Mandela’s Appeal Seen in Methodist Help for Fund

When Nelson Mandela, deputy president of the African National Congress, visited Los Angeles on his triumphant U.S. tour this summer, United Methodist Bishop Jack M. Tuell was among the local dignitaries in a welcoming party for one of Mandela’s talks.

Tuell recalled wondering whether he could say anything meaningful as Mandela shook hands on his way to the podium.

“I said one word, ‘Methodist!’ ” Tuell wrote this week in a regional edition of the United Methodist Reporter.

“His face wreathed into that beautiful smile which 27 years in prison could not erase, his eyes lit up, and he declared, ‘Methodist!’ ” Tuell said.

Although obstacles remain to end apartheid in South Africa, Tuell wrote, “surely the world will owe a debt of gratitude to this rather quiet, unassuming, but immensely courageous Methodist layman and man of faith.”

The bishop’s anecdote may help explain in part the approval this week by the United Methodist Church’s missions agency, meeting in New York, of a $20,000 contribution to the Nelson Mandela Freedom Fund. The agency rejected a suggestion that all donations be sent to the Methodist Church of Southern Africa.

Although a number of other mainline denominations made contributions to the fund when Mandela toured the United States, Methodist officials withheld any donation until the General Board of Global Ministries’ fall meeting.

Executives of the missions agency have become increasingly cautious in their dealings with Third World liberation groups such as the African National Congress in the wake of continuing criticism that the church should not be underwriting “revolutionary” movements that fail to renounce violence as a means of change.

Freedom Fund monies are to be used for educational, medical, housing and nutritional needs of refugees in South Africa and surrounding countries.

Meeting Tuesday, the board overwhelmingly approved the $20,000 donation to the fund after the Rev. James Lawson, pastor of Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, and others spoke in favor of the donation.

The board also approved a $20,000 donation to the Methodist Church of Southern Africa.

Lawson, who chaired a committee making the recommendations, termed the African National Congress a “multiracial, multicultural” organization representing the interests of South Africans from “all walks of life, all denominations,” and said the Freedom Fund promises to meet an “urgent ministry of reconciliation and healing.”

Speaking against the appropriation was the Rev. Karl Stegall of Montgomery, Ala., who sought to have the monies used for the same purposes but sent to the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. “We have the churches (in Southern Africa) to accomplish the very same goals,” he said.