Studies
5.3.2 Findings on church and political issues in the DR Congo
5.3.2.1 Objective one: The relevance of a prophetic voice in the context of political turbulence in the DR Congo
Five questions in the questionnaire were aimed at obtaining results for the first objective, namely, to understand the relevance of a prophetic voice in the context of political turbulence in the DR Congo.
The first of these questions asks the church leaders “to indicate their agreement that the Protestant Church must be involved in political issues”. The study uses a T-test to assess the following hypotheses.
Ho: Church leaders should not be involved in political affairs in the DR Congo.
H1: Church leader leaders should be involved in political affairs in the DR Congo.
Table 18: T test of involvement of the church in politics
Indicate your agreement that the Protestant Church in
Congo must be involved in political issues Frequenc
y Percent
Valid Percent
Cumulative Percent
Valid Strongly disagree 4 4.8 4.9 4.9
Disagree 4 4.8 4.9 9.8
Neutral 15 18.1 18.3 28.0
Agree 37 44.6 45.1 73.2
Strongly agree 22 26.5 26.8 100.0
Total 82 98.8 100.0
Missi ng
System 1 1.2
Total 83 100.0
Source: Author’s computation
172
Table 19: One simple statistic of church involvement in politics
One-Sample Statistics
N Mean
Std.
Deviation Std. Error Mean B1 Indicate your agreement that the Protestant Church in Congo
must be involved in political issues
82 3.84 1.036 .114
Table 20: One simple test on involvement of the church in politics
One-Sample Test
Test Value = 3 Hypothesis
t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Difference
95% Confidence Interval of the Difference
Lower Upper
B1 Indicate your agreement that the Protestant Church in Congo must be involved in political issues
7.355 81 .000 .841 .61 1.07
Source: Author’s computation
The result shows the mean score >3 (3.84), with standard of deviation 1.036 and standard error of .114. The one-sample test indicates the t of 7.355, the df of 81 and a sig of .000.
The mean of the difference is .841. According to the above result there is significant agreement (M=3.84, SD=1.036). That score means that the Protestant Church in the DR Congo should be involved in political issues, t (81) =7.355, p<.0005. In other words, one rejects the null hypothesis that church leaders should not be involved in political affairs in the country. Moreover, the cumulative percentage of the descriptive table 1 confirms that 73 percent of the respondents supports that church leaders should be involved in political affairs in DR Congo. This is in accordance with such scholars as Zwingli who approved of church involvement in social life, although this viewpoint drew some criticism from, among others, Calvin. At the time of Zwingli, the corpus christianum was a unified, single Christian society. Courvoisier (1963:79) writing about Zwingli’s position on church-state
173
relationships, stresses that conceptions of church and state today are not necessary the same as in the 16th century.
As shown in figure 4, almost 70 percent of church leaders in the ECC have a minimum of twenty years of experience in dealing with social issues. In regard of the first objective of this study, a further test is done to determine if church leaders’ willingness to be involved in political issues differs across categories of experience. ANOVA was applied (see table 1, 22) and indicated that responses differ significantly across categories of experience, F (4,76) = 5.134, p=.001. Those with 0-5 years of experience agree significantly less with church involvement in socio-politics than those with more years of experience. The more experienced the church leaders are, the more they welcome the concept of the Protestant Church fulfilling a role in socio-political affairs in the DR Congo. Why does the amount of experience in the ministry influence church leaders’ perceptions of socio-political responsibilities? Perhaps they have seen in their ministry too much of what poverty and war do to people and become sensitized to the connection between ministry and the outside world.
The second question posed in the context of the first objective is: “To what extent do you think the ECC/General Direction is politically involved in a prophetic way?”. The one sample test was applied to test for a significance extent. The test reports a mean of 2.54 and the std deviation at 1.509 with the std error means of .170, t is -2.684, df 78 and the Sig .009 with the mean difference of -.456. The mean in this case being <3, the Protestant Church is of lesser significance in the prophetic way. This shows that the Congolese Protestant Church is not involved in political issues in a prophetic way. The prophetic voice has been explained as the fact of standing up and speaking out, impartially, according to the will of God, for the well-being of the people. The prophetic theology speaks of, and speaks to, a particular time to a particular place about a particular situation (Maduro, 1989:433). This confirms the public view of the Congolese who perceive of the Protestant Church as being one-sided in its support of government and as lacking in criticism. Concerning this point, I am of the view that the task of church authorities is not to make laws, but to secure the obedience of Christians and rulers and ensure that they
174
act according to the gospel (Thompson, 1984: 127). The study results explicitly show the lack of a prophetic mission in the Protestant Church of the DR Congo.
