ROADS TO RECONCILIATION: AN EMERGING PARADIGM OF AFRICAN THEOLOGY 1 moth_1632 549..569

ROADS TO RECONCILIATION: ANEMERGING PARADIGM OFAFRICAN THEOLOGY1

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J. J. CARNEY

The heart of contemporary African Christian theology centers on the idea of“reconciliation.” As with much of African theology, this trend began not inthe academy but in the hurly-burly of everyday life—South Africa’s Truthand Reconciliation Commission, the involvement of Christian churches inpeace-building efforts from Kenya to Zimbabwe to Sierra Leone, and thetragedy of Christian complicity in the Rwandan genocide.2 Theology has bothled and followed these developments, from the widely-read reflections ofchurch leaders like South Africa’s Desmond Tutu or Rwanda’s John Rucya-hana to the Catholic magisterial focus on “reconciliation, justice, and peace”for the 2009 Second African Synod.3

In this article I analyze the emergence of African reconciliation theology inthree movements. Placing reconciliation in its theological and historical con-texts, I begin by surveying the three major African theological paradigms—inculturation, liberation, and reconstruction—that shaped post-colonialAfrican theology. Drawing on the writings of three contemporary theolo-gians of reconciliation, I next synthesize four guiding principles from theemerging paradigm: interdependence, prophetic advocacy, holistic transfor-mation, and alternative Christian community. Recognizing the extent towhich African theology has been shaped by grassroots Christian ministries,I then consider several examples of post-conflict Christian reconciliation inthe Great Lakes region of Central Africa. Such stories demonstrate the extentto which Christianity remains a transformative social movement in Africa,demonstrating that Christian politics can extend well beyond the horizons ofthe modern nation-state.

J. J. CarneyThe Catholic University of America, Theology and Religious Studies, 620 Michigan Avenue NE,Washington DC 20064, [email protected]

Modern Theology 26:4 October 2010ISSN 0266-7177 (Print)ISSN 1468-0025 (Online)

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

As a North American outsider, I speak with rather than for African theol-ogy. In a spirit of humility, then, I propose challenges of memory, justice,brokenness, and pluralism to the African theologians of reconciliation. I alsoconsider how a practice conspicuously missing from African reconciliationtheology, the Catholic sacrament of reconciliation, could offer resources fortheologians and practitioners of the growing church-based reconciliationmovement. I close by encouraging this journal’s predominantly North Atlan-tic readership to undertake a deeper conversation with their African col-leagues on shared questions of politics, violence and reconciliation.

A. Paradigms of post-colonial African theology

The first theological school to emerge in post-colonial Africa was incultura-tion. This paradigm arose in the 1950s and 1960s through more sympatheticmissionary reflections on traditional religion and culture and African voicesprotesting the “anthropological impoverishment” fostered by the colonialproject.4 Inculturation also reflected African frustration with otherworldlymissionary theology which uncritically accepted the colonial status quo. Thismovement was especially fertile in the Francophone Roman Catholic worldas seen in the work of the Franciscan missionary Placide Tempels, the Con-golese theologian Vincent Mulago, and the great Rwandan intellectual AlexisKagame.5 English-speaking Protestant scholars like Harry Sawyerr and JohnMbiti pushed further in the 1960s, theorizing the components of “Africantraditional religion” and then linking these as stepping stones to the Chris-tian gospel.6 Inculturation embodied the hope of the early post-colonialperiod—hopes that Africa could indigenize a Western religion and chart anew political future independent from the formerly dominant Europeanpowers. It is not surprising that a decade which saw the flowering of AfricanIndependent Churches also saw the emergence of political philosophiesdeeply shaped by inculturation theology, such as the négritude of Senegal’sLeopold Senghor or the ujamaa of Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere.7

For all of its strengths, however, inculturation came under increasingcritique in the 1970s and 1980s. Its cultural recovery project reflected a staticand often romanticist view of “culture,” failing to recognize the concept’sinherent hybridity and trans-national complexity.8 Critics like the Cameroon-ian Jean-Marc Éla took inculturation theologians to task for being moreconcerned with reconciling their own bifurcated identities as Western-educated African elites than with grappling with the peasant realities ofhunger, unclean water, economic oppression, and violence.9 Within Africanreligious life and practice, the explosive growth of Pentecostalism in the1970s and 1980s contained a strong counter-cultural edge, reminding theo-logians that mass religious movements could be quite critical of local cul-ture.10 In summary, “culture” could be a fundamentally ambiguous term,whether one found oneself within Mobutu’s authenticité campaign in 1970s

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Zaire or joining Mercy Oduyoye’s 1980s critiques of traditional African patri-archy.11 Biblically, one could argue here that Paul’s discourse on the Athenianunknown God in Acts 17:22–31 must be read with Romans 3:9, Paul’s con-tention that “all are under the dominion of sin.”

Liberation or black theology arose in the 1970s and 1980s as an alternativeto inculturation, gaining particular influence in South Africa.12 Here thereality of white oppression could not be ignored; here the risks of incultura-tion discourse—namely the Afrikaner theology of election—were evident forall to see. If inculturation theology looked to Acts 17, liberation theology tookits cue from Luke 4:18, Jesus’ opening salvo in the Nazareth temple. “TheSpirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring gladtidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives andrecovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.”13 If inculturationtheology mined the ideal past, liberation theology focused on the repressivepresent of poverty, neo-colonial dependence, state oppression, and structuralracism. Christianity’s preferential option for the poor and marginalized—embodied in the story of the Exodus, the prophetic denunciations of Israel’ssocial injustice, and Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:20–26)—seemed tooffer a more faithful hermeneutic within which to pursue theological reflec-tion. For Desmond Tutu writing in 1970s South Africa, liberation theologywas a cry from the crucible of human suffering and anguish which assertedthe fundamental humanity of the victim.14 And in the words of Éla, one of thefew African liberation theologians working outside of South Africa in the1980s, theology’s pressing task was to rehabilitate the “marginalized masses”and liberate a “dependent church among oppressed peoples.”15

If not spelling the end of liberation theology,16 the early 1990s collapse ofSouth African apartheid and Soviet communism brought both new critiquesand new emphases. In theological terms, liberation tended to privilege thehorizontal over the vertical, emphasizing the temporal “already” of theKingdom of God at the expense of the eschatological “not yet.” Ideal foruniting a suffering people struggling against state oppression, liberationtheology was less applicable for post-conflict reconstruction—an Exodusmodel of swamping the Egyptians in the Red Sea offered little in the way ofrestorative justice. Finally, even sympathizers like Desmond Tutu could cri-tique liberation theology for failing to recognize the interconnectedness of allhumanity, victims and perpetrators alike.17

In response, theorists like South Africa’s Charles Villa-Vicencio and Kenya’sJesse Mugambi formulated a new model of reconstruction which invigoratedAfrican theology throughout the 1990s. If Moses the warrior was the hero ofliberation, Nehemiah the post-exilic nation-builder was the symbol of recon-struction. For the reconstructionists, African theologians should resist thepost-colonial temptation to externalize all of the continent’s problems, offeringinstead self-critical and prescriptive solutions. For Villa-Vicencio, the post-apartheid South African church should shift from a posture of prophetic

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resistance to one of political collaboration—helping to construct a modern,secular, multicultural South Africa enshrining the principles of democraticparticipation, human rights, and economic justice for all.18

While reconstruction embodied the central role of the Christian churchesin the second wave of African democratization,19 it has faded from its 1990szenith. First, the paradigm does not directly address how former enemiescould share life together, preferring to focus on the procedural dimensions ofnation-building. In the words of Villa-Vicencio, “at the center of a post-exilictheology of reconstruction is an encounter between theology and jurispru-dence.”20 Its optimistic vision of church-state collaboration has been shakenby the persistence of state tyranny in post-Cold War Africa; one thinks here ofLiberia’s Charles Taylor, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, or Sudan’s OmarBashir.21 Even in a democracy like South Africa, reconstruction’s accommo-dationist impulses tend towards the marginalization of the Christian com-munity within the liberal polity, reducing the church to a lobbyingorganization advocating for imprecise notions of justice, rights, and thecommon good.22 Finally, most reconstruction theologians assume rather thancritique the state. The notion that the church might have a distinctive politicsindependent of the modern nation-state is never entertained.23 While recon-struction has not disappeared from the academic scene,24 the 2000s has seenthe emergence of a new paradigm of African theology: reconciliation.

