times of conflict the victims caught in crossfire will find refuge and
sanctuary in places of worship. With regard to the first meaning, there
is a long tradition in Euro-American Protestantism, in which Chris-
tianity is used as a justification for withdrawal from social action. The
Puritan emigration from Europe to the Americas was thus justified.
Those who refused to conform to the norms of the political estab-
lishment took sanctuary in their religion, and fled to the Americas
where they established their own social system based on the separa-
tion of church and state. Within the same country, religious individ-
uals and communities can withdraw from engagement in social
affairs and retreat into individualistic pursuits. William Lee Miller
observed such a tendency in North American Protestantism. Such
withdrawal and retreat leads to political alienation. Geyer explains
the withdrawal and retreat as follows : in part, he suggests, the Protes-
tant withdrawal from politics is a function of the Protestant with-
drawal from the city. That withdrawal reinforces the Puritan image
of the city politics as corrupt, machine-ridden and Catholic-con-
trolled. The retreat into suburbia leads to the following liabilities :
- the escape from the invasion of racial and religious minorities
removes Protestant leadership from the stage of those domestic
conflicts for which there is now a worldwide audience, while actu-
ally intensifying those conflicts within American society ; - the abandoning of urban centres weakens Protestant identifica-
tion with those unsolved economic and welfare problems which
threaten the country with domestic stagnation ; - Protestants become more vulnerable to the artificial compartmen-
talisation between domestic and international issues, leaving them
increasingly with the paradoxical combination of a sentimental
internationalism and a socioeconomic conservatism ; - the retreat from the city is a retreat from exposure to the cosmo-
politan and intercultural influences of the city ; and - Protestant participation is increasingly withdrawn from such
national and international centres of foreign policy discussion as
New York, Boston, Baltimore, and Chicago.
Geyer’s analysis of North American Protestant withdrawal and
retreat from politics is helpful in explaining the social aloofness of
African Christianity. The withdrawal and retreat from public life has
been exported to Africa through the modern missionary enterprise,
with all the liabilities highlighted above, especially in the post-colonial
period. In view of the fact that the African elite has been trained
mainly in institutions owned or sponsored by missionary agencies
where these principles of withdrawal and aloofness have been incul-
200 Responsible Leadership : Global Perspectives