A Pastor’s Determined Message of Reconciliation and Forgiveness

Monrovia, Liberia - Each Sunday morning, as he stands at the pulpit, the Rev. Joseph G. Johnson says he confronts not just a congregation. He looks into the eyes of the more than 600 people in the pews and sees both a reminder of Liberia’s difficult, heartbreaking past as well as the wonder of the human capacity for forgiveness and his country’s potential for reconciliation.

The First Baptist Church in Monrovia’s Sinkor’s section is no ordinary church, even by Liberia’s standards. To be sure, the church reflects much of the heartache of Liberia’s current challenges. Nearly 60 percent of his church members are unemployed and there is an incessant stream of congregants’ requests for money, for food and for clothing.

Pastor Johnson

“When they come to church, it’s not just about hearing the message of God,” said Rev. Johnson, a slight man, who speaks quickly. “People want their needs to be met. They have no food, no money for medical bills. They are suffering sometimes with HIV and tuberculosis. They come expecting to hear form God, but in a holistic way. They want biblical answers, but they want miracles to happen.”

To the eyes of many here, the miracles are very much in evidence at First Baptist. The church is the spiritual home of a large number of the rebel soldiers whose carnage shocked the country and the world during the nearly 15 years of Liberia’s brutal civil war. And now, Rev. Johnson says, these one-time warriors now often sit in the same pews — even serve together in the very same church ministries – with some of the people they victimized before the war’s end in 2003.

Somehow, the church has helped victim and perpetrator come together in an understanding that the act of forgiveness – seeking it and granting it – is the most crucial ingredient in the healthy recovery of their war-weary country and to the individual lives of Liberians.

“When both the victims and the perpetrators come together and see each other as brothers, then you see the foundation of a reconciliation of a people,” he said. “And this is something that is not easy to do. You’re not talking about forgiving someone who forgot to pay you three dollars. You’re talking about forgiving someone who, in some cases, shot your mother, your father or your loved ones. You’re talking about forgiving someone who created a loss that cannot be replaced.”

How did all this come to be? For one thing, the historic church, which first opened its doors in 1898, is located in an area of town where a large number of former rebels eventually settled. In fact, a periodic visitor to the church many years ago was Charles Taylor, one the country’s prominent warlords who led an uprising from the Ivory Coast into Liberia to overthrow the government (Mr. Taylor later became the country’s president). The ethnic violence in the country saw one tribal group turn on another, with horrific tales of killings, rapes, looting and destruction. In all, about 250,000 people were killed during Liberia’s civil war (Mr. Taylor later stepped down and is now on trial in The Hague on 11 charges of instigating murder, rape, mutilation, sexual slavery and conscription of child soldiers during the civil war).

After the war, Rev. Johnson said, he felt it was crucial to include every facet of the community in the life of First Baptist. And the church actively sought anyone who wanted to worship, although he added that many of the former rebels felt ashamed and were reluctant attend church. Nonetheless, Rev. Johnson said he was determined to preach a strong message of reconciliation and love. Guilt, anger and any inability to forgive, he said, has to be actively purged from members of his congregation, explaining that it is “a poison” that prevents people from reaching their full potential. The church aggressively took on sports activities, family dinners, concerts and other projects aimed as getting members to work together and see each other as family rather than having them dwell on the past.

“It is, to me, a most important part of the worship experience, to see people come together,” he said. “Here, we have seen the reconciliation of people. They can come to the same church, serve together on the deacon board and as trustees together. It sends the message that in life, when we focus properly, we can achieve anything.”

Sometimes, however, the results of his outreach are disappointing. There are ex-rebels who visit the church two or three times but stop attending, Rev. Johnson said. He explained that in many cases, the former combatants feel their war crimes were too heinous to enable them to feel comfortable in a church setting for long. Still, he and five or six other senior officials at First Baptist, head out in the early evenings into the community to find the former rebels, to meet with them and encourage them to attend the church, no matter their acts and memories of the past.

“We’re trying to create a situation where everyone will feel love, no matter what they have done,” Rev. Johnson said. “Everyone feels the pain of the past. And our church should not be a place where people get fingers pointed at them for what they did – or didn’t do. We want people to feel like they are one family. We want them to feel God here.”

By Jonathan P. Hicks