B. Envisioning the paradigm: Reconciliation theology in Africa

Integrating Christianity with local cultural traditions and claiming elementsof liberation and reconstruction discourse, reconciliation theology hasemerged in the past decade as the most dynamic stream of African theology.Its claims are initially impressive. First, the language of reconciliation isdeeply rooted in religious discourse.25 More than inculturation, liberation orreconstruction, reconciliation stands at the heart of the Christian gospel.Moses liberated Israel from Egypt, Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem, but Jesusreconciled a fallen world to God. In the words of the paradigmatic text 2Corinthians 5:18, “all this is from God, who reconciled us to himself throughChrist, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” Reconciliation holdstogether the vertical and the horizontal, recognizing that love of God cannotbe separated from love of neighbor (or increasingly stewardship for creation).It recalls the church’s historical challenges in integrating the “other,”whether Greek-speaking gentiles at the Council of Jerusalem, Protestantreformers at the Council of Trent, or Enlightenment moderns at Vatican II.The paradigm demonstrates the formative potential of Christian practices,from the Eucharist to sacramental confession to the washing of the feet. Inlight of this, the South African theologian John de Gruchy may not exagger-ate when he claims that reconciliation is the “sum total of what Christiansbelieve about God’s saving work in Jesus Christ.”26

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Reconciliation not only has deep Christian roots, but like all successfultheology it speaks to the current context. If reconstruction emerged from theephemeral hopes of the second wave of African democratization, reconcilia-tion grew out of the enduring pain of ethnic and political conflict in placeslike Northern Uganda, Nigeria, and Burundi.27 Philosophically, the paradigmrecognizes post-modern difference while moving beyond the paralysis ofpost-modern parochialism to a critical synthesis of Christian revelation,African tradition, and Western modernity. Politically, reconciliation theologyhas had great influence, most famously in South Africa’s Truth and Recon-ciliation Commission but also in post-conflict resolution efforts in countriesranging from Sierra Leone to Rwanda to Mozambique. Ecclesially, reconcili-ation has emerged as a dominant missional theme for Christian groups asdiverse as the Lausanne Evangelicals and the Roman Catholic Church.28 Theparadigm responds to the post-colonial critique of otherworldly missionarytheology without losing sight of the graced horizon. In short, reconciliationseems to be basking in a unique kairos moment.

To further understand this important theological moment, I will analyzethe thought of three prominent African practitioners of reconciliation theol-ogy: the retired Anglican archbishop and leader of South Africa’s Truth andReconciliation Commission (TRC), Desmond Tutu; the Anglican bishop andfounder of Rwanda’s Christian prison ministries, John Rucyahana; and theUgandan theologian and co-founder of Duke University’s Center for Recon-ciliation, Emmanuel Katongole. I have chosen these theologians for threereasons. First, reconciliation stands at the center of their theological corpusand pastoral work. Second, they engage both the theoretical and pastoraldimensions of reconciliation; one could see their work as representative oflived or practical theology. Finally, these theologians engage two contexts,South Africa and the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, which have largeChristian populations, long histories of intra-ethnic and inter-racial violence,and significant church-based efforts at post-conflict reconciliation. Together,they offer us what Mercy Oduyoye might term “beads and strands” for anemerging paradigm of reconciliation theology.29 Most prominent amongthese are Tutu’s encouragement of interdependence and prophetic advocacy,Rucyahana’s emphasis on holistic transformation, and Katongole’s vision ofthe alternative politics of Christian community.

I begin with Desmond Tutu, whose reception of the 1984 Nobel Prize, TRCleadership, and influential writings have made him perhaps the most famousproponent of reconciliation theology in the world today. Tutu’s vision ofreconciliation as interdependence is intimately bound up with the Africanconcept of ubuntu, the principle that “a person depends on other people to bea person.”30 In this sense Tutu’s understanding preserves an element ofinculturation, building directly from a traditional African worldview thatspeaks of recovering the “primordial harmony” of God’s creation.31 Tutu alsosees reconciliation as retaining a liberative dimension. Black consciousness



and black theology had to affirm blackness as a part of God’s creation andrestore dignity to the African person before genuine inter-racial reconcilia-tion could be possible in South Africa.32 The key shift from liberation toreconciliation comes in the view of the enemy. Rather than “a devil to beopposed, confronted, and rejected” as in the famous 1985 Kairos statement,33

the enemy for Tutu remains God’s child. This makes him no less an enemy,but the goal is harmonious co-existence, not violent revolution.

While his vision is one of interdependence, in his person Tutu embodiedthe reconciliation agent as prophetic advocate speaking truth to power. Frommeeting with hostile government ministers to lobbying at the United Nationsto leading street protests in Johannesburg townships, Bishop Tutu spear-headed the movement for political change in apartheid South Africa. His roleas a “voice for the voiceless” was enhanced by the official banning of theAfrican National Congress (ANC) and the imprisonment of prominent politi-cal leaders like Nelson Mandela. To his credit, Tutu has not lost his criticaledge since the ANC won power in 1994, demanding the inclusion of ANCviolence within the TRC’s mandate, challenging former president ThaboMbeki on his AIDS and Zimbabwe policies, and publicly expressing histrepidations over the recent ascension of Jacob Zuma to the presidency. Hisrole as pastor and prophet was perhaps best seen in his stewardship of theTruth and Reconciliation Commission, providing a forum in which thevictims and perpetrators of South Africa’s apartheid system could reveal thepainful stories behind structural evil. Tutu reminds us that reconciliationtheology retains a prophetic or liberative dimension, helping the churchmaintain critical distance from the state.

The second representative of reconciliation theology, Bishop John Rucya-hana, offers the paradigm a component of holistic reformation. Rucyahanawas appointed to lead a Rwandan Anglican church still recovering from thehuman traumas and ecclesial betrayals of the 1994 genocide. Standing withinthe evangelical wing of Anglicanism, he repeatedly emphasizes God’s trans-formation of individual human hearts as the requisite first step in reconcili-ation.34 At the same time, while reconciliation may begin within individualsouls, it ultimately looks social. In Rwanda, such a vision will see Hutu andTutsi “attending church and worship together . . . singing in the same choirs,shopping in the same markets, playing together on the same sports teams,working next to each other on the job, and eating with each other at home intheir villages.”35 The telos here is conviviality, not just tolerance.

For Rucyahana, the practices of reconciliation are holistic, relational, andultimately transformative. Far from the public spotlight of the Arusha inter-national tribunal or the government-sponsored gacaca trials,36 Rucyahana’sprison-based Umuvumu Tree Project ministries bring together genocidairesand victims for weekly small group discussions that stretch over the course oftwo months. These discussions begin with biblical stories of repentance andmove towards an honest discussion of the crimes of 1994.37 Crucially, repen-

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tant prisoners are asked to materially demonstrate the fruits of their conver-sion by building houses for victims. In accepting the gift, the victim in turnrehabilitates the perpetrator. Another initiative, Project Dairy Cow, gathersrepentant perpetrators and victims to “produce something worthwhiletogether,”38 echoing the 1990s efforts of Catholic priest André Sibomana toreconcile Hutu and Tutsi parishioners by having them reconstruct Kabgayivillages.39 Finally, Rucyahana has started initiatives like the Sonrise Elemen-tary School with the goal of re-educating Rwandan youth on national andethnic history and training them to serve as agents of a new evangelizationmovement in Rwanda.40 Rucyahana’s work demonstrates that reconciliationtheology is more than just a theoretical paradigm. It is embodied in thevisible, physical, and daily practices of Christian community.

