Modern theologians of the West have described ecumenical concern as a receding issue in a milieu of weariness over the ecumenical agenda.[1] However, it is not the case that Christians in developing nations can afford such ennui in the face of political divisions that have fallen along religious divides and have hindered development. In modern Uganda, critical tensions dividing north from south may be traceable to historical tensions between the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant/Anglican denominations. This paper calls for Catholic-Protestant reconciliation in modern Uganda by drawing attention to a neglected historical connection between Ugandan religious tensions and current regional conflicts. Having acknowledged the damages that denominational divisions imported by the Christian West have inflicted in this developing nation, Ugandan Christians are poised for the possibility of resolving their historical conflicts with grace.
In the British House of Lords on March 10, 2006, Anglican Bishop of Winchester urgently called for the British government to alleviate “the humanitarian and cultural disaster currently engulfing northern Uganda.” The region had been called a disaster zone because of its dire need for international assistance. The Bishop’s report referred specifically to the civil war resulting from the rebel forces of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which carries out a regional reign of terror. At the time, the rebel forces of Northern Uganda had displaced over one million people from their homes, and were abducting and torturing children to force them into sex slavery and military service.
While the nation’s political and economic hub in southern Uganda enjoyed relative peace and prosperity, northern Uganda was suffering one of the worst humanitarian crises in its history. Uganda’s international appeals for aid to the North against the marauding LRA hinted strongly at disabled intervention by the resourceful South, and demonstrated the history of hostile separation between the tribes of the two regions.[2] In this way, the historical/geographic divide between northern and southern Uganda had become a contemporary story of long-standing tribal divisions and regional non-cooperation. Although each Ugandan region represents dozens of distinct, and often hostile, tribal communities, and although the North/South divide results in part from the colonial and topographical division that splits the country neatly in two, Ugandan historians have suggested that the regions’ mutual disdain results from historical religious tensions.[3]
Ugandan historian Phares Mutibwa sketches the relationship between religious and political hostility in Uganda. According to him, Anglican British missionaries and explorers were the first Christians to arrive in Uganda in 1877 and were welcomed by the Ugandan king as harbingers of advantageous political power.[4] Just two years later, in 1879, the first Catholic missionaries arrived and presented their own theological case to the court of High King Mutesa I. The French Catholic priests of the Society of Notre Dame d’Afrique were immediately countered in their missionary efforts by the doctrinal rebuttals of the Protestant British, such that the court of King Mutesa I became a battlefield for the two missions.[5] The ensuing conflict between personalities and doctrinal claims would become disastrous for Uganda.[6] From the outset, European Christians such as Stanley Livingstone had relied on the impressive nature of a seemingly univocal Christian confession to impress the Ugandan Kabaka.[7] When Catholics entered the British colonial matrix, the cursory Anglican catechesis at Mutesa’s court disintegrated into theological diatribe, to the frustration of the baffled king who quickly became indifferent to “the two religions.”[8] By Mary Stuart’s account in Land of Promise, it was this hostility between the Anglican and Catholic traditions that led to Mutesa’s ultimate rejection of the new-found European religion. Mutesa consequently initiated a harsh pogrom against Ugandan proselytes. Though the efforts of both the Catholic and Anglican missionaries persisted, the persecution of Ugandan Christians would follow in the years ahead, a period remembered by Ugandan Christians through the often memorialized Martyrs of Uganda, 22 Catholics and 10 Anglicans put to death by King Mwanga II between 1885 and 1887.[9]
Although the fundamental disagreements between the Christian missionaries originally inhered in theological differences, over time these doctrinal disagreements became politically charged as proselytes began to take opposing sides in support of their religious instructors.[10] This religious/political divergence degenerated into a civil war for political sovereignty between the Catholic and Protestant factions in 1892. The civil war ended in triumph for the Protestant factions, which were aided by British support.[11] This victory prompted the initial declaration of the Ugandan British Protectorate in 1894. The triumphant Baganda tribe of the south, as allies of the British, would then rise to elite power under British rule; thereafter, power and influence were disposed and enjoyed according to religious affiliation.[12] Catholics, who were in the majority numerically, were relegated to second place.[13] Now we find in modern Uganda a ruling Protestant political and cultural elite in the south, where the British left them, with smaller Catholic communities interspersed throughout the nation, particularly in the relatively impoverished and disenfranchised north.[14] Despite such power differentials, the Christian population in Uganda tends to divide roughly into two neat categories: fifty percent Anglican/Protestant, fifty percent Roman Catholic.
