Editing Albert Schweitzer (section)

==Schweitzer's views==
===Colonialism===
Schweitzer considered his work as a medical missionary in Africa to be his response to Jesus' call to become "fishers of men".

{{blockquote|Who can describe the injustice and cruelties that in the course of centuries they [the coloured peoples] have suffered at the hands of Europeans?... If a record could be compiled of all that has happened between the white and the coloured races, it would make a book containing numbers of pages which the reader would have to turn over unread because their contents would be too horrible.}}

Schweitzer was one of colonialism's harshest critics. In a sermon that he preached on 6 January 1905, before he had told anyone of his plans to dedicate the rest of his life to work as a physician in Africa, he said:{{sfn|Schweitzer|2005|p=76–80}}

{{blockquote|Our culture divides people into two classes: civilized men, a title bestowed on the persons who do the classifying; and others, who have only the human form, who may perish or go to the dogs for all the 'civilized men' care.

Oh, this 'noble' culture of ours! It speaks so piously of human dignity and human rights and then disregards this dignity and these rights of countless millions and treads them underfoot, only because they live overseas or because their skins are of different colour or because they cannot help themselves. This culture does not know how hollow and miserable and full of glib talk it is, how common it looks to those who follow it across the seas and see what it has done there, and this culture has no right to speak of personal dignity and human rights...

I will not enumerate all the crimes that have been committed under the pretext of justice. People robbed native inhabitants of their land, made slaves of them, let loose the scum of mankind upon them. Think of the atrocities that were perpetrated upon people made subservient to us, how systematically we have ruined them with our alcoholic 'gifts', and everything else we have done... We decimate them, and then, by the stroke of a pen, we take their land so they have nothing left at all...

If all this oppression and all this sin and shame are perpetrated under the eye of the German God, or the American God, or the British God, and if our states do not feel obliged first to lay aside their claim to be 'Christian'—then the name of Jesus is blasphemed and made a mockery. And the Christianity of our states is blasphemed and made a mockery before those poor people. The name of Jesus has become a curse, and our Christianity—yours and mine—has become a falsehood and a disgrace, if the crimes are not atoned for in the very place where they were instigated. For every person who committed an atrocity in Jesus' name, someone must step in to help in Jesus' name; for every person who robbed, someone must bring a replacement; for everyone who cursed, someone must bless.

And now, when you speak about missions, let this be your message: We must make atonement for all the terrible crimes we read of in the newspapers. We must make atonement for the still worse ones, which we do not read about in the papers, crimes that are shrouded in the silence of the jungle night{{nbsp}}...}}

===Paternalism===
Schweitzer was nonetheless still sometimes accused of being [[paternalistic]] in his attitude towards Africans.{{sfn|Brabazon|2000|p=253-256}} For instance, he thought that [[Independence of Gabon|Gabonese independence]] came too early, without adequate education or accommodation to local circumstances. [[Edgar Berman]] quotes Schweitzer as having said in 1960, "No society can go from the primeval directly to an industrial state without losing the leavening that time and an agricultural period allow."<ref>{{Citation | last = Berman | first = Edgar | title = In Africa With Schweitzer | place = Far Hills, New Jersey| publisher = New Horizon Press | year = 1986 | page = [https://archive.org/details/inafricawithschw0000berm/page/139 139] | isbn = 978-0-88282-025-5 | url = https://archive.org/details/inafricawithschw0000berm/page/139 }}.</ref> Schweitzer believed dignity and respect must be extended to blacks, while also sometimes characterizing them as children.<ref name="forest" /> He summarized his views on European-African relations by saying "With regard to the [[negro]]es, then, I have coined the formula: 'I am your brother, it is true, but your elder brother.'"<ref name="forest">{{harvnb|Schweitzer|1924|p=[https://archive.org/stream/ontheedgeofthepr007259mbp#page/n163/mode/2up 130]}}</ref> [[Chinua Achebe]] has criticized him for this characterization, though Achebe acknowledges that Schweitzer's use of the word "brother" at all was, for a European of the early 20th century, an unusual expression of human solidarity between Europeans and Africans.<ref name=":0">Chinua Achebe. [http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/wyrick/debclass/achcon.htm "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060118110823/http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/wyrick/debclass/achcon.htm |date=18 January 2006 }}&nbsp;– the [[Massachusetts Review]]. 1977. (c/o [[North Carolina State University]])</ref> Schweitzer eventually emended and complicated this notion with his later statement that "The time for speaking of older and younger brothers has passed".<ref>Quoted by {{cite book |last=Forrow |first=Lachlan |chapter=Foreword | editor-last=Russell | editor-first=C.E.B. | title=African Notebook | publisher=Syracuse University Press | series=Albert Schweitzer library | year=2002 | isbn=978-0-8156-0743-4 | chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qa-TVXEkY3sC&pg=PR13|page=xiii}}</ref>

American journalist [[John Gunther]] visited Lambaréné in the 1950s and reported Schweitzer's patronizing attitude towards Africans. He also noted the lack of Africans trained to be skilled workers.<ref>{{cite book | title = Inside Africa | url = https://archive.org/details/insideafrica00gunt | url-access = registration | publisher=Harper | location = New York | year = 1955}}</ref> By comparison, his English contemporary [[Albert Ruskin Cook]] in Uganda had been training nurses and midwives since the 1910s, and had published a manual of midwifery in the local language of [[Luganda]].<ref>{{cite book | title = Amagezi Agokuzalisa | publisher=Sheldon Press | location = London}}</ref> After three decades in Africa, Schweitzer still depended on Europe for nurses.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Paget|first=James Carleton|date=2012|title=Albert Schweitzer and Africa|journal=Journal of Religion in Africa|volume=24|issue=3|pages=277–316|doi=10.1163/15700666-12341230|jstor=41725476}}</ref>