The Ugandan Catholic priest Emmanuel Katongole, co-director of DukeDivinity School’s Center for Reconciliation and co-founder of the AfricanGreat Lakes Initiative, offers us a third component of the emerging paradigmof reconciliation theology, the alternative politics of Christian community. ForKatongole, this alternative begins by recognizing that “the way things are is notthe way they have to be.”41 Ironically, this process begins not in activist worksbut in contemplative lament. From the Psalmist’s protests, Job’s pleadings, orJesus’ “Eloi, Eloi lema sabachthani” at the end of Mark’s gospel (Mark 15:34),lament is an evident response to unjust suffering. Lament problematizes facilecalls for reconciliation (often from former oppressors) which fail to grapplewith the deep pain suffered by victims. It recognizes that human efforts alonecannot resolve or even grasp the problem of evil in the world; as prayer itanticipates God’s transformation of the world in ways we cannot yet imagine.42

Christian alternative politics are also embodied in the church’s living as an“interrupted and interrupting community.” Far from the confident crusadersetting out to conquer the world for Christ, this church should forswear anygrand strategy. Her goal rather should be to establish unconventional com-munities that live according to a different standard than the violence of theworld, a “church of people who can say no to killing.”43 Katongole pointshere to a community like Rwanda’s Hotel des Mille Collines in which“people lived with a different set of assumptions” than the genocidal intera-hamwe hovering beyond the gates.44 This church should be open to the inter-ruptions of the stranger—the immigrant, the refugee, or the AIDS patient.45

She should also serve as an ambassador. In the world but not of it, the churchwitnesses to a “kingdom realism” that challenges society’s dominant narra-tives of race, tribe, or nation-state.46

Finally, the Christian alternative is embodied in the reconciliation agent aspilgrim. Just as the interrupting church forswears grand strategy, pilgrims“are not as interested in making a difference as they are in making newfriends. . . . Pilgrims set out not so much to assist strangers as to eat withthem.”47 This image recognizes that healing takes time, that one’s presencecan mean more than one’s words. The pilgrim sets forth on a journey which



helps him to “unlearn the distance” that psychologically separates him fromvictim and perpetrator alike.48 Pilgrimage also entails confession, a criticalstep for perpetrators of sins of omission and commission alike. Finally, pil-grimage reminds the Christian that her final home is not here, that she is buta sojourner witnessing to the strangeness of the city of God in a world “thatknew him not” (John 1:10–11).

Comparing and contrasting these visions, we see multiple shared empha-ses. All three theologians see reconciliation as entailing a new imagination,from Tutu’s integration of ubuntu with Christian theology to Rucyahana’sintra-ethnic umuvumu fellowships to Katongole’s calls for a “new Christianwe” that transcends tribal and national categories. Second, all share an essen-tially relational vision of reconciliation. While God’s reconciliation of theworld in Christ has cosmic dimensions, Christians encounter this grace onthe local level through God’s transformation of individual human hearts, therehabilitation of interpersonal relations, and the restoration of communion invillages and neighborhoods. Finally, all recognize the essential nature of timein the reconciliation process. Rucyahana’s umuvumu prison meetings stretchover eight weeks; Katongole’s obligation to lament forestalls any rush toresurrection; Tutu repeatedly says that the TRC was a beginning rather thanan end to racial reconciliation in South Africa. Just as Christians continue to“see through a glass darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12), so the Christian vision of recon-ciliation will unfold gradually, partially and inconclusively.

For all of their similarities, however, Tutu, Rucyahana and Katongole differsharply in how they present the politics of reconciliation. Tutu and Rucyahanaenvision the work of reconciliation unfolding upon the canvas of the nation-state. While maintaining a degree of critical distance from state leaders, Tutustill describes the first post-apartheid elections of April 1994 in strikinglytheological overtones. “Everywhere else elections are secular political events.Ours was much more than this, much, much more. It was a veritable spiritualexperience. It was a mountaintop experience.”49 Likewise, Rucyahanadescribes his mission as “healing the nation” and posits that “reconciliationbetween Hutu and Tutsi . . . is the reconciliation of Rwanda.”50 Like Tutu, he isengaged in a national project of reconciliation, working closely with theRwandan government to institute his vision. Significantly, he has nothing butpraise for Paul Kagame’s contributions to reconciliation despite the Rwandanpresident’s growing reputation for shaping a climate of political correctnessand authoritarianism.51 Katongole on the other hand assumes a decidedly localvision of reconciliation, emphasizing the work of the church qua church andcalling for a strengthening of Christian identity vis-à-vis competing identitiesof tribe, nation, race, or ethnicity.52 For Katongole the church is a politicalcommunity, if of a different genus than the modern nation-state.

In this area I empathize with Katongole. I recognize that what makesChristian reconciliation theology so publicly engaging is its perceived impacton national politics—the sight of bishops chairing truth and reconciliation

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commissions in Sierra Leone or the legacy of the Catholic Sant’Egidio com-munity brokering a national peace deal after the Mozambican civil war.53 Butin their marveling over how the church still matters in African politics,observers may have forgotten why the church truly matters—namely, hermission to embody the politics of Jesus in the body of the church. WithKatongole, I would argue that the church is not just another NGO strength-ening civil society, but a social body that witnesses to a “different world righthere.”54 It is to these different Christian worlds that we now turn.

C. The paradigm in practice: Grassroots efforts at Christian reconciliation inCentral Africa

Having examined reconciliation’s theological predecessors and contempo-rary theorists, I turn now to a consideration of several grassroots efforts atpost-conflict Christian reconciliation in Central Africa. These examples sharea theocentric vision which traces the roots of reconciliation to God’s trans-formation of the human heart, a holistic picture of Christian ministry whichavoids the dichotomies of Western secularism, and a “resurrection imagina-tion” that looks to the formation of Christian communities of peace. While theprimary actors are all Roman Catholic, their programs transcend confessionalor diocesan boundaries, resulting more from local activism than episcopalfiats. I will argue that in their practices they echo the theological “beads andstrands” discussed above.

Rucyahana’s emphasis on holistic transformation is evident in the work ofMaggy Barankitse’s Maison Shalom network in Burundi. Barankitse wasworking in the Bishop of Ruyigi’s residence in October 1993 when Tutsisoldiers burst into the compound, executing 72 Hutu. Barankitse survivedthe episode and subsequently took in 25 children who had lost their parents.From this small group she began Maison Shalom, or the “house of peace.” Aspolitical violence escalated over the next twelve years, taking the lives of anestimated 300,000 Burundians, Barankitse’s network grew in kind, eventuallycomprising over 500 houses and 30,000 young people.55

Barankitse’s vision is intrinsically holistic, moving well beyond common-place Western divisions between the secular and the sacred and the churchand the world. Her “homes” include schools, medical centers, and language,computer and agricultural centers. Some sites have libraries, cinemas andswimming pools; Barankitse argues that recreation and leisure cultivate thejoyous life that should mark childhood. Refusing to limit themselves topost-conflict or intra-ethnic issues, Barankitse and Maison Shalom haveexpanded more recently into AIDS prevention and treatment.

This holistic vision leads into a broader commitment to reforming andreeducating a new generation of Burundian youth, recalling the Paulinedictum to “not conform yourself to this age but be transformed by therenewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2). For Barankitse children are the future



hope of Burundi. If the cycle of grievance and retribution can be broken, anew day may dawn. In her own words, “I am Christian, and I know thatour human vocation is to love. . . . I will try to make a new nation of Hutuand Tutsi together . . . we are one family, one human family.”56 Such audac-ity is embodied in her own persona—a female leader in a paternalisticsociety and a laywoman in a clerical church. She admits that many viewher as “crazy” for thinking that Hutu and Tutsi can live together peaceably.Like Rucyahana, her response is simply to “show them it is possible”through forming a new generation of Burundian youth who think differ-ently than their elders.57

The next example reflects Katongole’s emphasis on the alternative politicsof Christian community. Catholic Bishop Paride Taban grew up in southernSudan and remained there through most of the half-century of warfare whichended with the granting of regional autonomy to South Sudan in 2005.58 Hefounded Kuron Village (also known as Holy Trinity Peace Village) in 1997around a contested bridge that had served as a locus for cattle-raiding andintra-ethnic conflict. Located in southeastern Sudan near the Ethiopianborder, Kuron Village has grown to include over 80 families from eightdifferent ethnic groups. Christians, Muslims, and adherents of traditionalreligion reside together in relative peace, and rival tribes often meet in thevillage to resolve disputes.

