Pluralism And Religious Life

INTRODUCTION

Since the mid-1950s, African theologians like John Mbiti, Edward Fashole-Luke, Desmond Tutu, Vincent Mulago and Harry Sawyerr, Bolaji Idowu, Byang Kato and others have made it their mission to bring the gospel to bear on Africans’ lives and thought-worlds — to make Christianity indigenous on a continent that first heard the gospel in New Testament times. It would therefore be a misleading oversimplification to state that Germany, America, Britain and Africa respectively created corrupted, corrected and copied theology. Africa has something meaningful to offer. This provides supportive evidence for a realistic assessment of the issues and trends of the Church in Africa.

CONTEXTUALIZATION

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Ever since the Taliban became a threatening presence in the life of democratic and peace loving people I’ve had this dreaded fear that one day, intolerance would reign in Israel. I’m not so sure that this is a far fetched threat or as others has told me, bordering on the paranoid. It is not all that far farfetched because Israel happens not to have a separation of church and state. The day could come when politically the religious parties could hold the majority of seats and usurp power reigning religious tolerance on the majority of secular Jews in Israel.

The fact of the matter is that in a sense there already is the foundations of religious intolerance, what we term in Hebrew as k’fia daatit. On example of that would be marriage. The founding fathers of Israel, incorrectly assumed that for the sake of the unity of the Jewish people all matters relating to marriage and divorce ought to be in the hands of the Chief Rabbinate. By so doing, intermarriage and mamzerut (halachically rendered illegitimate) issues resulting from an unholy union would be minimized. Truth be told, most Israelis resent having this arrangement and would prefer the option of choosing how and by whom they were marrying.

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