INTERFAITH DIALOGUE A CUTTING-EDGE NECESSITY IN AFRICA

Story from Ngala Killian Chimtom

July 20, 2017

Picture at left:  Bishop Jean-Marie Benoit Bala of Bafia, Cameroon.  (Credit: Valérie leon (Travail personnel) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons.)

Participants at a meeting of central African bishops this week recommended inter-religious dialogue as the way forward for the sub-region. They also reiterated claims that the death of Cameroonian Bishop Jean-Marie Benoît Balla was not a suicide, but that he was "brutally assassinated.”

YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon - Inter-religious wars in the Central African Republic, the excesses of the terrorist sect Boko Haram in Cameroon, and a steep rise in Christian revivalist movements are rapidly changing the religious landscape in the Central African sub-region, and paving the way for religious intolerance.

In the Central African Republic, the fight for political control became increasingly religious with the Muslim Seleka rebels wresting control of the capital Bangui in 2013 and looting, raping and killing the Christian-dominated Anti-Balaka. But when the Christians seized back the capital months later, they committed the same crimes against the Muslims.

In Cameroon and Chad, the Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram has become a source of continued attacks, killing at least 500 civilians since it started cross-border attacks in 2013. Across the entire area, a rise in Pentecostal movements and their extremist ideologies has taken sway. “The Central African sub-region is in crisis, and these crises are an expression of hate,” says the 86-year-old Archbishop emeritus of Douala in Cameroon, Cardinal Christian Tumi. “If I love my brother, if I love my sister, I won’t take up a gun to kill him,” he added.

In view of the troubling situation, some 80 Catholic bishops from the Central African Sub-region along with representatives from other Christian denominations and Muslim communities came together in Yaoundé for the 11^th Forum of the Episcopal Conferences of Central Africa, with ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue at the centre of their discussions.

The bishops and their guests discussed “Islam in Central Africa today,” traditional African religions and inter-religious dialogue,” “Christianity, Islam and Politics,” as well as “dialogue between the Catholic Church and the different Islamic currents in Central Africa.”

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