As with Maison Shalom, Kuron Village offers a holistic model of Christianministry with a full array of economic and social services. It includes homes,schools, dispensaries, wells, agricultural fields, a hostel, reconciliation andretreat centers, and separate centers for adult and religious education.59 Thisreflects Taban’s three-step vision of reconciliation. Peaceful coexistence firstdepends on food security, addressing the fundamental question of “I amhungry” through improving farming methods.60 Second, the people must beeducated, including adults who lost the opportunity for schooling during thelong war years. The final step is the non-violent witness of Kuron Villageitself, creating an “oasis of peace” that demonstrates to surrounding villagesthat people can “live in harmony among themselves despite their diverseethnic backgrounds.”61

Kuron Village is not just a Christian ghetto, however, as it includes Muslimand Traditionalist families as well. Taban also invites non-residents fromsurrounding villages to train in his demonstration farms. In this sense Kuronembodies the bridging dimension of reconciliation efforts—connectingregions, ethnic groups, and religious communities through a new vision ofcommunity, transforming a symbol of conflict (i.e., the contested bridge) intoone of hope. The bridging motif embodied in Kuron’s vision and locationextends to the international partnerships that Taban has developed. FromCaritas Switzerland to the Norwegian government, transnational partners areinvested in Holy Trinity Peace Village. It is distinctively local yet strikinglyuniversal at the same time, “catholic” in genesis and practice.

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In addition to holistic transformation and the construction of alternativecommunities, reconciliation theology emphasizes the principle of propheticadvocacy on behalf of the dispossessed and marginalized. This has been oneof the most consistent strengths of the hierarchical Catholic Church in post-colonial Africa, from Archbishop Denis Hurley in apartheid South Africa toBishop Pius Ncube in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe to Archbishop Laurent Monsen-gwo in contemporary Congo. The current efforts at prophetic advocacy Ihighlight here, however, stem again from the grassroots. In October 1996Angelina Atyam’s daughter and over 100 other schoolgirls were abducted bythe Lord’s Resistance Army in Northern Uganda. Local mothers in Liradecided that the time had come to stand up to the LRA and founded theConcerned Parents Association (CPA). For the past thirteen years the CPA hasimplored the LRA to release abducted children, established local facilities forrehabilitating former LRA soldiers, and lobbied the Ugandan government onbehalf of internally-displaced families (IDPs) from Lira and elsewhere. Thenetwork also supports children by raising money for school fees, assistingwith medical bills, and teaching practical skills to returning child soldiersand former IDPs.62

While the Concerned Parent Association has developed a national profile, itremains embedded in the grassroots. Like Maison Shalom, the CPA worksthrough micro-communities spread across the country. Over 500 parentsupport groups and 100 youth groups are now part of the network; each cellhas an average of 25 members. The CPA demonstrates that effective advocacytakes place not only through international NGOs in Washington or episcopalsynods in Accra or Nairobi but within local communities themselves. CPAparents of abducted children continue to gather every Saturday to pray, re-minding Christians that their most important advocacy efforts are with God.63

D. Conclusion: Paradigmatic challenges and sacramental resources

Africa has the fastest growing Christian population in the world and, as thisarticle has shown, a vigorous theological tradition.64 In particular, the emer-gence of the reconciliation paradigm in contemporary African theology is asign of great hope. The paradigm addresses the existential needs of post-conflict societies throughout the continent, parrying the frequent chargelevied against African theology of being removed from African social real-ity.65 Reconciliation shows how Christianity remains a transformative socialmovement in Africa, offering glimmers of hope in a continent often por-trayed as drowning in hopelessness.

This is not to say, however, that the paradigm is immune from risks orchallenges. To reconciliation’s emphasis on holistic transformation, I wouldpose the challenge of memory. In the face of the ambiguities and polariza-tions of contested communal histories, there remains an inevitable tempta-tion in post-conflict reconciliation to leave the past behind. Notwithstanding



a case like Mozambique which seems to reflect a model of communal amne-sia,66 post-conflict communities typically must reach general (if not total)consensus on the past to break the cycle of violence. The temptation to“victor’s history” is perhaps even stronger than victor’s justice, as demon-strated by Rwandan historiography over the past 50 years.67 To gain a thickerand more accurate historical truth, then, one must engage multiple perspec-tives, especially those of the vanquished. In the words of Miroslav Volf, theredemption of memory entails asking “how former enemies can remembertogether so as to reconcile, and how they can reconcile so as to remembertogether.”68 The process should involve what Katongole would term collec-tive lament as sins on both sides are recalled, confessed, and repented. TheTRC’s national grappling with apartheid history or ANC political violenceoffers instructive lessons here.69 In contrast, the shortcomings of contempo-rary Rwandan justice stem in part from the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front’sfailure to subject to public scrutiny its army’s own abuses during the 1990–94war in northern Rwanda or 1996–97 campaign in eastern Congo.70

To the emphases on interdependence and prophetic advocacy, I wouldpose the challenge of justice, especially in periods following civil conflict andmass violence. Simply put, the hope for harmony cannot ride roughshod overthe demands for justice. The greatest controversy of South Africa’s TRCprocess stemmed from the nation’s failure to grant victims adequate repara-tions.71 While not offering much in the way of reparations, Rwanda’s gacacaprocess differed from the TRC precisely in its rejection of political amnesty.The new Rwandan elite argued that amnesty would only further the cultureof impunity that had reigned in Rwanda since the time of the revolution.

At the same time, justice can easily slide into vengeance. To his credit, Tuturecognizes the risk of the justice-liberation narrative leading into a “topdog-underdog” historical cycle in which the sins of the oppressed areexcused in the name of retributive justice.72 Similarly, the North Americantheologian Alan Torrance has argued that restorative justice theorists must bewary of the “myth of the scales,” distinguishing between the victim’s under-standable desire for justice and the danger of retribution.73 One saw this cycleat work in revolutionary Rwanda where the narratives of democratization,social justice, and liberation lent ideological justification to Hutu peasants’violent appropriation of Tutsi lands.74 Theologians and ministers must there-fore avoid mistaking reconciliation with retribution on one hand and facilecompromise on the other.

To Katongole’s emphasis on alternative Christian politics, I would posetwo challenges: the brokenness of the church and pluralism. I am in deepsympathy with Katongole’s vision, which I see as an important ecclesiologi-cal corrective to the erastian tendency seen in much of African theology. Butwhile Katongole should be commended for avoiding a narrow Catholic tri-umphalism, his language of “church” would benefit from more specificity. Itis difficult to place so much stock in Eucharistic communion when Katongole

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and Rice cannot share a common table; the church’s efforts to embody analternative politics are sabotaged by the depth of ecclesial division. Katongolewould do well to take intra-Christian differences more seriously. Finally, if Iagree with Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice that at its deepest level “thejourney of reconciliation hangs or falls on seeing Jesus,”75 I also recognize thatmost Christians must reconcile with people (e.g., Muslims, traditionalists,and secularists) who think in very different terms. It seems, then, that Katon-gole’s vision would benefit from an additional formulation—if and how adistinctively Christian vision of reconciliation applies in a pluralistic reli-gious milieu. Here perhaps a grassroots ministry like Paride Taban’s KuronVillage offers a glimpse of hope.

Surprisingly absent in all of these conversations on reconciliation is thesacrament of reconciliation itself. This may stem from the perception thatreconciliation is a uniquely Roman Catholic sacrament with little ecumenicalresonance, or it may demonstrate the privatization of sacramental reconcili-ation in the medieval and modern eras. The silence surely reflects the declinein Catholic confessional practice over the past half-century. Whatever thereasons for this lacuna, I would like to conclude by briefly outlining how thepattern of sacramental reconciliation—contrition, confession, mediation, for-giveness, and penance—could provide further resources for the African the-ology of reconciliation.

