RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE: AFRICANS

RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE: AFRICANS

RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE: AFRICANS

“You can stay with us if you like our ways,” said Ajofia to the European clergyman. “You can worship your own god. It is good that a man should worship the gods and the spirits of his fathers.”
— Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

The truth is that the interreligious dialogue being talked about today by the Church is not entirely foreign to Africa. It reflects something deeply present in the religious worldview of our ancestors.

If there is one thing Ndigbo, and Africans generally, can teach the world, it is religious tolerance.

The religious frictions we see in many parts of Africa today are, in important respects, a departure from older African patterns of religious coexistence.

Our ancestors lived in communities where different religious traditions and practices could exist side by side.

That spirit of coexistence is something we need to rediscover.

The day Africans rediscover the spirit of religious and denominational tolerance is the day another door to African liberation will begin to open.

We have a lot to learn from the wisdom of our ancestors.