A third question states: “Is the ECC engaged in political issues in your province?” The binomial test used in this question demonstrates that the church leaders are divided on this point. 57.8 Percent of respondents opine that the ECC is not engaged in political affairs in their provinces (figure 7). Is that result sufficiently significant to be generalized in the study? Based on the Z approximation, the result is not significant (p=0.187>0.05), because the proportion responding ‘yes’ is not significantly different from the proportion that answered ‘no’.
Another question asks the respondents “to Indicate the impact of the church’s involvement on the political instability and turbulence in the country”.
The one-sample t- test shows that the mean is 2.15 and std deviation is 1.246. It shows a mean < 3. This indicates a lesser impact. It leads to the conclusion that the way in which the Protestant Church in Congo is involved in matters of political stability and turbulence in the country does not impact society. This poses an enormous challenge to the church which is supposed to be the salt and the light of society. The Church is seen as a guard of society. So, why does the work it is supposed to do have no impact to speak of in society? One reason is that there is in the Church no organised system for dealing with political issues. Often isolated voices are heard, calling for political responsibility.
Question 13 provides more insight into ways in which Church involvement might become more effective. It is important not to focus only on acting but to assess how actions affect society. The sense of public theology lies not so much in its meaning for the Church but in what it does for oppressed and marginalised people. This impact requires outsider judgment.
When doing the bivariate analysis considering the position of Church leaders in the ECC and the impact of ECC involvement in socio-politics, both provincial and non-provincial presidents were significantly agreed on the lesser impact of the church’s involvement (see table 3).
175
The fifth question is: “Has your community ever been involved in political issues?” The question is dealt with using both quantitative and qualitative methods.
Table 21: Has your community been involved in politics?
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent
Valid Yes 35 42.2 42.2 42.2
No 48 57.8 57.8 100.0
Total 83 100.0 100.0
Source: Author’s computation
57.8 Percent of Church leaders stated that their communities are not involved in political issues whereas the communities of 42.2 percent of Church leaders are.
The result of the question, based on Z approximation, does not allow us to conclude that the majority population claims their communities are not involved in socio-politics.
The table indicates the non-commitment of the local churches in the matter.
The second part of this question presents the various ways in which respondents perceive involvement in political issues.
How are the churches of different communities throughout the DR Congo involved in political affairs? What means involvement in socio-politics to these leaders? Five key themes were identified in responses.
i. The first theme concerns advocacy. Some churches are involved in solving social conflicts. One case involves a community in the province of Kongo Central which made various declarations and attempted to solve conflicts over the mystic-religion ‘Bundu dia Mayala’, whereby they opposed the provincial government and the mayor of the city of Boma. A similar case was reported from Kasai province. One church leader writes:
“We fought against tribal conflicts between Katangais and Kasaiens”. Such advocacy is also applied by other churches who make themselves available, through their leaders, to contact and discuss problems of a political nature with the authorities. The Church leaders in question act as
176
advisers to some politicians, building inter-dependent relationships with them. One of the Church leaders states: “We usually are asked by politicians to give our points of view in different situations”.
ii. A second form of involvement is by direct implication (for example, participation in parliament). Church leaders whose communities engage with socio-politics, mostly advanced this type of involvement as prominent.
Those leaders who are of the opinion that involvement should entail direct participation in political structures, argue that they have to motivate people to enlist for elections and we encourage laity to make themselves available for membership of parliament. The leaders also declare they are involved in electing members of parliament while their churches fulfil many political responsibilities. Many members of the church are members of government and opposition structures. Leaders argued that they are ready to apply as deputies at national and provincial levels and participate in certain national meetings while they are often consulted when church members are willingly involved in political affairs. If they are elected as national or provincial deputes, they are consulted in cases where laity is involved. In the words of respondents: Our pastors apply as deputy and we have several in the two chambers of parliament or functioning as prosecutors and in other institutions. There are among our laity provincial and national ministers; as well as members of parliament although, unfortunately, these have deserted the church. We organise meetings for peace, for purposes of education and to encourage people to participate in elections. We motivate our young brothers to present deputations.” Another question associated with direct involvement in political structures is concerned with the impact of faith commitment on such involvement. And, in addition, how to interpret the declaration by one church leader that a particular community has some parliament members but that, “unfortunately, they deserted the church? In the view of respondents, political structures are also formed by some church leaders. In general, a minimum of participation in politics is seen from a sense or another.
177
iii. Training activities. Another way of being involved is by focusing on training and educating church members on the practice and significance of elections and on the engagement of Protestant leaders in political