African Christian - Jewish consultation in French-speaking Africa
Yaoundé, 8-13 November 2001
Hans Ucko

Jewish-Christian dialogue is in Europe and North America a well-established experience. It continues to inspire many Christians, which is demonstrated in many church documents and theological writings. Lately it has also led to a reflection on the role and significance of Christianity for Jewish theology. I have referred to the document Dabru Emet in an earlier travel report. The Jewish-Christian dialogue builds upon the presence of Jewish communities and the problematic history between Jews and Christians in Europe. Anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism have left stains in history impossible to remove and impossible to forget.

There is of course another aspect of Jewish-Christian encounters or rather lack of encounters. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one major reason for the absence of dialogue between Jews and Middle East Christians. The Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) responds coolly to suggestions from Jewish or Jewish-Christian organisations to engage in any Jewish-Christian dialogue, lest it be interpreted to support the cause of Israel.

Christians in other parts of the world, where there is no or insignificant Jewish presence or history, are not immediately part of the Jewish-Christian dialogue. They may for sure have other priorities. If there are any associations with Jews and Judaism, they are complex and contradictory. They may be related to what is said in the Bible about the Jews. They may refer to what was conveyed through missionary education. Attitudes encompass respect and esteem for the chosen people, the people of God but entails alas also classical theological positions between Jews and Christians expressed through polarisations such as old and new, Law and Gospel, merit and grace. There is the sympathy for Palestinians, living under occupation by the Jewish State. At the same time there is also in some places, where Islam is dominant and Christians live as minorities, a silent support for Israel in its struggle against Muslim neighbours, Israel vicariously doing what they would like to do themselves but cannot do.

The desk for Jewish-Christian relations has the mandate to bring into the Jewish-Christian dialogue Christian partners, for whom there are no immediate encounters with Judaism or Jewish communities. There has thus been Jewish-Christian dialogues organised by the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Nairobi 1986, in Hong Kong 1992, in Cochin 1993, and in Johannesburg 1995. Some of them have been co-sponsored by the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), an umbrella organisation of mainly American Jewish bodies.

The consultation in Yaoundé was the result of a collaborative effort between IJCIC and WCC and is the first Christian-Jewish dialogue organised in French-speaking Africa. Aside from this fact, it is worth noting how many of the African Christian participants welcomed that the WCC, as they said, finally took note of French-speaking Africa.

The consultation was carefully planned with the IJCIC consultant in Geneva, Prof. Jean Halpérin, and in an ongoing communication with CER, the Africa Task Force and AACC staff, facilitating the choice of themes and suggesting participants from WCC member churches.

The consultation was divided into three themes:

African participants represented both church and university in Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa and Togo. The Harrist Church and the Kimbanguist church represented the African Instituted churches (AIC). The representative of the Harrist Church expressed at several occasions that there was a particular affinity between Africans and Jews. Many of the AIC churches understand themselves to be photocopies of the People of Israel and identify themselves with the Jewish people in their own calling to be a people set aside with a particular mission. Other African participants echoed the same. Europe had exported its history of anti-Semitism to Africa, but it had no place in Africa. Moses was an African, he married an African. He spent a major part of his life in Africa. He was before the exodus according to tradition the sovereign of Ethiopia. The Jews were for many years slaves in Egypt, thus in Africa. There is an alliance between Africa and the Jewish people. One of the African participants told the story about his own people, who walked forty kilometres to meet him after they had learned that he had been to Jerusalem. One of their own coming home from Jerusalem was something out of the extraordinary. The Old Testament, the Holy Land, and the People of God are loaded concepts in the African Christian tradition. During worship in church at the time of our consultation, there was immense jubilation as people learned that one of the Jewish participants actually came from Jerusalem. There was no end to the praise and ovation.

Jewish participants came from France, Israel, Switzerland and the United States. A Jewish and a Christian participant represented the International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ). There were in all 25 participants.

Every morning was ushered in through a common Bible study. The first Christian Bible study on the Pharisee and the Publican (Luke 18, 10-14) could easily have collapsed the consultation from the beginning. The Bible study used all the stereotypes that those involved in the Jewish-Christian dialogue have learned not to use and why not to use them. But the Jewish participants understood that the stereotypes were not there to hurt or offend. They were simply part of a traditional Christian "teaching of contempt" carried along without much conscious reflection throughout the oikoumene. This traditional teaching sees the Jew more as a theoretical theological construct illustrating a polarised Christian teaching than a person in flesh and blood, a person in his or her own self.

Instead of leading to a polarisation between Jews and Christians an interesting discussion took place on the concept of fasting, where the text from Isaiah (58, 3ff) became significant, a text also used in the Yom Kippur service.

This is not the place to summarise the content of the presentations and the ensuing discussion on the themes. The evaluation of the consultation resulted in a commitment to work towards a publication of the material together with studies of biblical sources, which refer to the African people and seeks to create a Jewish-African anthology.

I will instead highlight only a couple of issues that were important in the consultation. Although not directly an activity of the Decade to Overcome Violence, it became obvious how much we could refer to the Decade as an incentive towards peace making, towards shalom and ubuntu. To pursue peace is more than to love peace, anyone can love peace, but to pursue peace is to create peace. Shalom has to do with the verb shalem, which means to pay. There is effort involved, one has to pay one's dues, and one has to be released and acquitted from one's debts.