Sacramental reconciliation’s first step is contrition for sin—being honestwith one’s own failings. In stepping into the confessional, the sinner stepsaway from pride and rationalization, admitting his sins to himself, God, andthe church. The posture is one of sorrowful humility, not arrogance, resent-ment or defensiveness. The examination of conscience addresses the chal-lenge of memory and reveals the visible brokenness of Christian life;contrition entails honesty with one’s failings. Social reconciliation in turndepends on the mutual contrition that arises from self-examination andhonest dialogue on each party’s collective sins. Contrition recognizes that thechurch herself is broken, that the ecumenical call of John 17:11 that “they mayall be one” is an integral step in following St. Paul’s vision of Christiansbecoming ministers of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:17).

This is followed by the act of confession itself. If contrition is an internalemotional state, confession outwardly verbalizes the sin. A proper confessiondemands a degree of precision; one cannot hide behind vague truisms. Like-wise, public reconciliation depends on voicing sins in their specificity. Thismay explain the power of a process like South Africa’s Truth and Reconcili-ation Commission, a public forum in which the granting of amnesty hingedon the perpetrator’s detailed confession of state-sponsored sins. Collectiveconfession could be an especially important step for churches like theRwandan Catholic community, a church which to this day refuses to issue aninstitutional apology for any involvement in the genocide, attributing thecrimes of 1994 to wayward individuals.76



One of the most controversial aspects of Catholic sacramental practice isthe element of mediation—the requirement to confess one’s sins to a priest.Without delving into a long apology for the practice, I would argue that theprinciple of mediation reminds us that sin damages the church and hurts ourneighbor. Admitting sin to another avoids the risks of cheap reconciliation,recognizing that we cannot forgive ourselves. The principle reminds us that(like sin) reconciliation is always mediated, whether through God, family, orcommunity. Social reconciliation in turn is mediated, whether through localcommunities like Rucyahana’s prison ministries or a national forum like theTRC. Even its critics have noted that much of the TRC’s power lay in Tutu’srole as “South Africa’s high priest.”77

In the sacrament of reconciliation, the priest offers forgiveness to a sinnerwho makes a full confession and offers an act of contrition. At the same time,forgiveness remains a divine act of grace rather than a human right, a giftfrom God to an undeserving sinner. Likewise, acts of social forgivenesstypically require confession and contrition. Some victims may unilaterallyforgive like Jesus on the cross,78 but most require perpetrators to admit theirsins and demonstrate remorse. And as Israel was warned against modelingJonah’s retributive resentment over repentant Nineveh, so public reconcilia-tion depends on the “sinned against” letting go of bitterness and offering thegift of forgiveness. This in turn should facilitate the creation of Christiancommunities whose reconciled common life offers an evangelical witness tothe world; Taban’s Holy Trinity Peace Village stands as a model in this regard.

While the sinner is forgiven when he or she walks out of the confessional,the penalty of the sin remains until penance is completed. Responding to thechallenge of justice, penance recognizes that the damaging effects of sin donot disappear overnight; reconciling broken relationships takes time.Penance also underlines the reality that actions speak louder than words.While penance in the modern West has often been reduced to reciting a fewprayers or reflecting on a scriptural verse, there is no reason that penancecould not entail more visible, public demonstrations of remorse. One thinkshere of the repentant slaver Rodrigo in Roland Joffe’s 1986 film The Mission,dragging his armor and weaponry up a rain-soaked Brazilian cliff beforecollapsing in joyous tears at the summit. Henry IV’s 1077 penance in theCanossa snows stands as a memorable example from church history.79 In thecurrent African context, one thinks of examples like Rucyahana’s prisonministries in which former genocidaires are asked to demonstrate the fruits oftheir repentance by constructing homes on behalf of survivors.

These are but sketches, and their fuller contextual development is best leftto African theologians themselves. But just as the sacrament of the Eucharisthas proven to be a rich resource for African Catholic theology in recentdecades,80 so the sacrament of reconciliation has similar theological andpastoral potential. I think here of Fr. André Sibomana, named administratorof the Rwandan diocese of Kabgayi in August 1994. Facing Catholic congre-

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gations complicit in a popular genocide, Sibomana took the extraordinarystep of suspending baptisms, confirmations, first communions and weddingsuntil Christmas 1994. “Every parishioner who knew he had killed” wasinstructed to abstain from communion, go to confession, and offer a fullexplanation of his/her actions including mitigating or aggravating circum-stances.81 This decision connected the typically private experience of confes-sion with public sins that had rent the community, recognizing thatsacraments of initiation could not be celebrated faithfully until the commu-nity itself was reconciled.

Whether through the pastoral work of André Sibomana or Maggy Baran-kitse or the theological reflections of Desmond Tutu or Emmanuel Katon-gole, African reconciliation theology embodies the hopes of Antioch, thehopes of a reconciled cross-cultural community where the followers of theLord were first called Christians (Acts 11:26). And as Antioch’s integratedJewish-Gentile community challenged the preconceptions of Jerusalem’sJewish Christians, so African reconciliation theology offers some surprisesfor North American and European interlocutors. So many conversations inNorth American theology start and end within the Western context, assum-ing that the church’s universal milieu consists of post-Christian secularism.Even when Africa is brought into this conversation, it is typically througha Western lens, as “the next Christendom” in which global south will battleglobal north and religious war will rear its ugly head.82 Yet the Africansocial reality conforms neither to a medieval model of “Constantinianism”nor to the post-Christian or non-established models of contemporaryEurope and North America.83 Christianity remains a minority religion inmuch of the continent, and yet the churches have real social power, in partdue to the structural weakness of an African state that seems a far cry fromthe Hobbesian Leviathan assumed in so much Western political theology.84

In light of global demographic shifts, North American and Europeantheologians would do well not only to take note of such complexities butto seek out ways for fuller,more sustained and mutually constructiveengagement.

NOTES

1 This article has grown out of papers delivered at the annual conferences of theAfrican Studies Association (Chicago, November 2008) and the Catholic TheologicalSociety of America (Halifax, Canada, June 2009). I am grateful to my interlocutors at bothmeetings.

2 For a helpful study of church engagement and resistance to peace-building efforts in Africaand elsewhere, see Gregory Baum and Harold Wells (eds), The Reconciliation of Peoples:Challenge to the Churches (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997).

3 Synod of Bishops, II Special Assembly for Africa—The Church in Africa in Service to Reconcili-ation, Justice and Peace: Lineamenta (Vatican City: 2006), http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20060627_ii-assembly-africa_en.html (accessed 26Jan. 2010).



4 The phrase was coined by the late Cameroonian Jesuit Engelbert Mveng; see his “Récentdéveloppements de la théologie Africaine,” Bulletin de théologie africaine Vol. 5 (Jan-June1983), pp. 137–144. I borrow the phrase from Raymond A. Aina, “The Mission of the ChurchToday: Reconciliation?” African Ecclesial Review Vol. 5 (2008), p. 221.

5 Cf. Alexis Kagame, La philosophie bantou-rwandaise de l’être (Brussels: Académie Royale desSciences Coloniales, 1956); Placide Tempels, Bantu Philosophy (Paris: Presence Africaine,1959); Vincent Mulago, Un visage africaine du Christianisme: L’union vitale Bantu face à l’unitévitale ecclésiale (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1962); Albert Abble (ed), Des prêtres noirss’interrogent (Paris: Cerf, 1957).

6 Representative texts here include John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (New York,NY: Anchor, 1970) and Concepts of God in Africa (London: SPCK, 1979); Harry Sawyerr,Creative Evangelism: Towards a New Christian Encounter with Africa (London: Lutterworth,1968) and God: Ancestor or Creator? (London: Longman, 1970). This movement was notwithout its dissenters. For a critical perspective on reading indigenous religious traditionsthrough a Christian lens, see Okot p’Biteck, African Religions in Western Scholarship (Nairobi:East African Publishing House, 1970).

