13 We have not been willing to take their advice regarding some of our approaches to issues that have resulted in so much conflict and pain among our people. Regretfully, we suddenly perceived those of our friends who saw things differently from us to be our enemies as we began to pursue agendas that would bring personal benefit at the expense of the common good. We did not want to take advice from friends and those who genuinely cared about us. When friends told us the truth about our situation or told us what we did not want to hear they immediately became enemies and allies of our former colonial power. The result is that we became isolated and some nations began to apply targeted sanctions against some of our leadership as a way to influence changes in some of our policies. We all agree that Zimbabwe is a sovereign state and as Zimbabweans we must defend our sovereignty at all costs. But in a world that has become a global village it is no longer possible for any nation to exist in isolation. Doing otherwise can only inflict unnecessary pain and suffering on the people. 1.2.9 Inability of the Churches to Speak with One Voice on National Issues The question to be raised is: How could the situation degenerate to this extent as described above when more than 80% of the population is Christian, including many of those in political leadership positions? What happened to our Christian values of love, peace, justice, forgiveness, honesty, truthfulness? Where was the voice of the Church which is called upon to be the conscience of the nation? Clearly we did not do enough as Churches to defend these values and to raise an alarm at the appropriate time. We too have often tended to look inward rather than outward and also ignore the wisdom from our Christian sisters and brothers outside Zimbabwe. Maybe we used tinted same glasses used by secular authority to evaluate the advice given to us by other members of the body of Christ outside Zimbabwe. As Churches we confess we have failed the nation because we have not been able to speak with one voice. We have often not been the salt and the light that the Gospel calls us to be. We therefore confess our failure and ask for God’s forgiveness. The Church entered the dispensation of the new Zimbabwe with a largely other worldly detachment from things social and political except for the Roman Catholic CCJP and the ZCC, who even amid objections from some of their members, thought through the relevance of the Gospel values to the political and economic realities of the nation. Issues of democracy, human rights and development were, by and large, viewed as out of the jurisdiction of Church activity. Some Church members fell into the pit of political appeasement at the expense of maintaining the integrity of the Church. This traditional aloofness and metaphysical disengagement have made the Church an officious bystander caught in between the anguish of its constituents and the spiritual interpretation of its mandate. Divisions within the Church based