Some people achieve. Some enable others to achieve. And that was Jim.
Born in Sri Lanka, where his father managed a tea plantation, he started school in England, but in 1940 was evacuated to New Zealand, where he received his secondary schooling. His military service in 1948 took him to Sudan. There he began to find a Christian faith, thanks to his Company Commander who had encountered the work of Moral Re-Armament. He served as ADC to the Governor-General of Sudan, Sir Robert George Howe, and he gained a deep love for that region of the world. When he went on to Oxford University, he befriended African students, such as Ahmed El Mahdi, grandson of the Mahdi who rose up against British rule. Those friendships opened Jim’s eyes to the ugly side of British colonial rule.
On leaving university he decided to work as a volunteer with Moral Re-Armament, which is now called Initiatives of Change and stresses the importance of Christ’s values of honesty, purity, unselfishness and love. Jim decided that this called for an end to cover-up in himself. He went to his father and told him about things he had done of which he was ashamed. The next day his father came to him and said, ‘You’ve been honest with me, and I think I should do the same with you.’ Then his father decided to tell his wife, Jim’s mother, the truth about himself. She was shocked, but she forgave him. At the time his father suffered from stomach ulcers so severe that a doctor had said he might have only six months to live. But this honesty and forgiveness, Jim said, was like switching on a light in a dark room. The ulcers cleared up and his father lived another 20 years, free and faith-filled.
Jim served for five years as an assistant to Frank Buchman, initiator of Moral Re-Armament, travelling with him to Asia and Australia. Among his companions on one trip were Malise Hore-Ruthven, a former Colonel in the Black Watch regiment, and his daughter Sally. He and Sally married in 1962.
In 1967 the Governor-General of Eritrea invited Jim to establish Moral Re-Armament in Eritrea, at that time a province of Ethiopia. The Governor-General was an Ethiopian aristocrat attempting to rule the rebellious province of Eritrea. Jim accepted on the basis that the challenge of Moral Re-Armament applied to the Governor-General as much as anyone else. Several times, when the Governor-General took action which lacked integrity, Jim went to him and raised the matter, risking being told to leave.
He and Sally spent the next five years based in Eritrea, travelling widely in the region. As he wrote later, ‘This involved working alongside those responsible for initiatives of reconciliation in conflict situations, and accepting the need for the white races to face up to our past so that we can begin to heal the wounds of history.’ They built warm friendships with Ethiopians, Eritreans, Sudanese, Somalis, Kenyans, and many initiatives for healing and reconciliation flowed from these friendships.
I worked with Jim for four years in Eritrea and Ethiopia, and I saw how he helped people. Let me tell you about Mammo Wudneh, who headed the Ethiopian media office in Eritrea, with the job of ensuring that the Eritrean media gave the Ethiopian Government line. Jim helped Mammo find a faith in God and a freedom from fear. Mammo began to listen deeply to Eritreans and understood their grievances. His newspaper articles changed. Now he wrote as he saw the situation, regardless of his Ethiopian Government masters, and Eritreans were grateful.
Before long Mammo was summoned back to the capital city Addis Ababa. There he worked courageously to allay the brutality of the murderous Derg government which ruled from 1974. It was overthrown in 1991, and at that time he played a crucial role at risk of his life.
As the liberating army laid siege to the city and the Derg government was in disarray, Mammo went to the radio station and persuaded them to let him broadcast an appeal to the Derg troops to lay down their arms, and give a chance to work out a better way for the country. The Derg troops responded to his proposal.
The liberating troops, realising the danger he had put himself in from the collapsing regime, sent in a unit to surround his house. The next day their forces took over the city peacefully. Mammo’s action preserved the city from wholesale fighting and destruction, and opened the way to a far better government. He always said that he felt he had been ''guided by God'' that day, and that was thanks, above all, to Jim.
As Jim grew older, his visits to Africa grew less, but Africa was always in his heart. When an African colleague doing risky work towards resolving a war was tortured, it was to Jim’s home here in Oxford he came to recover. Even into his nineties, Jim would participate in the weekly Agenda for Reconciliation meetings at the IofC centre in London, which brought together people from the Horn of Africa. His humility, and his care for each person, won the hearts of all who attended. One of them, a science graduate, wrote to me this week saying that Jim’s friendship helped him decide to return to Somalia, and he spent the next nine years working to re-establish the Somali civil service and develop civic enterprises.
For me, working with Jim was a masterclass in spiritual warfare. I learnt that in a situation of conflict God can lead us to people whose change of heart can open up avenues to cooperation and peace. I have found the truth of that ever since. I feel deeply the honour of speaking at this farewell to a man who taught me so much. Thank you, Jim.