7 Initiated by the Martinican scholar Aimé Césaire, négritude was an influential Francophonephilosophical movement that underwrote black cultural nationalism in the 1930s–1950s. A“third way” between communism and capitalism, Nyerere’s ujamaa modeled socialism’segalitarian ideal but rejected its atheistic materialism. Cf. Leopold Senghor, On AfricanSocialism (New York, NY: Praeger, 1964) and “Negritude: A Humanism in the TwentiethCentury,” in Wilfred G. Cartey and Martin Kilson (eds), The Africa Reader: Independent Africa(New York, NY: Vintage, 1970), pp. 179–194; Julius Nyerere, Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism(New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); Adrian Hastings, A History of African Christianity1950–1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

8 On the theoretical shortcomings of inculturation discourse and “culturalism,” see Edward P.Antonio (ed), Inculturation and Post-Colonial Discourse in Africa (New York, NY: Peter Lang,2006) and Jean-François Bayart, The Illusion of Cultural Identity (Chicago, IL: University ofChicago, 2005).

9 Jean-Marc Éla, African Cry, trans. R.R. Barr, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986).10 On the emergence of Pentecostalism in the 1970s and 1980s, see Ogbu Kalu, African Pente-

costalism: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Paul Gifford, AfricanChristianity: Its Public Role (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998); André Cortenand Ruth A. Marshall (eds), Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africaand Latin America (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001).

11 Mobutu’s indigenization campaign sparked great resistance from Catholic quarters; see hereKenneth L. Adelman, ‘The Church-State Conflict in Zaire 1969–1974’, African Studies ReviewVol. 18 (April 1975), pp. 102–116. For Oduyoye’s feminist critiques of traditional Africanpatriarchy, see Mercy A. Oduyoye, Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy (Mary-knoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995).

12 It should be noted that inculturation theology has never disappeared from the Africantheological canon and remains especially influential in Roman Catholic circles. See here theimportant works of Charles Nyamiti, Christ as our Ancestor: Christology from an AfricanPerspective (Gwero: Mambo, 1984); Bénézet Bujo, African Christian Morality at the Age ofInculturation (Nairobi: Paulines, 1990); Laurenti Magesa, Anatomy of Inculturation: Transform-ing the Church in Africa (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004). For an influential Evangelicaladvocate of inculturation theology, see Kwame Bediako, Theology and Identity: The Impact ofCulture upon Christian Thought in the Second Century and Modern Africa (Oxford: Regnum,1992) and Christianity in Africa: The Renewal of a Non-Western Religion (Edinburgh: Edin-burgh University Press, 1995).

13 All biblical quotations are taken from the New American Bible.14 Desmond Tutu, “The Theology of Liberation in Africa”, in Kofi Appiah-Kubi and Sergio

Torres (eds), African Theology en Route (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979), p. 163. Thisimportant text collects the reflections of the groundbreaking 1977 Ecumenical Association ofThird World Theologians (EATWOT) conference in Accra, Ghana.

15 Jean-Marc Éla, African Cry, pp. 6, 38. In addition to Éla’s writings, other representative1970s-1980s works of African liberation theology would include Manas Buthelezi, “AnAfrican Theology or a Black Theology”, in Basil Moore (ed), The Challenge of Black Theology

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in South Africa (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1973), pp. 29–35; Alan Boesak, Farewell toInnocence: A Socio-Ethical Study on Black Theology and Power (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,1977); Steven Biko and Millard Arnold, Black Consciousness in South Africa (New York, NY:Vintage, 1979); Fabien Eboussi-Boulaga, Christianity without Fetishes (Maryknoll, NY: OrbisBooks, 1984); Itumeleng J. Mosala, Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa(Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989).

16 Liberation theologians deny that their movement was a transient phenomenon dependenton Marxist politics. For more recent studies which continue prior economic and politicalundertones while developing new emphases in ecological, feminist, and post-modernthought, see Christopher Rowland (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) and Ivan Petrella (ed), Latin AmericanLiberation Theology: The Next Generation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005). In the Africantheological context, Musa Dube’s post-colonial feminist analysis has been especially influ-ential; see her Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (St. Louis, MO: Chalice, 2000).

17 “Liberation methodology seldom offers guidance on how interdependence is possibleamong persons who recognize that their dispossession is linked. Instead, liberation theolo-gies often result in separate claims on God’s providence by diverse communities. Therefore,solidarity is never realized.” Tutu quoted in Michael Battle, Reconciliation: The UbuntuTheology of Desmond Tutu (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1997), p. 150.

18 The pioneering texts in 1990s reconstruction theology were Jesse Mugambi, From Liberationto Reconstruction: African Christian Theology after the Cold War (Nairobi: East African Educa-tional Publishers, 1995) and Charles Villa-Vicencio, A Theology of Reconstruction: Nation-Building and Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

19 See here Terence Ranger (ed), Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2008); Paul Gifford (ed), The Christian Churches and the Democrati-zation of Africa (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995); Jennifer A. Widner (ed), Economic Change andPolitical Liberalisation in Sub-Saharan Africa (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,1994); J.C. Djéréké, L’engagement politique du clergé catholique en Afrique noire (Paris: Karthala,2001).

20 Villa-Vicencio, Theology of Reconstruction, p. 12.21 In light of this, a more recent proponent of reconstruction theology, Zimbabwe’s Masiiwa

Ragies Gunda, has argued that the accommodating symbol of Nehemiah should be replacedby Amos, a prophet who offered a far stronger critique of the internal religious and politicalleaders of Israel. Cf. Masiiwa R. Gunda, “African Theology of Reconstruction: The PainfulRealities and Practical Options!” Exchange Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 84–102.

22 Reconstructionists would do well to clarify these concepts. Even a sympathizer like SouthAfrica’s John de Gruchy argues that “there is no coherent understanding of justice in themodern world,” noting that justice in the South African context can refer to law and order,restoring the rule of law, returning land, or healing relationships. See John W. de Gruchy,Reconciliation: Restoring Justice (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002), pp. 200–201.

23 While a second generation reconstructionist like Gunda should be credited for recognizingthe importance of the church, even he fails to see how the church itself could constitute analternative political community to the world. “The fact of the matter is that the church is asmuch in a crisis as the entire continent. . . . What we need is to institute reconstruction in thechurch and restore the church as an institution that not only represents the common menand women but . . . acts for and with these common men and women in Africa” (Gunda, pp.95–96). The problem is that the church is not just an advocate on behalf of the “common menand women of Africa”; it is these common men and women.

24 See Mary N. Getui and Emmanuel A. Obeng (eds), Theology of Reconstruction: ExploratoryEssays (Nairobi: Acton, 1999); Valentin Dedji, Reconstruction and Renewal in African Chris-tian Theology (Nairobi: Acton, 2003); Jesse Mugambi, Christian Theology and Social Recon-struction (Nairobi, Kenya: Acton Publishers, 2003); M.R. Gunda, “African Theology ofReconstruction.”

25 The Hebrew tikkun olam (“healing,” “repairing,” “transforming”), Greek katallage, apokatál-laso, and diálasso (“adjusting to difference,” “restoring to favor,” “renewing friendship”),Latin concilium (“deliberative process by which adversaries work out their differences”),and Arabic salima (“peace,” “safety,” “security,” “freedom”) and salaha (“righteousness,”“compromise,” “restoration”) all deepen and nuance our understanding of the polyvalent



English term “reconciliation.” See Daniel Philpott, “Beyond Politics as Usual: Is Reconcili-ation Compatible with Liberalism?” in Daniel Philpott (ed), The Politics of Past Evil: Religion,Reconciliation and the Dilemmas of Transitional Justice (Notre Dame, IN: University of NotreDame, 2006), pp. 11–44.

