Thomas C. Oden, a leading expert on Christian writings from 100 to 500 A.D., is the author of many theological works and the general editor of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. His new book, How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind, may upset what he calls “the common misconception that the flow of intellectual leadership in early Christianity moved from Europe to Africa, not vice versa.”

Oden told WOW that a “liberal bias wrongly assumed that Africa was inexperienced in understanding cultural conflict resolution and only needed larger doses of European enlightenment to solve its maladjustments. Many thus missed entirely the literary richness of the distinctive African Christian imprint on proto-Europe and the formation of the Christian mind. These misjudgments were passed on through graduate study programs.”

Oden contends that in Christian history “the flow of intellectual leadership demonstrably moved largely from Africa to Europe – south to north,” with Christian thought “cradled and nurtured” in Africa…. Africans were informing and instructing and educating the very best of Syriac, Cappadocian, and Greco-Roman teachers…. Inattention to this south-to-north movement has been unhelpful (even hurtful) to the African sense of intellectual self-worth. It has seemed to leave Africa without a sense of distinguished literary and intellectual history.”

Augustine, for example, was African, and his family wasn’t just hugging the Mediterranean coast: He “was born and raised far from the sea in a remote inland Numidian town (Thagaste) with mixed racial stock…. Among Augustine’s known family and friends were people who had Berber, Punic, Numidian, Roman, and even Libyan names.”

Tertullian, Cyprian, and Athanasius also were African, but African intellectuals ostensibly trying to overthrow European influence pay more attention to Europeans. Oden says that’s because “Many African academics are trained in European or American universities dominated by the failed assumptions of modernity.” He notes that a review of references in books by African intellectuals will typically show many more citations of Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Marcuse than Tertullian, Cyprian, Athanasius, and Augustine.

Oden hopes that young scholars and pace-setting universities will take on the task of righting the historical record.

I used to write grants for the medical and public health schools of a medical research university, and I often helped public health researchers write grants for HIV/AIDS programs in Africa.  Time and again, they scoffed at faith-based groups in Africa who preached abstinence and fidelity.  They never said quite why they didn’t approve of these methods, but you got the feeling that they thought preaching morals was imperialistic and, well, moralizing.  Instead, they wanted AIDS education and AIDS medication (both good things, but not enough by themselves).  In other words, they didn’t want to step on their own pluralistic toes by suggesting that something was fundamentally flawed in African culture and in the worldviews of certain peoples, so they dared not suggest these good people change their view of right sexuality.  A new report on all this is discussed at great length at First Things.

Katherine Marshall and Lucy Keough, lead authors of the report, are clearly uncomfortable with approaches to HIV prevention that emphasize sexual responsibility, behavior change, and morally based messages. They praise the work and compassion of faith communities in treating and caring for people ­living with AIDS and their families, yet harshly ­criticize the messages of faith communities for increasing the stigma of AIDS. Their discomfort with attempts to change sexual behavior is evident early in the report, when, for example, they muse: “Should the focus be on changing the behaviors that contribute to HIV/AIDS? (Is that possible? Desirable? How? With what assurance?)”

Education and medicine bring change, but the gospel brings the most fundamental change in all of history.  That’s why it works in the fight against AIDS/HIV.

Has Bill Gates poured $8.5 billion into programs that are doing just as much harm as good? LA Times questions whether the money Gates has devoted to global health causes is well-spent.

Critics say that Gates is funding much-needed vaccines and AIDS pills, but diverting attention from the true killers: poverty, ignorance, hunger, and poor hygiene. Patients may receive free AIDS pills from the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, but the patients vomit them up because they are starving. Mothers may owe their lives to the pills, but their infants are dying in filthy hospitals for lack of a $35 oxygen tube.

LA Times poses three concerns. First, the Global Fund has diverted staff from basic health care, replacing well-trained clinicians with inferior staff. In Rwanda, for instance, the Global Fund pays its nurses $175 to $200 a month, while other nurses earn $50 to $100 a month. A Lesotho government official said the problem could be solved by taking a fraction of Global Fund’s funding to fund pay raises for other government health pay professionals.

Second, the focus on a few high-profile diseases has diverted attention from nutrition and transportation. The clinics are there, but some patients have to walk nine hours to reach them. One nurse told Times that four out of her five patients ate fewer than three meals a day, and most of them were dying of hunger as well as AIDS.

Finally, programs actually tell caregivers to ignore the possibility of other diseases. During vaccination drives, program directors tell caregivers that addressing other health concerns slows the vaccination lines.

Global Fund director Michel Kazatchkine said the Global Fund “cannot resolve all the problems of all the people.” The Global Fund has given 1% of its funds to helping local health systems, but it adds that its task is treating AIDS, TB, and malaria, not propping up local health systems. To take over would weaken African countries that need to learn to support themselves.