In sum, modern political conflicts in Uganda may be traceable to their origin in early religious tensions as reinforced by colonial power distributions.[15] The historical resentments that have divided and disabled Uganda are now reflected in small, significant incidences of denominational animosity at the local level: a young Protestant insists on offering petitions in a prayer meeting on behalf of “unsaved Catholics;” in his Sunday sermons an evangelical pastor utters witty diatribe against mysterious Catholic practices; Pentecostal school teachers refuse to present the stories of the Catholic Ugandan martyrs to their students;[16] Roman Catholic clergy have been noticeably absent at national days of prayer for reconciliation, though the meetings are otherwise populated by every Protestant in the vicinity.[17] Perhaps most grievous are the untold accounts of violent skirmishes between Catholic and Protestant school children on account of their divergent denominational identities.
In times of crisis that call for reconciliation at the root causes of political separation,[18] we see the need for a new kind of ecumenism in Uganda,[19] one that doesn’t depend solely on slow official dialogue or haphazard doctrinal compromise, but which emerges immediately and practically from individual commitments to the practice of grace. Uganda is an urgent context where Christian disunity can kill.
John Howard Yoder' work stands as a Protestant watershed in Christian reflection on the enactment of Christ’s peace in the world. However, even as Yoder laments the negative impact of ecclesiastical division on the church’s mission field,[20] he seems to falter somewhat at the “radically different” premises dividing Protestants and Catholics. Such Protestant hesitation at the formidable bulk of magisterial teaching is not uncommon, since Catholic doctrine often seems to present an insurmountable threat to popular Protestant interpretations of the Christian tradition. One Protestant commentator urges that “if we are required to forget what Jesus so explicitly taught in order to have peace between denominations, it would be better to go on fighting.”[21] Certainly many conservative Christians avoid ecumenical gestures in order to avoid contamination by liberal thought and sloppy doctrine, or out of fear of the mysterious conclusions and practices of the doctrinal other. It remains, however, that the quest for unity among confessing Christians is neither a liberal penchant, nor the prerogative of the church’s elite; rather, the quest for Christian unity and reconciliation is the normative duty for every Christian. Having been scripturally mandated by Christ, Christian unity is a non-negotiable; let them be brought to complete unity, so that the world may know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:20-24).
Both contemporary Catholic and Protestant theologians have responded to the Biblical mandate for ecclesial unity. Pope John Paul II states that “Christ calls all His disciples to unity. ... It is the will of God.”[22] Yoder also presents the Biblical basis for ecumenical relationships as a Christian duty, with particular reference to the ecumenical concerns of the early Church described in 1 Corinthians 3 and Galatians 2.[23] Yoder notes that St. Paul, though aggrieved by matters of doctrine, instructs the entire church to overcome doctrinal differences solely out of the practices of Christian love. Yoder concludes that “Christian unity is just as clearly a Biblical imperative as are evangelization … and nonconformity to the world.”[24]
As representatives of their respective traditions, Yoder and John Paul II urged that just as it is the duty of the Christian to seek brotherly relationships with all who confesses Christ, so it is also incumbent on Christians to recognize that their interdenominational relationships require not only polite mutual recognition and intercommunication; true reconciliation also involves striving toward the unity of disciplined discipleship.[25] For instance, Protestant theologians who identify themselves among Yoder’s progeny argue for a praxis of reconciliation from the ontological union of the church; as those who know themselves to be in Christ, Christians regard others as from Christ and in Christ as part of the uniquely Christian construal of the world, and thus the Church has the ministry of reconciliation as its defining mission.[26]
In this regard, John Paul II expresses a common concern in the encyclical Unum Sint for the serious impact of the church’s division in troubled contexts: “Division in the Church contradicts the will of Christ, provides a stumbling block to the world, and inflicts burdens on the most holy cause of proclaiming the good news to every creature.” This practical concern is shared by Protestant theologian John Milbank, who, echoing Augustine, describes the church’s mandate to act as a “political counter-society in troubled times, by maintaining an ontological priority of peace over conflict, such that difference may become the foundation not for violence but for harmonious peace.”[27] Milbank laments that insofar as the Church fails in this mission, it relegates both Christianity and the world to ceaseless exhaustion and possibilities of violence.
