Unexpected Missionary Legacies?

We religious people sometimes talk about the providence of God -- that guiding hand of God that influences history. There are hard and soft forms of it, but the idea is that God acts deliberately in history. You may have heard stories about what at first sight seems to be coincidence, but on further thought seems to important to be coincidental. But what if things don't work out how one might expect?
This morning, reading the LA Times, I came across a column by Sandy Banks that spoke of the commissioning/sending off of a newly trained rabbi to minister to a small Jewish community in Uganda. What is interesting about this story is that this small Jewish community came into existence after a Christian missionary left Bibles with a Ugandan tribal group. Well, they read the Bible, but instead of becoming Christians, they fell in love with the descriptions of ritual and law found in the Hebrew Bible -- the Christian Old Testament -- and converted to Judaism and ordered their community around the Torah. Taking the name Abayudaya, People of Judah, they did this without any missional assistance or guidance. They just decided to be Jewish, and then only years later, after being reduced to a small remnant by Idi Amin, sought out connection with the Jewish community world wide.
In 2003 the community's leader -- Gershom Sizomu -- came to LA on scholarship and began his training to be a Rabbi. In May he was ordained the first Black Rabbi from sub-Saharan Africa. Now he goes back to minister to his community. Rabbi Sizomu is the third generation from his family to serve this community, and his young son plans to continue the legacy.
I'm not sure what to make of this, but it is a unique story, that suggests that when seeds are planted we're not always sure what will emerge. That a gift from Christian missionaries intent on converting a tribal group inadvertently helped create Uganda's Jewish community is an interesting expression of divine providence, I would say!
For more of this story check in here.

Comments

Popular Posts