Category Archives: International

A Missionary Elephant

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I found the following interesting paragraph in an article Myanmar:a hidden harvest by Tim Houghton, grandson of pioneer missionaries in the north of what was then Burma. I received this as publicity for the mission society Crosslinks, formerly BCMS. In fact I found the full article online.

In 1942 invasion by the Japanese meant that the missionaries had to escape from Burma by sea, air or, most remarkably, by foot across the northern ranges in what has become known as ‘The Muddy Exodus’. At the heart of this legendary trek was Maggie, the faithful BCMS elephant, who for years had kept communication open through the Hukawng valley in both monsoon and dry seasons. In her finest hour, Maggie helped both missionaries and soldiers through the Naga hills to safety in India.

It is interesting to see some of the different ways which have been used to spread the gospel, and in this case to save the lives of God’s servants.

Who was St Stephen the Great?

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The story of how the SPCK bookshops were taken over by St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust, recently in the news, prompts me to this purely historical study of who this St Stephen the Great might be. I remembered only one thing, that he is not the biblical Stephen, the first Christian martyr. I thought I had remembered another fact, that he was a Serb like Radovan Karadzic, but it turns out that my memory was faulty.

It was hard to find good information about this St Stephen. I did manage to find the following transcription of Mark Brewer’s words from a video, but only courtesy of a Google cache as this is from one of the posts by Dave Walker whose deletion Mark Brewer seems to have demanded.

I’m Mark Brewer, Chairman of the Saint Stephen the Great charitable trust. Who was Saint Stephen the great? He was a man who lived in the fifteenth century who fought some forty seven battles against the Muslim Turks who were invading Eastern Europe at that time. During his lifetime, after every battle he commemorated a church, built a new church to the glory of God throughout eastern Romania. He restored churches that had been destroyed by the Ottoman Turks. He is therefore a very fitting patron saint for this trust. We want to aspire to do the very same thing that Saint Stephen did, we want to rescue restore and re-energise the churches of this great country to the glory of God and to the salvation of the people.

I also found with some difficulty a Wikipedia article about St Stephen the Great, who in fact seems to have been a 15th century ruler of Moldavia (Moldova). He does indeed seem to have been a great defender of the cause of state-controlled Christianity in eastern Romania. So it is not surprising that he was canonised by the Romanian Orthodox Church, and is even now considered in Romania to be the greatest Romanian of all time.

But there is another side to this man at least in his associates. The details are sketchy, but Stephen seems to have been a close relative of Vlad the Impaler, otherwise known as Dracula, Stephen’s contemporary as ruler of Wallachia (southern Romania). The name “Dracula” comes from the Order of the Dragon (dracul, a stange symbol for a supposedly Christian order) into which he had been initiated as a child. The two rulers were close associates. As young man Stephen fled to Vlad’s court for protection from his enemies; he sent troops to help Vlad regain his throne; and later he married Vlad’s niece. Vlad also defended Romania from Turkish invaders, and on one occasion managed to impale 20,000 Turkish prisoners. He probably avoided being canonised by the Orthodox by later converting to Catholicism.

Stephen doesn’t seem to have been the same kind of cruel character as Vlad. But, despite the claim that “He was victorious in 34 of his 36 battles”, he ended up losing the war and having to cede sovereignty over his lands to the Muslim invaders:

Finally on 20 August 1503 he concluded a treaty with Sultan Beyazid II that preserved Moldavia’s self rule, at the cost of an annual tribute to the Turks. From the 16th century on, the Principality of Moldavia would spend three hundred years as an Ottoman vassal.

Is this man a fitting patron saint for today? I would not presume to comment.

Why I am ignoring Burma and China

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I have not been moved greatly by the natural disasters in Burma (Myanmar) and China. Why not? Am I callous? I sometimes feel a bit guilty for this. But somehow deep down these things do not move me.

One thing that I could say is that the tens of thousands who die in high profile disasters like these are in fact a small number compared with those dying every year from largely treatable diseases like malaria, which causes over a million deaths a year. It may seem callous to calculate like this, but there are probably more lives saved or rebuilt per buck from providing simple mosquito nets to poor Africans than from responding to the latest fashionable disaster appeal.

But there is also a more theological reason for not focusing on natural disasters, which is well put by John Hobbins quoting David Hart:

[T]here is no more liberating knowledge given us by the gospel — and none in which we should find more comfort — than the knowledge that suffering and death, considered in themselves, have no ultimate meaning at all.

Hart’s essay is profound, and also touches on how this matter relates to understandings of the atonement. If this extract doesn’t make sense to you, read it all. It is in line with Hart’s conclusions that John adds:

Suffering and death have no meaning whatsoever except insofar as they will be vanquished forever.

Indeed! To Christians death should be a joyful release from this earth (2 Corinthians 5:1-4), although of course tinged with sadness for those left behind, and suffering is temporary and a preparation for greater glory (2 Corinthians 4:17). As for those who die without explicitly being Christians, it may well be that God reveals himself to them in their dying moments; or maybe God knew that they would never repent and believe and so there was no point in keeping them alive. In any case, God is in control of all this. We should avoid falling into the world’s way of thinking in which death is the ultimate disaster.

So, as Christians we should not let ourselves be distracted by giving excessive attention to natural disasters, which are bound to come, but should keep our focus on the work of building God’s kingdom.

Being read on an African beach

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I must say it is a rather nice thought that Lingamish has been reading my posts, about literary translation, on his mobile phone while lounging in a hammock outside a beach hut in one of the remotest corners of Africa. He even has the pictures to prove it. As my ClustrMap shows, this blog is attracting readers in nearly every part of the world; there are obvious reasons why north Africa and central Asia are rather thinly represented.

It would of course be an even nicer thought if I was able to join Lingamish on the African beach, to blog from there and not just be read there, rather than suffer the increasing cold of an English autumn. Actually it has been rather pleasant here for the last few days, but frost is on its way and I am not looking forward to it.

It takes one colonial power to recognise another

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Russian President Vladimir Putin today, as reported by the BBC in support of his refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, accused of the murder of Alexander Litvinenko:

“They have long forgotten that it is a long time since Britain was a colonial power,” he told Russian TV.

Also on the BBC today:

Russia is sending a mini-submarine to explore the ocean floor below the North Pole and find evidence to support its claims to Arctic territory. … Moscow argued before a UN commission in 2001 that waters off its northern coast were in fact an extension of its maritime territory.

Even if I don’t mention Chechnya, I can say that it takes one colonial power to recognise another one. But whether any country is or is not a colonial power should not be used as an excuse for harbouring an apparent murderer.