Other Protestant ecumenists have pointed out that the persistence of strife within the church causes a crisis of credibility, particularly in developing nations where divided Christianity cannot offer a united front against external pressures. Pope Paul VI urged particularly that just as Christian cooperation “vividly expresses that bond which already unites Christians, and sets in clearer relief the features of Christ the Servant,”[28] such cooperation should be “intensified in the use of every possible means to relieve the afflictions of our times.”[29] Decades later, John Paul II urged that “no Christian community can exempt itself from this call.”[30]
In light of these Christian mandates—combined with the fact of ecumenical failures—theologian Miroslav Volf calls for the exercise of grace. Here, Volf’s solution for dealing with clashing doctrinal claims may be derived from his proposals for dealing with “clashing justices, where, as with denominational clashes, we encounter both universalistic affirmations, the postmodern claims of plurality, and the communitarian location of doctrinal truth within a tradition.”[31] Volf’s Christocentric alternative to such ideological disjunctures is to propose that agreement on truth depends on the will to embrace the other. In this way, Volf’s proposal involves not so much the specification of correct doctrine, but rather a way for Christians to seek peace in the “givenness” of plurality. Volf suggests that the central issue is not whether God’s truth is universal, or whether God will infallibly judge people for their conformity; rather, the ultimate question is whether Christians who purport to uphold God’s doctrines can judge between denominations and persons within them with the same divine infallibility. Volf recognizes that they cannot.
Nonetheless, to appear to relativize standards of truth, even for the sake of conflict resolution, is particularly problematic in conservative cultures such as traditional Uganda. Volf’s solution to both the seeming futility of relativism on the one hand and the rigid construals of exclusive dogma on the other is to consider all claims within the fundamental tradition of grace. I propose that the solution is to engage ecumenical proposals with rigorous attention to the essential tradition in which all Christian doctrines are situated, in order to align ourselves more closely with all the central tenets of Christianity. The central tenet within the Christian tradition is the grace that is given through Christ. As Volf puts it, the ecumenical Christian must identify both herself and the doctrinally estranged other within the whole narrative of God’s relationship with humanity, centered at the point where Christ enacts the coming reign of God “by receiving sinner and enemy into His very self.”[32] Grace is the bedrock of Christian belief for both Protestants and Catholics, and in as much as Protestants and Catholics cling to Christ’s grace as the central tenet of their respective systems, they may not deny its power by refusing to extend this grace to one another. By extension, Christians must cultivate and implement a culture of grace, particularly in light of the exigencies of the Ugandan situation.
Commitment to a culture of grace necessarily precludes even small manifestations of hostility and their far-reaching impasses. A culture of grace particularly resists small moments of personal animosity: the moment a Protestant voices her opinion that Catholics are “unsaved,” thereby excluding them from her fellowship; the moment a Protestant ministry refuses to appropriate local Catholic resources to reach out to the Ugandan poor; or the moment a Catholic refuses to step foot in an inter-denominational prayer meeting. Instead, a culture of grace calls Christians to unite with one another in love until they can confess the same things.
