Africa Matters

Listen to a two-part radio interview with Emmanuel on Prime Time America about his new book, “Mirror to the Church.”

Read Emmanuel’s conversation with Sojourners Magazine, ‘The Pattern of This World’

Taking cue from an African proverb: “if you want to go fast, walk alone; if you want to go far, walk with others,” Chris and I hosted a vision casting gathering of 50 remarkable leaders to cast the Center for Reconciliation and hear feedback on ‘what can such a center distinctively contribute?’ The feedback helped shape the Center towards three strategic goals:

1. cultivating new leaders
2. communicating wisdom, insights, hope, and practices
3. connecting in partnership to strengthen leaders globally, nationally and locally.

At the launch, as Chris and I lead a plenary session within the Pastors Convocation under the general theme: A new Creation: Building a Ministry of Reconciliation Conference’ – I was all the while intensely aware that Duke is a long way from Africa. But as we shared the key convictions about the journey of reconciliation, it was clear that the vision of the center was very much about things I deeply cared about: Africa and a new future for Africa.

Talking about a New Future for Africa: November saw the release of my new book. A Future for Africa (Scranton Press) a mix of essays ranging from Idi Amin’s legacy, to AIDS, the Rwanda Genocide… http://press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/170775.ctl A Future for Africa was also featured on the Duke Divinity School Website Spotlight page for March-May: http://www.divinity.duke.edu/news/spotlight/afutureforafrica/

But November also brought another strange: the gift of a house in Durham- a home away from home. My nephew, Godfrey , and his fiance, Agnes, visited my in this new home, and we were able to celebrate Christmas as ‘family’. With this gift I am humbled and yet constantly reminded: “If the Lord does not build the house, in vain do its builders toil (Ps 127:1).

Summer is here: As I prepare to travel to Uganda the end of the week, I look forward to a number of events and activities: a celebration at home in honor of mothers 75th birthday; hosting a number of American friends in Uganda, including Michael Budde (Chicago), Rich and Terrie Payne (Duke Institute for Care at the end of Life), members of Share the Blessings; the ordination to the priesthood of two good friends ; overseeing the construction of three wells for three village communities (funded through Share the Blessings: http://share-the-blessings.org); a trip to Italy, early July, for a meeting of Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church, in Padua, where I will be reading a paper on “AIDS, Africa and the ‘Age of Miraculous Medicine’. I intend in the midst of these activities and events, comings and goings, to find time for rest and renewal.

I cannot believe, though, it is already June, and a year has gone by since my last post. I must admit, I have done a bad job keeping this webblog up to date. I wish I could send regular updates on ‘current’ events and happenings, so that you do not have to read about what happened last year only now! But there is a sense in which not keeping up to date can be a gift in that it forces me if not to live in memory, to at least, try to remember the past. This can have its grace, for in remembering one often has a better perspective of things and events. That is why, as I remember the year that has been, I am more amazed at the number of journeys that I have been on, and even more so, by the way in which all these journeys continue to lead back to Africa.

As soon as the classes were out, Chris and I moved on full speed to work on the book series on reconciliation, and to write the lead title in this series, as well as develop some other programs of the Center. Both Chris and I are particularly excited about the Great Lakes Leadership Training Institute Program, through which the Center, in partnership with other key organizations working in the region, will host yearly institutes on the region to train, nurture, and support leaders through a biblically based informed vision of reconciliation. We hope to launch this initiative with a catalytic of key leaders, to be held in Kampala in November.

As I look back to the year that has been, its activities and journeys, it is now very clear that even though Duke might seem to be a long way from Africa, in a strange way, my being at Duke seems to bind me to Africa in far deeper and more enduring ways than I had anticipated. A clear confirmation, at least for me, that all journeys lead back to Africa.

What a great experience, co-teaching with my colleague and co-director Chris, a class on Journeys of Reconciliation, exploring with a group of 16 students the convictions at the heart of the Center for Reconciliation. For the first two months of the course, we were blessed with the gift of Bishop Macleord Baker Ochola, retired bishop of Kitgum, Northern Uganda. He brought to the class not only the gift of personal journey through faith, pain and hope, amidst the madness of the war in Northern Uganda, but a wealth of cultural idioms and stories through which to understand the journey of reconciliation.

Mid January: A brief stop over at home on the way to South Africa for annual IAAC meeting of SAC: Johannesburg, SA

Early February: at Catholic University of America, for a public lecture on “Pope John Paul II and the Future of the African Church,” at the Graduate School of Theology.

November 16-18: Indianapolis at the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) gathering: over 2000 attending. Highlighs of the meeting: a standing room only workshop led my Chris and myself on ‘From Genocide in Rwanda to Peace in Boston and LA’; and a lively consultation with Jim Tyree and others of Stand for Africa- an organization committed to spread awareness and respond to HIV/AIDS in Africa. The Lord keeps sowing seeds of hope.

From Indianapolis, I flew directly to Philadelphia for the AAR/SBL – a meeting of a completely different find: the biggest academic gathering of the U.S. – almost all PhDs and PhD wannabes: lots of brilliant ideas and lots of brilliant books to sell. Making a transition from Indianapolis (community development, practical focus) to Philadelphia (world of brilliant ‘ideas’) was not easy. Fortunately, the paper I read dealt with matters of life and death: AIDS in Africa. Speaking in the African Hermeneutics Group, I pressed the need to embody Hermeneutics of Life in the Academy: “Embodies and Embodying Hermeneutics of Life in the Academy: Musa W. Dube’s HIV/AIDS Work.”

Earlier in October, I was at Oklahoma State University at the invitation of Michael Bartley and the Wesleyan Foundation, to give the annual Lecture Series on Pacifism and the Christian Tradition. The topic for my lecture was not the Oklahoma bombing memorialm which I had visited earlier in the day, but, ‘Pacifism, Politics and Christianity in Africa’: On the Resurrection of the body (politic).