Unless Uganda begins to address the poverty, ethnic divisions and social unrest in its midst, the country’s future will be blighted, Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda has warned.
Police report that 24 people died in two days of rioting in and around Kampala that began on Sept 10 after the government forbade King Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, the leader of Uganda’s largest ethnic group, the Baganda, from touring the Kayunga region near Kampala.
Kayunga is a part of the Baganda kingdom, however, only a minority of its residents are Baganda. The government forbade the king from visiting the region after it said he declined to meet with separatist groups.
Although this brief report by George Conger tells us very little that’s new, what’s important is that ++Henry Orombi is unafraid to address the problem of the multiple fracture lines that are deeply dividing this fledgling East African nation (like so many other African countries). The question is how well the Christian Church will be able to help bring peace and justice to the bitterly fragmented country.
The new archbishop of Kenya is clearly concerned about the same problem in his neighboring land. So are the leaders of the Episcopal Church of Sudan to the north. Important progress is being made, from all I hear, but it’s slow business. Such deep-rooted rivalries didn’t arise overnight. And they can’t be overcome overnight.
I’m glad to read that there have been no more deaths since the two days of rioting on September 10th and 11th.
“Blessed are the peacemakers…”
David Handy+
A reminder also, David+, do you not think, that the Church in Africa will be obliged to continue to put down an institutional footprint for some years to come?
It’s almost as if the Global South is at the point where the Protestant churches of the West were in the early 19th Century and the point Roman Catholicism in the West reached at the end of the 19th century? The Global South’s understanding of its role in the wider world today may thus look a little different from that held by Christians in a more secular society. Not that this is an unbridgeable gap; it just bears taking account.
And Anglican and Catholic bishops will continue to serve as the consciences of many African nations as they wrestle with the demons of the post-colonial era.
[url=http://catholicandreformed.blogspot.com]Catholic and Reformed[/url]
“…consciences of many African nations as they wrestle with the demons of the post-colonial era.”
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The deep-rooted problems of Africa pre-date the colonial era just as the demons of Europe pre-date and antedate the Renaissance.
I wouldn’t deny it, but that wasn’t my point. Perhaps I should have said post-independence era. Being a Cold War theater didn’t help, but as Rwanda and Sudan both demonstrate, the African continent has proved quite capable of generating its own internecine strife.
Alas, Jeremy’s #4 is all too true. He’s somehow reminded me that Reinhold Niebuhr came to wish that he’d titled his great Neo-Orthodox classic [i]”Moral Man and Immoral Society”[/i] a bit more precisely (if ponderously) as [b]”Immoral Man and Even More Immoral Society.”[/b] But the point is the same. Yes, there is the grim reality of original sin that drives us all to sin as individuals. But to get us to commit truly horrendous things that we’d never think of doing as individuals to other individuals, just cloak those inhumane acts in the national flag, or in the rhetoric of being faithful to one’s proud heritage (whether tribal, religious, or whatever).
I like Jeremy’s language of calling Christian leaders the [b]”conscience'[/b] of the society’s in which they live. Just right.
David Handy+