Pastor Ray McCauley’s CV includes dropping out of school in standard eight to take up women’s hairdressing (to pick up the ladies), working as a nightclub bouncer at places like the Go-Go Club and coming third in the 1974 Mr Universe bodybuilding competition, where he was runner-up to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Most recently he appears to have added the title of High Priest of South Africa to the list — this after being appointed by President Jacob Zuma as leader of the National Interfaith Leaders Council (NILC). The council was formed by Zuma in July last year as a religious body with one of its functions — called the Thuma Mina or Roma nna (Send me) programme — being to advise and aid the government on the delivery of social services.
The NILC’s other function, said McCauley, is for ”religious leaders to be more proactive in offering interventions on policy issues” while bearing in mind ”the moral dimension”. The organisation was ”invited” to do so after a meeting with Zuma in August this year.
”The NILC will thus interact with parliamentary processes in a critical engagement,” said McCauley.
Though McCauley remains coy about how often he chats to the president (”Erm — It depends — It depends what we’ve got going on. Not a lot at the moment”), it is generally accepted that he has the ear of Zuma, who himself was ordained as an honorary pastor at a gathering of independent charismatic churches in Durban in 2007.
McCauley is encouraged by the burgeoning relationship between the state and religious groups. At the Rhema Bible Church’s 30th anniversary celebrations recently — which was attended by one of Zuma’s three wives, MaNtuli, and Social Development Minister Edna Molewa — he voiced his optimism about ”the new dispensation taking the body of Christ forward”.
But it is an intimate relationship that blurs the separation of state and church, and is causing increasing consternation among civil liberties and gay rights organisations who feel that a lurch towards conservatism by the government could see the possible repealing of abortion and same-sex marriages laws, and a return of the death penalty.
Zuma’s head of communications, Vusi Mona, also a Rhema Church member, commenting on ”SA journalists’ and liberals’ paranoia” about the president’s consistent calls for a reopening of the debate on such laws, said: ”The president is just saying, let’s have a debate for the sake of debate. He is saying ‘Is there a shift in the mood of the public? Is there something we didn’t do right [with regard to these laws]?’ We can’t go through life pretending that everything is cast in stone — This is a president who encourages debate.”
McCauley said that the NILC’s approach, ”as a multi-faith organisation”, to intervening on government policy ”is to concentrate on those basic ethical principles that are universal to all religions. These include issues such as the promotion of the rights of the poor; protection of human dignity; the sanctity of human life; and the support of anti-corruption and crime initiatives of the government.”
On the return of the death penalty, McCauley said: ”It’s not proven yet whether it is a deterrent or not. In my opinion, I don’t think it would change anything. I do think that on those sorts of issues you’d need to consult and open up a debate.”
On gay marriages, he takes the personal, pastoral approach and is reticent to comment on what legislative interventions he might advocate. McCauley said gays are welcome in his church: ”I just love them [rather than condemn them] — So we, in our church, we embrace them, and not try to make them something that they are not. Or change them all.”
But he said that he advises a gay couple in his church similarly to a heterosexual couple: don’t live in sin and wait until marriage to have sex. So is he advocating that homosexuals remain celibate for the rest of their lives? ”Yes.”
”Personally, I’m against abortion on demand,” said McCauley, ”But I think there are times when the person’s life is threatened, and there are circumstances and situations that you have to deal with accordingly.”
He said: ”You can’t tell people not to have an abortion unless you have an alternative, so we work very hard at having these homes for unwed mothers — The church is good at casting stones and they are very good at telling everybody what the problems are, [but] you can never deal with problems unless you have a solution.”
Delivering a speech on the relationship of church and state at a recent national church leaders’ meeting, McCauley’s vision of the NILC appears modelled on United States President Barrack Obama’s White House Office of Faith-based and Neighbourhood Partnerships, which has a $2,6-billion budget.
Set up earlier this year, the office deepens and extends the relationship of the George Bush administration’s White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives. Whereas the Bush administration provided government funding for social service delivery, Obama, according to the New York Times, appears to want to ”get religious perspectives on policies for economic recovery, strengthening fatherhood and families, reducing abortions and improving interfaith relations”.
But in South Africa the rules governing faith-based organisations using government funding to provide social services are hazy.
The Department of Social Development’s Policy on Financial Awards to Service Providers has no clear rules for faith-based organisations proselytising to those accessing services such as grants or orphanage shelters.
However, a social development official in the department’s welfare services transformation section said: ”Preaching or attempts at conversion of people who receive services from the organisation should not be the condition on which they should receive services.”