The SABC, South Africa’s national radio and TV broadcaster, has scheduled “A Prayer for Africa” for next Wednesday, 11 June 2008. The announcement was made on TV today; however, so far, no web links have been found concerning the event. Issues to be prayed for are overall healing, common peace and general harmony for all 50+ African states and their peoples. While the sentiment is admirable, one fears that the methodology deployed towards achieving the intended goal is perhaps less than optimally configured. This anxiety is compounded significantly by the fact that Africa has about as diverse a range of religious camps as can be imagined. This opens the door for each such faction to accuse all of the others of not praying hard enough and/or praying to a fictitious god.
Still and all, one waits with keen interest to see which deity, if any, will take up Africa’s cause.
I must say, I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, it could be a good thing. Uniting people with a common goal towards good cannot be that bad. But on the other hand it promotes the idea that all we have to do is pray and all will be well. Instead of proactively doing something substantial towards that goal.
On the diversity of religions, luckily one thing religion has always been good with, is ignoring the obvious logical clashes in pursuit of its goals
I agree with this point and I with your next point.
This for me is key. Picking up on an issue and motivating people to be concerned about the issue especially using the national broadcaster to get peoples attention is great, but then they totally stuff it up by basically getting everyone to stop for a bit during a day and contribute - by what is the equivalent of holding thumbs! This is a plain abuse of the national broadcaster, but I guess at the moment they are a little to busy to worry about what other people think?
And which one(s) gets blamed for causing all the problems?