With regard to the small gestures that build a culture of grace, John Paul II particularly lamented that Christians dangerously underestimate the threat of misunderstandings, prejudices, indifference, and insufficient knowledge of one another. As an antidote, the Pope proposed “a calm, clear-sighted and truthful vision enlivened by divine mercy, capable of freeing people’s minds, precisely with a view to proclaiming the Gospel to every people.”[33] A key problem in Christian disunity is the tendency of Christian communities to simply overlook the existence, beliefs, and history of the other in their teaching and behavior, as if the other did not exist; such neglect can easily lead to the dangerous compulsion to vindicate one community by summarily denouncing or degrading the practices of the other, even though those practices are not fully understood.
Such practices of hostility in Uganda, as elsewhere, are radically incommensurate with the basic Christian concept of grace that is embraced by all Christian denominations. The remainder of this essay lists suggestions of “grace-full” ways of thinking and behaving, in order to address particular instances of damaging sectarianism. The alternative to hostile practices is the renewal of a practical emphasis on the Christians’ common hope in the unmerited grace of Christ, which attributes uprightness even to the evildoer and regards the wrongdoer as if he had got it right, while transforming him into a friend. The gracious alternative to inter denominational hostility is for Christians to act toward other Christians on behalf of the Christ who invites his enemy into himself.
The duties of grace in situations where denominational reconciliation is urgently needed for humanitarian rescue cannot develop over lengthy processes; rather, individual Christians must begin to respond immediately to the demands of Christ’s grace in very real crises. I suggest that the overarching mandate in the Ugandan context of long standing animosity and immediate needs is not for Christians merely to re-name the perceived adversary, but rather to behave toward the doctrinal enemy according to the love and service demanded for the enemy by Christ himself.[34] The obedient response to Christ’s embrace of the enemy on the cross is to practice Christ’s grace by embracing the radical other; such an embrace may require that Christians choose to behave as though the historically perceived sin of the estranged other were no longer immanent. The practices of this embrace must take concrete shape in the behavior of individuals. These practices include: 1) a renewal of language, 2) hospitality and blessing for the enemy, 3) conversation, and 4) catechesis.
Renewal of Language. The renewal of language in Uganda might proceed with a deliberate commitment to bless the other verbally, and to eschew all verbal demonization of or flippant terminology for the other. The demonization of another immediately violates the Christian mandate to speak the truth and inevitably introduces sheer emotionalism into the conversation. The statements on ecumenism by John Paul II specifically forbid the “words which do not respond to the condition of separated brethren with truth and fairness, thereby making mutual relationships with them more difficult.”[35] In a similar vein, Volf urges that the will to embrace the other in conversation is absolutely indispensable for arriving at dialogical truth.[36]
Fundamentally, the strong link between language and the practices that proceed from it requires Christians to submit to a graced language since our very humanity is shaped by our language and the communities of discourse in which we participate.[37] A graced language will submit to the Biblical significance of language as properly creative and redemptive, on the theological models of the creative and gracious action of God speaking the cosmos into being, of the divine Word as the definitive instance of God’s self-communication to humanity, and of the communicative action of Jesus. As Protestant theologian Joe Jones notes, a graced language humbly recognizes that humanity cannot fully find itself apart from the sincere gift of itself, such that dialogue with the other becomes an indispensable step along the path toward self-realization in Christ. In submission to God’s own grace and self-gift in language, Christians must refuse to abuse the gift of language by using it as an instrument of lies, falsehood, closure, alienation, suspicion, or enmity when speaking about their fellow Christians.
Blessing and Hospitality for the Enemy. Volf asks for “small steps of living together, even while we do not yet understand each other’s language.”[38] While the commitment to a graced language is a critical first movement of love toward the enemy, the redemptive renaming of the enemy through our language implies the additional step of also construing a newly graced anthropology, where, as in John Calvin’s model, “true knowledge of humanity cannot be separated from true knowledge of God… (and) Jesus Christ is the normative revelation of true humanity.”[39] As such, Christ is to be recognized and served even in the enemy.