Ubuntu is that which makes our humanity, all that which makes the human being different from the animals. A person, an individual should be ubuntu, playing his/her given role in the community assuming responsibilities. "It is ubuntu to love and care for others. It is ubuntu to act kindly to others. It is ubuntu to be hospitable. It is ubuntu to be just and fair. It is ubuntu to be compassionate. It is ubuntu to assist those in distress. It is ubuntu to be truthful and honest. It is ubuntu to have good morals. A country, which practises ubuntu, is the closest thing on earth to the kingdom of God." It is through the word, the palaver (the reunion of the clan to talk about a crisis in community, re-establishing broken relations) that there is a possibility to pursue peace. In this participants saw likeness and relationship between shalom and ubuntu through the importance of the word against violence. The palaver is the tool in a conflict. The palaver distinguishes the human being from the animal. The absence of the word opens for violence. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission had as a principle to give both camps the word, the possibility to speak. Reconciliation must precede peace.

A peak in the consultation was in the discussion about memories and experiences of violence. Here Shoah and Rwanda became the focal points.

The churches involved in violence live between being victims and being responsible, between memory and amnesia. In this situation, one cannot operate with a theology of liberation. A theology of reconstruction is needed. Everything was shattered after what happened in Rwanda. African cultures and values were shattered. The words of Ezekiel 37:11 echoed in the wake of Rwanda, "Then he said to me, 'Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel". They say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.'"

The discussion on the topic took off in how we are to deal with our memories, whether one can allow oneself to forget in order to live, whether this would be the same as forgetting the crime, which was committed. Is forgetting an act of humiliation of those who died and those who survived and who want to know who killed their parent, child, relative, or friend? The words of 2 Samuel 21 (David avenging the Gibeonites) played into the discussion. How does one safeguard the memory and at the same time keep a way out for pardon and forgiveness?

African theology has dealt with both memory and violence. Memory is foundational and is celebrated in a liturgical manner in the theology of reconstruction. Countries, cultures, dignity have been destroyed repeatedly and yet one has to assume the responsibility to deal with memory in a constructive way.

There is a need to think in terms of reparation and not in terms of retribution. Or else the whole population is imprisoned. One needs to find a way of symbolic punishment in order to live together. A sort of Truth & Reconciliation Commission is needed, but how does one prepare people for it?

There is of course a need for a conventional code of "human rights" that would serve as a legal instrument for detecting, measuring, and redressing injustices. Yet, the greatest weakness of a theory of justice revolving solely around human rights is that it creates an ethos in which there is no room whatsoever for forgiveness and reconciliation. The correct but incomplete theory of justice has made us unable to forgive or forget the endless list of grievances we attribute to the other party. As long as we only fight for our rights, we shall continue to fight against the other. In the vocabulary of the "human rights language", the words "repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation" are absent.

This is why Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela refused to adopt the Nuremberg model of redressing the violated rights based on "retributive justice". They invoked the tribal tradition of ubuntu with its emphasis on "restorative justice" based on co-responsibility leading to confession and reconciliation. The criminals could not get away with murder, as some critics of the Truth Commission feared. The perpetrators of injustice were called to books, not in order to be harassed, but to be healed by an offer of forgiveness in exchange for a frank confession of repentance.

The Jewish concept tikkun olam, the reparation or betterment of the world, is also a kind of reconstruction. There is a risk with excessive memory, where the past conditions the present, where Arafat becomes a new Hitler. Such excessive memory will empty Hitler of meaning and should make us reflect on the meaning of metaphors. One has to reckon with that there is in the Jewish world sometimes an excessive paranoia, an excessive memory of the Shoah. There is an important verse in the Jewish tradition: "Therefore it shall be, when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies around, in the land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance to possess, that you shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven;" (Deut.25, 19). Remembering the danger of excessive memory, Jews should therefore remember Amalek but with great caution.

Is there a place for silence or amnesia in memory or how do we deal with excessive memory? One must be wary of simplistic metaphors, dividing the world into good or evil in too facile a way. One must realise that one sometimes has to consciously discontinue remembering. One must realise that there is a relationship between memory and idolatry. When you become a slave to your memory, there is a risk of becoming idolatrous. This is a challenge also in peace building: In the pursuit of peace, there is a danger in becoming overwhelmed by wrath and anger. Anger can become idolatry, when you lose the face of the other.

The evaluation of the consultation was overwhelmingly positive. There were justified remarks, which were noted: A Palestinian presence might have added another important focus, which could have been a healthy reminder of the political dimension of what is said in the Jewish-Christian dialogue. Poverty should have been an issue in itself and as a challenge to our talk about shalom and ubuntu. Certain issues were not at all mentioned: secularisation, agnosticism, Islam.

The message sent per e-mail captures in telegraphic style some of the vital points of the consultation and indicates a fervent wish that there is some kind of continuation to this kind of Jewish-Christian dialogue. While one may think that we have said what is to be said in the Jewish-Christian dialogue and time now has come for us to assess in an intra-Christian/intra-Jewish reflection the fruits of this dialogue, there are still both among Christians and among Jews refreshing and vital discoveries to be made of each other. It is maybe here that the WCC has a key role to play, providing a space for encounters that otherwise would never have happened.

Message of the Christian-Jewish Consultation
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