Bishop Trevor Huddleston

BISHOP TREVOR HUDDLESTON

In March of this year, shortly after the release of Nelson Mandela, we were privileged to receive a visit from the Rt. Reverend Bishop Trevor Huddleston, CR. A former Bishop of Stepney and Archbishop of the Indian Ocean, Bishop Huddleston is best known for his work in the struggle against apartheid, both in Africa and in this country. Bishop Huddleston gave an address to the School at Evensong on Sunday, March 9th, and at Chapel the next day. Below we print the abridged text of his Evensong address:

I would like to begin with something that is familiar to many of you, when we were looking night after night at the events in Tiananmen Square in Peking, until that moment when the whole square was empty except for a column of tanks bearing down across the square to clear it. There in their path stood one of the young students who had been taking part in that great demonstration for freedom. And he stood alone, and the first tank came within about six feet of him and stopped, and he stood. The tank swerved away to the right and he moved with it, and he stood. The tank swerved back again, and again he moved with it, and he stood, a tremendous symbol of that inexpressible power which sometimes takes hold of frailty and weakness and makes it so strong that it is irresistible. And the text which I have chosen tonight, which I hope you will take out with you into the world, has a bearing on that symbol, on that moment. It's a very simple text, one which you can't easily forget, and it says this: "We are not in search of death; we are in search of real life".

You won't find it in holy scripture. You'll find it if you look for it in a declaration made by those young students, some of whom went on a hunger strike in order to draw the attention of the world community to what they were trying to express.

Those young students clearly were not Christians. They were brought up in an ideological framework of Maoism and Marxism or a combination of both, and yet that first paragraph of their declaration is the most profound Christian and religious statement that I have heard for many years. "We are not in search of death; we are in search of real life". That lies at the heart of the struggle for freedom at this particular moment in our history. What a privilege it is to be alive at this particular moment, when in an unpredictable and unaccountable way not only across Eastern Europe but across the world is the single determination to be free. To be free for what? To be free to be human.

That's what those young Chinese protesters were saying and doing, and for which many of them of course lost their lives. And this is the challenge which confronts the Christian Church throughout the world. And how in fact is the Church responding to this challenge? That's the question. To me it is an almost incredible thing that here, confronted with this challenge to what we profess to believe, we do not rise up with one voice, because we are so preoccupied with sustaining the institution to which we belong, the institutional Church itself, that we haven't the time. We're so concerned about the ordination of women and other things, each in its own way no doubt very important within the Christian institution but basically of no significance compared with the challenge of today. For me there is one country that is at the heart of that struggle — South Africa.

There are very few advantages in being as old as I am, but there are some. For me the greatest advantage and the greatest blessing has been to have been involved in the liberation struggle in South Africa for forty-six years. For me Nelson Mandela is not a distant symbol: we worked together; we protested together against the evil of apartheid, in my case as a direct response to that which was destroying a whole community.

There is talk of reforming apartheid today. You cannot reform apartheid. Apartheid, like slavery, like cancer, is irreformable, because it is basically and fundamentally evil, and all the evils which have beset the people of South Africa for most of this century have sprung from a conception which is diametrically opposed to the fundamental belief that as Christians we profess to hold. We say in our creed, and we repeat in our hymns and our prayers, that we believe that God is not someone out beyond the shining of the farthest star, but that he has given to every single human being, across every barrier of race and colour and creed and culture and language, an infinite and unassailable dignity. Apartheid denies this. Apartheid from its very conception asserts that this is not true, that those of one colour and one race are in fact inferior to those of another; and not just that they are inferior, but that they must understand this inferiority, accept it, live by it, and to that end all law and all custom and the entire constitutional frame of the whole country must be put forth as unassailable itself. That is apartheid.

I am not speaking as someone who has studied the subject, I am speaking as someone who has lived with it, who has seen in thousands and thousands of cases people who have been destroyed by it, their gifts and talents denied fruition by it. Repression of the most vile and persistent kind for over forty years has been enshrined in the laws of South Africa and imposed by military and paramilitary and police force on the entire black population. That is apartheid.

The basic law of apartheid was the law passed by the British Parliament in 1912 known as the Native Land Act, which defined 87 per cent of the total land area of South Africa as white — all the great cities, all the ports and harbours, all the best agricultural land and the gold mines, 87 per cent of that vast and rich country proclaimed as white, and 13 per cent set aside for native occupation. That act is still on the statute book. It has never been repealed. Over the years since the present government came to power, that act has been followed by act after act implementing it in different ways: for instance, the Population Registration Act, defining race by the colour of your skin and the kind of hair you have, that act which has brought untold misery to families, particularly to the coloured people of mixed race. They can find one child defined as black, another as coloured, and another as white.

I am not exaggerating. I am saying this because today — thank God — we have cause for hope, we have cause for celebration. The sign and symbol of that hope and celebration is Nelson Mandela himself. He is the representative of hundreds of thousands of people whose lives have been destroyed by apartheid, and are still being destroyed by apartheid as I speak to you.

Of course, thank God for the signs of movement towards freedom and liberation in South Africa. But don't forget that apartheid is still there: not one single act in the whole apartheid structure has been repealed. Nelson Mandela steps out into a country in which apartheid is still as strong — and in many respects stronger — as when he went to prison. And so we are at the beginning of the end. "We are not in search of death; we are in search of real life."

That's the inspiration. That's the challenge of this present moment. And isn't it something to thank God for that we can play our part, each single one of us, in making certain that that evil is destroyed, not in five years, not in five months, not in five days, but now? We must keep up the pressure. So, the challenge remains. Are we prepared to respond to it? I believe that as Christians we have no option. I challenge you to think in what direct way, within the democratic structures of this country, you can realise that challenge.

I shall be meeting Mandela in a few days, after thirtyfive years, thirty-five years in which he has not been allowed out and I have not been allowed in. I want to quote, to end my address, the words of a very remarkable white Afrikaner South African poet, Ingrid Jonker, who was consumed by a dark foreboding and overwhelming despair, and committed suicide at the young age of thirtytwo. Before she died she wrote this about her country:

The child is not dead. The child lifts his fists against his mother, Who shouts "Africa!" Shouts the breath of freedom and the veldt In the locations of the cordoned heart. The child is not dead, Not at Langa, nor at Nyanga, Nor at Orlando, nor at Sharpeville, Nor at the police post at Philippi, Where he lies with a bullet through his brain. The child is the dark shadow over soldiers On guard with their rifles, Saracens and batons. The child is present at all assemblies and law-giving. The child peers through the windows of houses And into the hearts of mothers. This child, who wanted only to play in the sun at

Nyanga, Is everywhere. The child is grown to a man And treks on through all Africa. The child, grown into a giant, Journeys over the whole world Without a pass.

Where, then, is the hope? Everywhere. I am not an optimist, I am not euphoric about the marvellous things that have been happening in the last few weeks. I am not so, because as a Christian I base everything on hope, on a future that accords with God's will and purpose in creating us in His image and likeness, taking flesh and identifying with us across all barriers, and from time to time in the long measure of history forcing us to answer the question: "We are not in search of death; we are in search of real life." Well, are we?