From Philadelphia to Kamina: Bumuntu Interreligious Dialogue in the Heart of Africa

Abstract

In the summer of 2010, Professor Leonard Swidler and Harry Halloran met with me in Philadelphia to discuss the root causes of violence in the Congo. The result was the creation of the Bumuntu Peace Institute, (1) the first African extension of the Dialogue Institute. This essay intends to articulate the challenges of interreligious dialogue in Central Africa, drawing from the field trips and the work of the Bumuntu Peace Institute over the last four years. I. Introductory Narrative It is January 14, 2015, and I am sitting in an hotel. This is not Los Angeles or Bombay, but Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The television screen that runs non-stop news from CNN, BBC, and French agencies shows the picture of Amedy Coulibaly, a black African involved in the Paris shootings connected to the Charlie Hebdo attack. I hear the reaction of many Congolese around me: These Muslims are crazy. As Africans we already have many problems: wars, poverty, tribalism, racism, dictatorship. Why get involved in Arab issues and fight wars that are not ours? Outside, in the streets of Kinshasa, Muslim robes are everywhere. When I left the Congo some twenty years ago for studies in Europe and then the United States, Muslims were believed to be about two percent of the population. Now statistics point to ten percent or even more. Moreover, it is a population of affluent businesspeople, soon to be heavily involved in competition for political power in this country where power was traditionally held by Catholics, Protestants, and Kimbanguists. (2) But, in this traditionally Christian country, Muslims are not alone in shaping the religious landscape. Street-radio (radio-trottoir) has it that many politicians belong to esoteric cults that require them to commit incest or perform human sacrifices to secure their jobs, positions, and power. Here, Indian are feared as malefic magic. As for traditional religions, they are viewed by most Congolese as mere witchcraft that should be eradicated as quickly as possible. The same opinion is prevalent in Lubumbashi and Kamina, where I have been teaching and doing research since 2011. Over the past four years I have regularly traveled to the DRC to teach and promote interreligious dialogue. After some attempts in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, in this vast land, we focused on Kamina. Thanks to the support of the Dialogue Institute of Temple University (Philadelphia) and grants from the Halloran Philanthropies, we have progressively established the Bumuntu Peace Institute in Kamina to prepare young generations for peace. In January, 2015, I was joined by Rene Sephton, a Greek-Australian woman who does research on the Bumuntu peace-making tradition. Together we have conducted several interviews among local people in various villages, while working with students from the Universite de Kamina, Institut Superieur Pedagogique, and the Methodist University of Kamina. It is the labor of these field trips and research that I would like to articulate here and to reflect on the state of interreligious dialogue in Central Africa, using Kamina as a paradigmatic case study. II. Context: Africa Matters In order to understand the scope of interreligious dialogue in Africa, let us observe the situation on the ground, that is, the religious landscape of Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the DRC, and finally the city of Kamina where our Bumuntu Peace Institute is based. A. The Religious Landscape of Sub-Saharan Africa (3) Africa is now home to four major religious groups: Christianity, Islam, African Traditional Religions, and religions of Asian origin (largely practiced by the political elite, mainly Mahikari, Hinduism, and Buddhism). The fifty-four countries of the African continent have nearly a billion people (15% of the world population, versus 5% for the U.S.A.). According to a Pew Forum study, more than 1,300. …