious implications are self-evident. Our faith is badly divided in its membership today. It is a federation of believing ethnicities. At best it resembles the zebra stripes — which, incidentally, was the model of apartheid: to develop equally but separately. "We cannot do much about this turn of events." We see it, we bluff around it by being "pragmatic" or "realistic." Needless to say, such a conception of pragmatism is philosophically wrong and that notion of realism implies theological defeatism. At best it means that the old racial suspicions and tensions are still intact. In a global village institutions of the church should be bringing people together rather than accepting federal ethnicity as ‘natural’ and as ‘reality’. The Christian church cannot accept, but maybe should accept, that in matters of fellowship the Muslims in Mecca have demonstrated year after year, in a very small way, what the Lord had in mind — people from all nations, classes, and languages melting together to meet Divine expectations.

It is also evident that in our ethnicization of countries and institutions, we create enclosures and mysteries and suspicions and therefore negative energies used to divide rather than to free and unite. Professor Heirrich Beck of Bamberg in Germany, like Dr. Schwartz in Western New York, had a dream in the 1970s to see the Berlin wall fall materially and spiritually through the encounter of world cultures when he founded the ‘School of Philosophy’ of Creative Peace. When cultures encounter they create a dialogue and the debates in such dialogues can only make us better, not bitter.

The consequences of Dr. Schwartz’s paper are epistemological. Do black students have something to learn from Billy Graham? Why do predominantly black college bookshops have so little on Billy Graham? Do white students have something to learn from Martin Luther King? Why do bookshops in predominantly white colleges have little or nothing on Martin Luther King? The reaction in a ‘white college’ might be:- "We are only a small bookshop and we cannot store everything." But McAlester College produced the current Secretary General of the United Nations. The reaction in a ‘black college’ could be:- "We have had enough of white studies. We need to focus on black people — being more Afro-Centric." The sad side to those sectarian epistemologies becomes so obvious when Tony Blair comes to Washington and some of our leading journalists refer to him as ‘Prime Minister Major’. Now, do not get me wrong. It is not an evil not to have Martin Luther King’s works or Billy Graham’s works in the bookstore or Jefferson’s writings in an African University. The people are as good as any member of the community. In fact they are better informed about publications and literature than most of us academics. That epistemological problem is rooted in our Federation of Ethnicities. Conscientization is best realized through multicultural approaches using multimedia for sure, and multicultural resources. Time and space does not allow us to explore this very significant topic in details. Dr Schwartz has initiated us - after all is not education just that - ‘initiation’ -according to Richard Stanley Peters?

The major problem with Dr. Schwartz’s vision is that of surviving institutional hypertension. As mentioned above, institutional politics killed similar visions time and again during the last 2000 years. Christ, our Lord, talked of the salt of the earth as a preservative. Salt in a diagnosis of hypertension contributes to ill health or death. Institutional salt is a silent killer of dreams and of careers of individual dreamers. In the board rooms institutional salts recommend "silence" as a passive resistant method against such ideals. Yes, a few voices might be vocal against moral ideals such as multiculturalism. But the majority of the "wise" voices remain silent or actively frustrate and thwart the dreams and dedications of visionaries. That is true of African modernity and I have no doubt that it can also be true of American modernity. It is true in corporate life. Apparently it is true in churches and church-run institutions including colleges.

Both the political and the moral might require advocates of such ideals to be prepared to face dangerous consequences in reputation and careers because that is invariably the fate of moral altruists. If you stop to help the bleeding stranger on the dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho you most likely look unwise because modern rationality says, "Be prudent and think of the consequences." Ask before you stop, "What will happen to me if I stop to help this stranger?" God’s moral law says ask, "What will happen to the stranger if I do not stop." In practical terms the right question requires an African academic to stand up and ask what will happen to a student activist who is likely to be expelled from the University because he stood up for freedom of speech and justice; or to a woman who has an independent voice which does not suit the corporate culture and has therefore been denied tenure; or to a professor of color who has been denied appointment because he or she might not be acceptable to the alumni, citing cultural differences — "Nothing personal, you understand." Moral voice against political authority is dangerous!

Martin Luther King, Jr. said to academics and ministers of faith in Africa and America that if a man is afraid to die for a good cause his life is not worth living. By implication, if a school is not ready to stand up for the ideals of Christ, Paul, Locke, Jefferson, Lincoln, King, and Mandela it is not worth its name. My question to modern and post modern institutions is this: Apartheid, with its business, religious, political, and academic companions jailed Mandela for 27 years. Are we — academics, Christians, alumni, donors and ‘customers’ — going to imprison the truth just for a few more years? Dr. Schwartz states that:- that is wrong. He commands us to choose multiculturalism standing firmly under two principles - truth and justice.