Historically, the relationship between Africa and Europe has been a checkered one. It is not my intention in this presentation to dwell on the vexed historical events and lingering questions that characterize this relationship. I deal with this relationship to the extent that some aspects of it continue to raise questions for the subject under consideration, namely faith and justice.

It would seem a fair assessment to maintain that in the respective contemporary contexts of Africa and Europe, faith and justice, taken singly or in combination, do not mean the same thing.Considering the present situations on both continents, and speaking in general terms, the expression “living faith” would seem to be more accurately predicated of Africa than of Europe.

Whereas, in the former, statistics attest a phenomenal resurgence and effervescence of Christianity, in the latter, grim statistics and demographics of religious practice generate a palpable sense of obsolescence and putrescence. If Christianity and the concomitant manifestation of faith is rising in Africa, the reverse is the case in Europe. Although the present explosion in the demographic fortune of Christianity in Africa owes its origin to the missionary movements of the 19th century, this fact alone does not account for the impressive growth of Christianity in Africa. Africa, as we know, is home to some ancient traditions of Christianity, specifically in Mediterranean Africa (Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria), Coptic Africa (Egypt and Nubia) and Orthodox Africa (Ethiopia). The present demographic situation has deep historical roots in Africa.

Paradoxically, however, on the evidence of prevailing conditions, whether in the context of religious growth, as is the case of Africa, or of decline, as is prevalent in Europe, religion broadly speaking faces particular external and internal threats. For example, while Europe is haunted by despair, Africa flirts with complacency. Each of these two attitudes affects the link between faith and justice. There are, however, graver threats that potentially undermine the link between faith and justice, namely secularism in Europe and sectarianism in Africa.

As Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI has repeatedly demonstrated, rightly or wrongly, secularism maintains an unholy alliance with relativism and atheism to attenuate if not eliminate completely the pertinence and viability of faith in a post-modern context. On the other hand, the instrumentalization of religion evidenced by growing faith-based insurgency and sectarianism constitutes a significant threat for the practice of faith in some parts of Africa, for example, in Kenya, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Somalia, Nigeria, Egypt, Mali,CAR and Niger.

Again, speaking somewhat generally, I am convinced that secularism does to Europe what sectarianism does to Africa. Whether one is starved of faith or the other is saturated with it, the difference it seems to me is the same. As an ideological option that relies on a philosophical system to argue God out of existence, secularism is the flip side of sectarianism, for the latter seeks to foist a particular understanding of God on people. The danger, however, lies in the realization that neither system can serve as the basis or firm foundation for a notion and practice of justice that is human and humanizing. In extreme circumstances, secularism reduces justice to a matter of the rule of law; sectarianism projects a caricature of justice as an excuse for pietistic lawlessness.

A further internal threat to the symbiotic relationship between faith and justice is the phenomenon of the gospel of prosperity – prevalent in Africa – that spiritualizes concrete challenges, thereby reducing them to the realm of personal shortcomings and misfortune, instead of acknowledging and challenging structural injustice at the root of socioeconomic and political malaise. I am convinced that if faith in Africa does not seriously address the concrete issues that matter to Africans, it risks falling prey to the marauding intent of secularism, thereby losing its relevance in the wider socioeconomic and political sphere. There is empirical evidence that “Africans generally rank unemployment, crime and corruption as bigger problems than religious conflict” (“Tolerance and Tension: Islam and Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa,” The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, April 2010).

As I see them, these concerns have roots in unjust structures in society. In such situations of structural injustice, I believe that to dilute their threat and the urgency of a viable response by merely appealing to the strategies of prosperity gospel constitutes a greater act of injustice. As I have already demonstrated, on the evidence of the Gospel, faith is never detached from the concrete reality of people’s lives. Even when Christianity lays emphasis on the primacy of “the interior castle,” such spiritual edifice is never a place of escaping the reality of the material world. In the finest traditions of Christian faith, contemplation and prayer are never detached from action and work.

The threats to faith apart, there are specific aspects of the relationship between Africa and Europe that deserve serious consideration from the perspective of faith and justice. My position is that such issues constitute old and new frontiers for the question under consideration, namely living faith through justice. 

By Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator

The author is a Lecturer at Hekima College Nairobi, Kenya and author of Theology Brewed in an African Pot (Orbis, 2008).