26 De Gruchy, p. 45. As with inculturation and liberation theology, this turn to reconciliation isfound outside of Africa. Strong North American works include Donald Shriver, An Ethic forEnemies: Forgiveness in Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); L. Gregory Jones,Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm, B. Eerdmans Pub-lishing Company, 1995); Robert Schreiter, The Ministry of Reconciliation: Spirituality andStrategies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998); Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: ATheological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville, TN: AbingdonPress, 1996) and The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World (Grand Rapids,MI: Wm, B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006).

27 Due to these political developments, secular political and legal theorists have also appro-priated the language of reconciliation and forgiveness in recent scholarship. See here MarthaMinow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence(Boston, MA: Beacon Press: 1999); Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis F. Thompson (eds), Truth v.Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000);Naomi Roht-Arriaza and Janvier Mariezcurrena (eds), Transitional Justice in the 21st Cen-tury—Beyond Truth versus Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

28 In addition to the lineamenta for the upcoming Second African Synod for the RomanCatholic Church (see fn. 2 above), see the Lausanne Movement’s 2004 document on recon-ciliation: http://www.lausanne.org/documents/2004forum/LOP51_IG22.pdf (accessed 26Jan. 2010).

29 Mercy A. Oduyoye, Beads and Strands: Reflections of an African Woman on Christianity in Africa(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004).

30 Battle, Reconciliation, p. 39.31 Desmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1999), p. 264.32 Battle, Reconciliation, p. 137.33 The Kairos Theologians, “The Kairos Document 1985” in Charles Villa-Vicencio (ed),

Between Christ and Caesar: Classic and Contemporary Texts on Church and State (Grand Rapids,MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986), p. 256. Released at the height of theapartheid struggle, the Kairos document offered a controversial if nuanced defense of “justrevolution” in situations of structural oppression.

34 John Rucyahana, The Bishop of Rwanda (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2006), pp. 185,200–201.

35 Ibid., p. 222.36 Launched in 2002, the gacaca (“on the grass”) process was instituted to help the state process

the tens of thousands of suspected genocide suspects languishing in Rwandan prisons.Prisoners are tried before local village councils and can receive reduced prison sentencesand community service in exchange for their cooperation. On gacaca, see Max Rettig,“Gacaca: Truth, Justice and Reconciliation in Post-conflict Rwanda?” African Studies ReviewVol. 51 (2008), pp. 25–50; Karen Broneeus, “Truth-telling as Talking Cure? Insecurity andRetraumatization in the Rwandan Gacaca Courts”, Security Dialogue Vol. 39 (2008), pp.55–76; Coel Kirkby, “Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts: A Preliminary Critique,” Journal of AfricanLaw Vol. 50 (2006), pp. 91–117; Timothy Longman, “Justice at the grassroots? Gacaca trials inRwanda,” in Roht-Arriaza and Mariezcurrena, Transitional Justice in the 21st Century, pp.206–228.

37 The project includes Christian ministers from across the ecclesial spectrum (Anglicans,Catholics, Evangelicals, and Seventh-Day Adventists), recognizing that the bitter denomi-national tensions that shaped Rwandan mission history contributed to a social climate ofmutual suspicion and fear (Rucyahana, The Bishop of Rwanda, p. 180). For all of his ecumeni-cal sensibilities, however, Rucyahana’s repeated assertion that “the people of Rwanda hadnever fully accepted Christ into their hearts” (p. 201) offers a biting critique of the Catholicmissions that dominated Rwandan social life throughout the twentieth century.

38 Rucyahana, The Bishop of Rwanda, p. 188.39 André Sibomana, Hope for Rwanda (London/Sterling, VA: Pluto, 1999), pp. 131–132.40 Rucyahana, The Bishop of Rwanda, pp. 212–213.

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41 Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice, Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice,Peace, and Healing (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), p. 13.

42 Ibid., pp. 75–94.43 Emmanuel Katongole with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Mirror to the Church: Resurrecting

Faith after Genocide in Rwanda (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008), p. 133.44 Ibid, p. 121. First narrated in Philip Gourevitch’s We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will

be killed with your children (New York, NY: Picador, 1998), the Hotel des Mille Collines andits proprietor, Paul Rusesabagina, were made more widely known by the 2005 film HotelRwanda.

45 Katongole and Rice, Reconciling All Things, pp. 114–115. Katongole here shares a movinganecdote from the early years of his priesthood. A young man burst into his office as he waspreparing his Sunday sermon, announcing that he was HIV-positive and despairing at thethought of sharing this news with his family. Katongole spent a few quiet minutes with himbefore leaving for Mass. At the time of the sermon, however, he found that the words nolonger made sense; he simply asked the congregation to pray for the young man. Thisepisode “reminds me of our vocation to interrupt the status quo and make sure that the lifeof the church is somehow good news to people like Michael. Even when we don’t knowwhat to do, we can’t just go on with business as usual” (p. 115).

46 Ibid., p. 13. In this sense Katongole argues that he is presenting neither a heroic nor utopiannarrative; he and Rice support their vision by providing numerous examples of “kingdomrealism” in Africa, Korea, and the United States.

47 Ibid., p. 91.48 Ibid., pp. 104, 121.49 Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness, p. 7. Later he describes the South African constitution as

“not just a piece of paper” but a “solemn covenant entered into by all South Africansthrough their elected representatives” (p. 17).

50 Rucyahana, The Bishop of Rwanda, p. 177, p. 166.51 Ibid., pp. 182–183. For more critical perspectives on Kagame to balance Rucyahana’s

approbations, see Johann Pottier, Re-imagining Rwanda: Conflict, Survival and Disinformationin the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); RenéLemarchand, The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa (Philadelphia, PA: University ofPennsylvania Press, 2009); Gerard Prunier, Africa’s World War: Congo, the RwandanGenocide, and the Making of Continental Catastrophe (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2009).

52 See here Emmanuel Katongole, “Christianity, Tribalism and the Rwanda Genocide,” inEmmanuel Katongole, A Future For Africa: Critical Essays in Christian Social Imagination(Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2005), pp. 95–117.

53 On Sant’Egidio, see P. Anouilh, “Sant’Egidio in Mozambique: From Charity to Peacebuild-ing,” La revue internationale et stratégique Vol. 59 (2005), pp. 9–20 and Cameron Hume, EndingMozambique’s war: the role of mediation and good offices (Washington, DC: United StatesInstitute of Peace Press, 1994). On Sierra Leone, see Amadu Sesay, Does one size fit all? TheSierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission Revisited (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitut,2007).

54 Emmanuel Katongole, “A Different World Right Here: The Church within African Theo-logical Imagination,” in Katongole, A Future for Africa, pp. 153–183.

55 My analysis of Maison Shalom draws on the organization’s website: http://www.maisonshalom.net (accessed 26 Jan. 2010). Duke Divinity School’s report on its January 2009gathering of the Great Lakes Initiative in Bujumbura (http://www.divinity.duke.edu/reconciliation/pages/programs/greatlakesgathering2009.html, accessed 26 Jan. 2010) andthe video celebrating Barankitse’s reception of the 2008 Opus Prize (http://www.opusprize.org/winners/08_Barankitse.cfm, accessed 26 Jan. 2010). Launched in 2005by Duke University’s Center for Reconciliation, the Great Lakes Initiative (http://www.divinity.duke.edu/reconciliation/pages/programs/greatlakes.html, accessed 26 Jan.2010) gathers local practitioners of reconciliation for an annual conference in Central Africa.Here participants pray together, share stories, and undertake further theological reflectionon issues of reconciliation, forgiveness, violence, and tribalism.

56 Barankitse’s testimony can be heard at http://www.opusprize.org/winners/08_Barankitse.cfm (accessed 26 Jan. 2010).



57 Winner of the 2007 Opus Prize, Br. Stan Goetschalckx’s Ahadi International Institute(http://www.opusprize.org/winners/07_Goetschalckx.cfm, accessed 26 Jan. 2010) in Tan-zania also focuses on the re-formation of Rwandan, Burundian and Congolese refugees intoproductive citizens.

58 Information is drawn from the website for Taban’s Kuron/Holy Trinity Peace Village:http://www.kuronvillage.net/ (accessed 26 Jan. 2010).

