Courage to Change - Dom Helder

Come April and I'm off to the sunshine of Brazil, to Recife in the north east to be precise. Yes I am fed up with this cold damp winter in the UK but there are more acceptable reasons for going to Recife - like work! Preparing for a week in Recife with mission leaders from around the world I decided I ought to get back in touch with one of my school boy heros. Despite my 'evangelical credentials' (did I hear you say, 'what credentials?') I received all my secondary education at a Roman Catholic school run by some fantastic religious brothers who taught me how to drink, enjoy worship, and get hooked on theoretical physics! But I digress. My schooling coincided with the Second Vatical Council and the hero of that great meeting in Rome for me was the Brazilian bishop Dom Helder Camara - champion of liberation theology, or more correctly, champion of the poor. He was bishop of Recife.

Not having read any of his thinking for almost 40 years I picked up Francis McDonagh's little book Dom Helder Camara - Essential Writtings, published by Orbis just last year. It has been great to read him again and I hope it is preparing me for something of the reality of 2010 Brazil, but the book also gave me a great shock. McDonagh begins her selection of writings with a short biography of the man and after a few pages I found myself reading about a young man who enthuisatically joined and then led the fascist Integralist movement in Brazil. That just dodn't fit for me - McDonagh must have got it wrong. How could the great champion of the poor, famous for his work with Catholic Action and his support for liberation theologians - a bishop who was often accused (unjustly) of being a communist - have recruited fascists? But it seems he did.

It was only some years after his ordination that his ministry amongst the poor of Recife and his faith in the poor man Jesus led him to reject fascism and embrace a whole new understanding of God's priority for the poor. Don Helder was a man big enough to admit his mistakes, to redirect his life, to change, to move on. We need more big men like him.

He wrote in 1970, "A people united and organised, a people united and relying of the grace of God, will rise up from poverty without hatred or violence, but with decision and courage."

Courage to change - Jack

I very much doubt whether you have ever heard of Jack Sparks - he died in Alaska a few days ago, aged 81. For years I had known, and been fascinated by, Jack's story and then seven years ago I found myself in Alaska (as you do!) and so headed straight off to Eagle River (great name - great place) to meet him, just a year after he had moved there from California. It was an interesting meeting.

So what's the story? Jack was a national leader with the very evangelical student movement called Campus Crusade for Christ in San Bernadino, California during the sunshine, 'flowers in your hair' and LSD years of the 1960s. In his desire to share his faith in Jesus he published a range of rather way out newspapers and then created the Christian World Liberation Front (what a 1960s name!) to minister amongst hippies and students. I was running a few years behind Jack, joining Campus Crusade in 1969 when my hair was very long and my flares very wide (but I missed out on the LSD - honest!) There would have been nothing unusal about Jack's story (Campus Crusade evangelists are not that rare) except that a decade later he, and a group of Campus Crusade leaders, decided to join the Orthodox Church! The crunch came for Jack when he saw so many of the young people he had introduced to Jesus just packing up their faith with their flares when they left university, cut their hair, threw away their CND badges and got a 'proper job'. Jesus, for so many was part of the hippie, student, package but an unafforable luxury when real life came along. Jack saw that Jesus freeks needed to find a home - in a church! He set out looking for the New Testament church and discovered Orthodoxy.

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Jack never gave up sharing his faith, getting young people excited about Jesus, but now he could bring them home - to his home - to the community of Orthodox Christians. It's a long road from Campus Crusade director to Orthodox priest (Jack was ordained in 1987), and it takes courage to travel that road, but Jack was a man of courage and convictions. I'm glad I met Jack, just that once, and I'm glad I discovered Orthodox Christians as well as Campus Crusade - I needed them both.