With regard to practical acts of service, Ugandan priest Bagumisirizia emphasizes that service is the best opportunity for Christian laity to participate in the movement toward Christian unity and communion; such acts of service are also primarily important for Christian discipleship because the Christian is called to be shaped by God’s will for unity in his church. Through acts of service that create openness to the enemy, the Christian definitively imitates Christ by making space in himself for the other, and by freely pursuing the benefits of the other.[40] From a commitment to view the other as partner in an interdependent, mutual embrace of God, both benefactors and beneficiaries infallibly become religious partners in their cooperative participation in grace.
With regard to practical service, clergy such as Bagumisirizia have proposed the usual compendium of pastoral reconciliation programs based on ecumenical projects,[41] but additional refinement of the ecumenical processes in Uganda should address the traditional values of the Ugandan culture for an “enculturation” of reconciliation. As Bagumisirizia explains, “in the process of seeking to build communion, it should be easier if we start from the known experience of the virtues already practiced in people’s lives. We need to bring the vision of God into what people do traditionally as acts of love towards each other.”[42] Ugandan theologian Emmanuel Katongole points out the particular efficacy and theological relevance of “greeting” in the Ugandan culture where African etiquette emphasizes the dynamics of courteous greeting with great care. This practice implies an invitation to common worship where such greetings can be made.[43]
Conversation. Having adopted a renewed language, and engaged in service that recognizes the dignity of the other for the sanctification of the self, the Christian is ready to engage in conversation with others. Yoder emphasizes the practice of conversation as a particularly appropriate means for establishing friendly relationships rather than merely minimizing differences among denominations. Furthermore, conversation is an appropriate means of building unity while grounds for actual communion may remain tenuous. Furthermore, Yoder points out that a commitment to conversation in general avoids the strictures of the overly simplistic checklists of denominational beliefs (and the arbitrary criteria represented in those checklists) that are too often used when Christians select their conversation partners.
Within the practice of conversation, Yoder does not presume mere dialogue, but also urges Christians to embrace other aspects of Christian obedience, such as good will, charity, and hospitality; conversation requires both a personal commitment to open one’s self to the other, and a pastoral commitment to sustain such conversations within and among Christian congregations.[44] Conversation also demands mutual forbearance, and a recognition of one’s own need for God’s mercy. Finally, conversation demands humility—“If in fact we have something to learn just as surely as we have something to teach, then the need for conversation becomes all the more clear.”[45]
In this regard, Alister McGrath offers a vision of ecumenical conversation as exemplary of a new brand of “street level” ecumenism, which he anticipates to be a necessary antidote to the dangers of exaggerated misunderstanding and misrepresentation between Catholics and Protestants.[46] In other words, personal relationships can safeguard against the stalemates often encountered by larger-scale ecumenical gestures. Such ground-level conversations can become enriching: “By engaging in frank dialogue, communities help one another to ask themselves whether they express in an adequate way all that the Holy Spirit has transmitted through the ages.”[47] Ultimately, the goal of conversation is the exchange of love that finds its most complete expression in common prayer and in the church’s Eucharist.
