Interview with David Evans (Part 1)

Dr. Evans  describes himself as growing up in fragmented settings that led to attending Baptist, Roman Catholic, and Lutheran churches. As a teenager lost in various destructive circumstances, he drew strength from biblical teaching he remembered hearing as a boy in a revivalist camp. He then moved into new life as he cried out to Jesus, “Help me.”. He has worked in various ministry contexts. While living in Washington, DC, David was the Junior/Senior High Director of an out-of-school time program on Capitol Hill. Later he served as Community Development Resource coordinator with MCC East Coast. Most recently he was co-pastor of Boonton United Methodist Church in New Jersey. Professor Evans is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the History of Christianity at The Drew Theological School. He has academic degrees from Spring Arbor College in Michigan, Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and Drew University in New Jersey. Professor Evans is interested in how white Protestant American forms of Christianity have been perceived through the eyes/experiences of people who live in the national, religious, and racial margins of the United States. He is currently working on a project exploring Methodist missionaries’ perception of Italian immigrants in early twentieth-century America as racial others. He currently is a faculty in Mission, Intercultural and Interfaith Studies at Eastern Mennonite Seminary.

Interview with Ray Motsi

Ray Motsi, Ph.D. was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He left Zimbabwe at the age of 19 and attended college in England. After he graduated, he learned that there had been a massacre in Zimbabwe. This massacre was part of Robert Mugabe’s Gukurahundi Conflict. He knew it was time to take a stand and make a change. He has dedicated his life to combatting the conflict in Zimbabwe through peace-building and non-violence. President of the Theological College of Zimbabwe (TCZ) since January 1991. Dr. Motsi previously has served as a Baptist pastor in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe for more than 20 years and, in 2002, he founded Grace to Heal, a faith-based organization focusing on community peacemaking and conflict transformation. He graduated from TCZ with a B.A. in Practical Theology in 1990 and then later from the University of Pretoria in South Africa where he earned his M.A. in Old Testament and Hebrew in 2001, and his Ph.D. in Peacebuidling, Conflict Resolution, and Trauma Healing in 2009. 

Child Abuse and Trauma Management – Facts, Culture, Lessons to be learned

FENZA attracted over 50 people to its regular conference on the 24^th April 2013 dedicated this time to child abuse and trauma management. The Director, Father Gotthard Rosner, was very pleased to introduce the Bemba group Fimbusa founded in 2008 and aiming at preserving traditional cultural values. This group is composed of six men and 17 women from various cultural backgrounds but using primarily Bemba symbols in their teaching. They operate as a research group within FENZA.

Jacek Rakowski, from the Home of Hope, was also invited to present facts about the reality of child abuse. According to his research, 85% of cases of abuse are related to neglect, so called emotional abuse. It is particularly the case in dysfunctional families or related to social poverty. For many children, life is nothing else than a hostile environment. Consequently, traumatic experiences remain as lifelong scars. Physical abuse, including sexual ones, from which discipline beatings are not easy to distinguish, ends up with injuries.

Sexual abuse takes place most of the time within the family set up where the “conspiracy of silence” and the denial of abuse reinforce the traumatic burden of the victim. Very often, abusers have been abused themselves and also need help.

Finally, to conclude the presentations, Patrick Mumbi, psychologist and anthropologist, gave a magisterial presentation of the negative effects imparted upon victims of child abuse. As counsellors or helpers, we are all invited to listen to the various personalities which are hidden within a traumatised person. By all means, an abuse should never be hidden. It must be said, preferably denounced. The wrongdoer is the abuser, not the child.

We are looking forward to attend the next FENZA Conference.

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