Religious ignorance as a source of interreligious conflicts: a serious theological challenge in Africa
(2020) Overcoming violence — Location: Kibuye-Rwanda (16.September.2019)
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- Abstract
- In this paper, I try to reflect on some interreligious conflicts between different Christian denominations, in Africa. Through traditional African context, I show that to decide to belong to different religions means to destroy the unity of family and community. In African mentality, God and religion are in every events. If there are many religions in family, it is a great lost for family or community communion. In the same sense, missionaries taught that there is one truth in religion, for instance they translated differently Jesus in Kinyarwanda. For Catholics, Jesus is Yezu and for Protestants, Jesus is Yesu. Does this kind of translation exist in another language? This is a simple example to show that missionaries confused Rwandese. It is a source of a theological shock for me. The religious logic in Africa is the logic of truth and the truth must be one, in a same field. For many religious leaders, If Catholics have truth, that means Protestants are wrong! Nowadays, the unity of family is broken because in a same family we can find protestant and catholic believers. Some religious leaders prohibit participation to the wedding of a brother or a sister who belong to another religion. This is a social and political problem. It is also a serious theological challenge. It is the reason why I propose to establish theology faculties in public universities. Those faculties would have two missions: civic and religious. For that, theology must be critical in order to make Christianity credible. In Africa, on the one hand, religions are becoming a social and political problem and, on the other hand, religions, especially Christianity, are losing their essence. It is time to make a serious critical evaluation of the theological training which is given to future priests and pastors. It is still unthinkable that Christianity, as a religion funded on the Trinity, can be a source of intolerance and violence.
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Niyigena, J.-P. (2020). Religious ignorance as a source of interreligious conflicts: a serious theological challenge in Africa. Overcoming violence, Kibuye-Rwanda. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/90620