Mekelle,Narobi,Pretoria,London, March 8፡2025 (Tigray Herald)
The Public Theology Fellowship met this morning, and our session focused on how our fellows are observing religion in public life.
By Andrew DeCort
An Ethiopian medical doctor talked about how people in his region are treated as “less than animals.” He described how they don’t have access to food, medicine, or the medical equipment they need to survive.
Another fellow noted that the Prime Minister’s beautification project in Addis Ababa is “erasing” the impoverished children in her neighborhood. She asked, “Do we even notice their absence?”
Also today, Franklin Graham is preaching in the central square in Addis Ababa. Of course, he is representing an American president who has cut off aid to these people desperate for food, medicine, and shelter. Graham will talk about “saving souls” and smile with the most powerful ministers in town. These same men supported Ethiopia’s devastating civil war – or simply chose to remain silent in the face of it. But Graham’s presence with them will further cement them as the public representatives of “God.”
The events of today are an example of why we need public theology – theology that analyses how we see God and public life. Some of us are focused on patients who have no medication and homeless children who have been “erased” in the name of “beauty”; thus we ask what it means to respect the image of God in others. But some of us are focused on singing songs in the capital city, “getting people saved,” and smiling in pictures with powerful men who stand for war.
The word “evangelism” means spreading “good news.” I ask: which of these is good news? Caring for the suffering neighbor or hosting a religious spectacle that masks cutting off the aid our neighbors so desperately need and further validating men who have sided with violent power?
Jesus was clear. He said that the Spirit of the Lord empowered him to speak “good news to the poor.” Unless our words and work can be heard as good news for patients with no medicine and children with no homes, it is unclear if it has any real connection to Jesus.
Please don’t forget: Jesus explicitly said that we can perform miracles, drive out demons, and call him “Lord,” but if that is disconnected from loving our enemies and healing our conflicts, we’ve missed the point and have no part in God’s kingdom.
