{"id":1094,"date":"2008-12-27T19:18:59","date_gmt":"2008-12-28T03:18:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=1094"},"modified":"2008-12-27T19:18:59","modified_gmt":"2008-12-28T03:18:59","slug":"as-an-atheist-i-truly-believe-africa-needs-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/as-an-atheist-i-truly-believe-africa-needs-god\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Matthew Parris, longtime fixture of center-right British journalism at publications like The Spectator, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/comment\/columnists\/matthew_parris\/article5400568.ece\">has been thinking about the intractable problems of Africa<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the \u201cbig man\u201d and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosophical\/spiritual framework I&#8217;ve just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Another version of the oft-heard &#8220;useful whether or not true&#8221; argument? An analogue to what economists sometimes call the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Theory_of_the_Second_Best\">theory of the second best<\/a>&#8220;? Or some third thing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matthew Parris, longtime fixture of center-right British journalism at publications like The Spectator, has been thinking about the intractable problems of Africa: &#8230;I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/as-an-atheist-i-truly-believe-africa-needs-god\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[150,149,148],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1094"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1097,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094\/revisions\/1097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}