Catechesis. The most far-reaching proposal ventured here refutes relativistic notions that dogmatic statements must be relaxed in order to foster mutuality among denominations.[48] Rather, I propose that for the sake of authentic unity,[49] Christians must reconcile on the basis of rigorous attention to particular doctrines and catechesis, if only for the sake of undoing superstitions and misconceptions that result from mere ill will and ignorance about basic Christian belief.[50] Adequate catechesis can particularly highlight any doctrinal misconceptions that implicate other traditions, and can strongly reinforce both the central role of grace in Christian doctrine and the importance of the unified church in historical Christianity. For instance, increased awareness of the church’s honoring of Trinitarian baptism among all denominations might at least reduce the mutually demonizing language of “saved,” versus “unsaved,” among baptized believers.[51]
The cultural emphasis on a communal identity in Uganda can lend itself to the flourishing of a robust and liberating ecclesiology.[52] Katongole especially points out the need for a renewed ecclesiology as political and social re-imagination to counter those traditional divisions of residual tribalism that are identifiable in political and religious affiliations in Africa.[53] Ecumenical efforts in Uganda should especially exploit their unique shared history of martyrdom in which Anglicans and Roman Catholics died together for their Christian faith in a hostile nation.[54] In many other ways, the Ugandan situation presents a critical locus for a new ecumenism, engaged through concrete gestures, motivated by devotion to the Savior who embraces his enemy. In a culture of greeting, welcome at common worship in the name of the self-giving, other-serving Trinity becomes a peacemaking gesture of obedience. Kindness towards Roman Catholics in the words of Protestant leaders becomes expedient out of concern for necessary humanitarian cooperation. All the while, authentic commitment to doctrinal integrity remains vitally necessary, in as much as the commonalities of basic Christian doctrine are assaulted and misrepresented on account of historical resentments. Grace is the bedrock of Christian belief for both Protestants and Catholics, and in as much as Protestants and Catholics cling to Christ’s grace as the central tenet of their respective systems, they may not deny its power by refusing to extend this grace to one another—particularly not in cultural contexts where Christian disunity can kill.
Do we see present signs of hope in Uganda that indicate that such a modest proposal for grace might work for reconciliation and consequent national development? Even as political tensions between the north and south are gradually relaxing as a result of successful political negotiations, the underlying nexus of potential unity in a predominantly Christian population is strengthened by every small gesture of grace and solidarity exchanged between Protestants and Catholics, both in Uganda and abroad. Today, a Catholic donor sends money to support the outreach of evangelical young Ugandans among refugees of a formerly hostile tribe in northern Uganda; or, perhaps a Protestant orphanage adds a story of the young Catholic martyrs of Uganda to its library bookshelves. Perhaps a Protestant European diplomat in Entebbe will prayerfully attend a Catholic Mass; perhaps an Anglican bishop in Kampala will consult the Catholic catechism on a point of doctrine. The necessary gestures of real reconciliation are small and personal, as is appropriate for the Christian’s “political” task of personally welcoming and embracing the alienated other in the name of the Savior.
“Just as Adam came into relationship to the other living creatures by virtue of naming them (Gen. 2), so too language is the basic medium for human knowing, understanding, and having a cosmos and social world. Through language humans have possibilities of being open to God and to other humans, to acknowledge them, to hear them, to see and identify them, to address and be addressed by them, and to conduct life in relationships with them. And it is by virtue of language that humans can have relationships to other creatures” (Jones, 305).
“Language, theologically understood, is a gift of God intended for good and truthful communication and understanding between God and humans and among humans. Language is intended by God to build up human life and community” (Jones, 305). Protestant theologians Volf and Jones have both employed the Genesis 11 narrative of the Tower of Babel to elaborate on a graced theology of language, in that Babel symbolizes the peril of language that does not communicate truth, goodwill, and love, but rather utter confusion and estrangement come among persons and societies. In contrast, Volf points out, Acts 2 can be understood as the Pentecostal recovery of language for communicating truth, understanding, love, and hope among diverse people (Jones, 305 and Volf, 226). In this way, we see that the renewal of language as the first act of the newly formed church, where God enables confessional unity from many languages and traditions within the one Church: “When the Spirit comes, all understand each other, not because one language is restored or a new all-encompassing meta-language is designed, but because each hears his own language spoken. Pentecost overcomes the confusion and the resulting false scattering, but it does so not by reverting to the unity of cultural uniformity, but by advancing toward the harmony of cultural diversity” (Volf, 228). Again, Volf states, “As in our own day culture clashes with culture and justice struggles against justice, we should seek inspiration from [the Pentecost narrative]. We need the grand vision of life filled with the Spirit of God. … [W]e can and will communicate with one another while we each speak our own languages … but along with the grand visions we need stories of small successful steps of learning to live together even when we do not quite understand each other’s language (Volf, 231).