“Govts bribe charities”

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33128, 19 January 1973, Page 15

“Govts bribe charities”

Vast amounts of money handled by the World Council of Churches find their way into the body’s coffers from governments. It was not a big step from this to the situation where governments could seek to control the Church’s witness, said the Rev. A. A. Brash, staff chairman of the department of iustice and service of the W.C.C., in Christchurch this week.

In his opening speech to 171 delegates from 15 different countries at the Ecumenical Consultation on Service Mr Brash said that when the W.C.C. handled money entrusted to it by governments, it could face “incredible dangers.”

“Governments often bribe charities to keep away from the real issues, the real causes, and encourage them to concentrate on symptoms,” Mr Brash said. “Charity means ‘kindly helo’ — as irrelevant as possible. They do not want charities to be involved in development.

“I don’t know whether C.0.R.5.0. defies the Government policy on overseas aid. It would be a good question.” said Mr Brash.

“Even though Mr Vorster hates us like mad, he lets our aid through to under-privi-leged groups because he concedes this is the kind of work the Church ought to be doing. “But how long can we_go

on like this without confronting the Government? Who defined the laws that, put those people into prisons?” The calling of the W.C.C. was not just to make injustice a little more comfortable for people but to make sure justice was done. The W.C.C. needed to consider the justice: of its aid more deeply and more often than it had. Mr Brash said. Aid to povertystricken refugees often led to I the creation of a favoured community in a poor land. Sponsorship of single child-' ren by a rich and well-inten-tioned donor on the other side of the world was all very well; for the donor but placed thei child in a position of total in-1 justice in relation to his fam-1 ily and community. “This programme is a .highly developed system and I a thoroughly bad thing.” Mr Brash said. Of the participation of con-; gregations in aid programmes. Mr Brash said they had quickly come to believe that welfare work was the job of experts and had become introvertedly religious and preoccupied with trivialities and the erection of church buildings. “They have not turned to other fields of service,” he said. Because aid had become the job of the professional, the donor had become removed from the person in need. “Service” for more and

more people had begun to mean paying the experts to do the job, and the size of the financial response depended not on any Christian motivation but on the technical effectiveness of the • fund-raisers.