text: Sorry  to sound like Napoleon (the chap next to me thinks he is George III) but how many divisions has the church got?
  Or more specifically, in the South African context, what are the churches going to do now?
  It is not as if we are here for the first time.
  During the apartheid years, churches knew things were wrong but went along with the whole render to Cesar what is Cesar's thing and prayed in separate buildings with separate priests.  Some built up charitable networks where whites gave to poor blacks and some did not.
  And even after Archbishop Tutu was appointed, not every established church opened its services to everyone.
  I do not see and would not want to see the church storming the barricades, stone in one hand and firebomb in the other, but neither do I see it uniting in peaceful mass action to take the captured state head on, especially when it knows that will result in brutal repression.