59 An image on Kuron Village’s website (http://www.kuronvillage.net/dream.htm, accessed26 Jan. 2010) captures the multifaceted balancing act which is Kuron Village. Taban is shownscratching his beard and rubbing his head as he “dreams” of all of the interlocking com-ponents of the peace village.

60 Cf. http://www.kuronvillage.net/exec_summary.htm (accessed 26 Jan. 2010).61 Ibid.62 While the Concerned Parents’ Association does not have its own website, information here

is drawn from associated groups, specifically Duke University’s Africa Rising (http://www.africarising.org/concerned-parents-association, accessed 26 Jan. 2010) and theFebruary 2009 report of Great Lakes Initiative Gathering III, “Identity, Community,and the Gospel of Reconciliation” (http://www.divinity.duke.edu/reconciliation/pdf/2009BurundiGathering.pdf, accessed 26 Jan. 2010).

63 Ibid. At the January 2009 gathering of the Great Lakes Initiative in Bujumbura, PhoebeOkello, chairperson of the CPA in Gulu, relayed how the prayer gatherings facilitated theconversion of heart that enabled victims to forgive perpetrators and begin to move forwardwith community-building. “I learned to trust God, to love God, and to love my neighbors.The problem brought us together and we started working as one.”

64 From a population of 10 million in 1900, the African Christian population in 2005approached 400 million and was growing at an unprecedented rate of 2.36% per year. Cf.Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. second edition, (NewYork, NY: Oxford, 2007), pp. 5–17.

65 See here A. E. Orobator, From Crisis to Kairos: The Mission of the Church in the Time ofHIV/AIDS, Refugees, and Poverty (Nairobi: Paulines, 2005). A Nigerian Jesuit, Orobator looksto integrate deeper social analysis into Catholic ecclesiology, shifting from “theology asinformed speculation to theology as critical reflection informed by empirical investigation”(p. 30).

66 After the brutal Cold War-era struggle between FRELIMO and RENAMO ended in theearly 1990s, Mozambique foreswore both a Truth and Reconciliation process and criminaltrials, issuing a blanket amnesty for both sides and leaving reconciliation and reintegra-tion to local communities. Significantly, these local reconciliation efforts often had deepreligious overtones, involving traditional curandeiro healers and Catholic priests alike (Cf.Helena Cobban, Amnesty after Atrocity: Healing Nations after Genocide and War Crimes(Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2007), pp. 140–181). The Mozambican process mirrors MiroslavVolf’s calls for selective forgetfulness in the aftermath of cycles of violent grievance, rec-ognizing that the “never forget” credo can breed violence rather than solidarity (Volf, Endof Memory, p. 33).

67 Briefly, the late colonial period of the 1940s and 1950s saw the dominance of monarchist-colonialist narratives justifying the historic claims to political power of Mwami Rudahigwa,the Abanyiginya and Abega clans, and the Tutsi class. After the 1959–62 Rwandan revolu-tion turned ethnic tables in favor of the Hutu, historiography emphasized Hutu-Tutsitensions and the importance of democratization. Post-genocide scholarship has returned toa more nationalistic narrative, downplaying the Hutu-Tutsi categories and blaming ethnicdivision on European colonial influence. The most thorough overview of earlier Rwandanhistoriography can be found in Marcel d’Hertefelt and Danielle de Lame, Société, Culture etHistoire du Rwanda: Encyclopédie bibliographique 1863–1980/87, 2 vols. (Tervuren, Belgium:Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, 1987; an updated bibliography is forthcoming). For morerecent ideological shifts, see Pottier, Reimagining Rwanda.

68 Volf, End of Memory, p. 35. Collective memory (rather than amnesia) may also be a moreaccurate way of describing the Mozambican case. In the words of Priscilla Hayner, “in theend, perhaps Mozambique’s process is not about forgetting or denying the past, but aboutaccepting it in its fullness and complexity” (Priscilla Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: ConfrontingState Terror and Atrocity (New York, NY: Routledge, 2001), p. 195).

568 J. J. Carney


69 While white South Africans remained skeptical about the TRC process in the early 2000s, thevast majority had little nostalgia for the apartheid era. In a 2000 national poll, 80% of whiteSouth Africans agreed that apartheid was a great moral and political evil (Hayner, Unspeak-able Truths, p. 160).

70 For a damning indictment of Rwandan intervention in Congo, see Marie-Beatrice Umutesi,Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire (Madison, WI: University ofWisconsin Press, 2004).

71 For this and other critical perspectives to balance Tutu’s approbations of the TRC, seeRussell Daye, Political Forgiveness: Lessons from South Africa (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,2004); Richard A. Wilson, The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Legitimizingthe Post-Apartheid State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Hugo Van derMerwe and Audrey R. Chapman (eds), Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Did the TRCDeliver? (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).

72 Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness, p. 259.73 Alan J. Torrance, “The Theological Grounds for Advocating Forgiveness and Reconciliation

in the Sociopolitical Realm” in Philpott (ed), Politics of Past Evil, pp. 45–85.74 The Rwandan revolution unfolded between late 1959 and mid-1962, leading to the trans-

formation of a Tutsi-dominated oligarchy/monarchy into a Hutu-dominated republic. Foran insightful (if poorly sourced) theoretical analysis of this period, see Mahmood Mamdani,When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 103–131.

75 Katongole and Rice, Reconciling All Things, p. 50.76 See here Carol Rittner, John K. Roth, and Wendy Whitworth (eds), Genocide in Rwanda:

Complicity of the Churches? (St. Paul, MN: Paragon, 2004), especially Tom Ndahiro, “TheChurch’s Blind Eye to Genocide in Rwanda,” pp. 229–249.

77 The skeptical Richard Wilson calls this the “religious-redemptive” narrative of nationalreconciliation in which Tutu leads the country through a national process of confession,forgiveness, redemption, and the exclusion of vengeance (Wilson, The Politics of Truth andReconciliation in South Africa, p. 109).

78 Tutu’s model centers on the unmerited forgiveness offered by Christ on the Cross (cf. Tutu,No Future without Forgiveness, pp. 272–273).

79 The German king Henry IV had fallen out with Pope Gregory VII over lay investiture (i.e.,whether the king had the right to nominate local bishops). After Gregory excommunicatedHenry, the king appeared in penitent’s attire outside the pope’s winter residence in northernItaly, remaining there for three days. This highly public act of penitence briefly reconciledGregory and Henry.

80 Katongole and Éla stand out here. Éla’s African Cry and My Faith as an African (Maryknoll, NY:Orbis Books, 1988) contrast the theological abundance of the Eucharist with the dailyCameroonian reality of hunger and destitution. Katongole’s social ethics could be summa-rized as forming a “Eucharistic community of hope” shaped by the practice of the Eucharist.See in particular Katongole’s essay “Kannungu and the Movement for the Restoration of theTen Commandments of God in Uganda” in A Future for Africa, pp. 119–149. For an importanttext in Eucharistic political theology that has influenced Katongole, see William T. Cavanaugh,Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics and the Body of Christ (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).

81 Sibomana, Hope for Rwanda, pp. 126–127.82 Philip Jenkins’s influential writings are emblematic of this attitude. In addition to The Next

Christendom, see his The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2006).

83 Bishop Taban’s Holy Spirit Trinity Peace Village demonstrates this complexity. A Catholicbishop running a rural village appears distinctively pre-modern, yet a Catholic bishopwelcoming Muslims and Traditionalists into a village named after the Trinity would seemequally foreign to the medieval mind.

84 See here Peter Scott and William T. Cavanaugh (eds), The Blackwell Companion to PoliticalTheology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004) and Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan (eds),Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World (New York, NY: Fordham Univer-sity Press, 2006). Neither of these standard works in political theology includes a singlearticle from an African author or African perspective, nor is reconciliation included underthe broad rubric of “political theology.”



ROADS TO RECONCILIATION: AN EMERGING PARADIGM OF AFRICAN THEOLOGY 1 moth_1632 549..569

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