A Christian in Politics

In line with one of the theme's of this blog during the month of July In have decided to draw your attention to a professing evangelical Christain who chooses to engage in the "dirty game" of Zambian politics. The person is Mr. Watson K. Lumba MP. He was elected as Solwezi Central Member of Parliament on 19th November 2009.

What makes this kind of person tick? Well here is a part of his maiden speech to Parliament:

Mr. Speaker, allow me to digress and give some aspect of my life story that inspired me to seek to serve the people. I come from a family of 14. My father, who is 79 years old and he has spent the last 40 years as a pastor in the Christian church. Growing up in that family, we were taught, as many in this house I am sure were, values and virtues rooted in scripture that called on us to love God first and then our fellow man. I therefore believe that without a sense of wanting to serve fellow man, man used generically to include woman, politics becomes devoid of its soul. But how can one serve man without love for him/her? And how can one love man without the love of God, the giver of true love? Mr. Speaker, I strongly believe that service to our fellow Zambians and our country should be informed by principles of virtue that will once again make our people proud of themselves. It is only when we believe that we can and should take care of our neighbours that we will have a fearless energy to drive this country forward. With this, we must reject an infamous proclamation of one of the leading western leaders of the last two decades when she said that “ there is no such thing as society.

The rest of his maiden speech, which includes reference to his views on free society, Zambian development and economics can be found here.