Abstract
In a spirit of full disclosure, I confess that I was Emmanuel Katongole’s student during his years at Duke Divinity School, and I have read nearly every book he has written. I can say with confidence, then, that Who Are My People represents a rich, organic development in K.’s remarkable corpus of scholarship, and I highly recommend this book for both seasoned K. readers and new admirers alike.
K.’s core theological and anthropological question is this: “What does it mean to be an African and a Christian” (1)? Fundamentally, he has not altered his long-held views that “Africa is already very modern” (3) and that much of the seemingly endless cycles of violence that afflict the continent stem from a twisted parroting of European modernity. As in A Future for Africa (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005) and Mirror to the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), K. reads this toxic story largely through the lens of the Rwandan genocide, leading him to call for “mixed up” identities in a modern world predicated on dualistic divisions. As in Reconciling All Things (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2008) and The Journey of Reconciliation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2017), he continues to argue that Christian identity should create a “new we” (47) that cuts across supposedly immutable cultural and political identities. He also stands by his conviction that “narrative,” “story,” and “imagination” are the hermeneutical keys to understanding social violence in Africa (23). Finally, his theology continues to seek embodied portraits of “love as a concrete social reality in the world” (4), a theme that can be traced back to his most influential book, The Sacrifice of Africa (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011).
But in important ways, K. charts new paths in Who Are My People. First, he more fully interweaves his own biography, using personal memoir to embody and enflesh his theological and philosophical claims. He also delves deeply into eco-theology, exploring the “slow violence” (134) of environmental destruction afflicting Africa and the need for a “reinvention” of the African understanding of land beyond the “technocratic paradigm” that has wreaked such havoc since the colonial period (142). This leads to a newfound openness to traditional African spirituality largely missing from his previous body of work. Here K. also sketches the theology that underlies the Bethany Land Institute, a new ecological initiative in Uganda where K. is exemplifying the type of “practical commitment and interventions” (29) foreshadowed in these pages.
There are other strengths to Who Are My People. First, K. remains a master storyteller. He offers memorable theological portraits of the Rwandan reconciler Jean-Baptiste Mvukiyehe, the Dominican environmentalist Godfrey Nzamjujo, and the Camillian missionary Bernard Kinvi (whose inter-religious medical ministry in the midst of the Central African Republic’s brutal civil war is especially compelling). I also remain largely convinced by K.’s twofold critique of Kwame Bediako’s spiritual identity (where Christian identity floats above material political and economic reality) and the rival African inculturation approach, where Christianity merely builds on African identity. In contrast, K.’s vision of Christian identity as creating a “new sense of belonging that extends beyond the boundaries of race, nation, tribe, and religion” (37) is especially resonant in a contemporary world dominated by mass migration and resurgent populist nationalism. In this vein, K.’s book is a wonderful exemplification of Pope Francis’s recent social encyclical, Fratelli Tutti.
For all its strengths, Who Are My People raised several concerns for me. First, when I taught K.’s writings in his home country of Uganda, many of my students did not understand his dismissal of ethnic identity. It is not that they supported ethnic chauvinism. Rather, they simply saw their Luo or Baganda identity as a core part (but not the only part!) of who they were. In this vein, one wonders if K.’s theological anthropology trends too much toward the universal or even the ecclesial, losing track of the local, parochial flavors that also comprise who we are. In this regard, I question whether K. puts too much emphasis on eschatological identity, namely the anticipated future of gathered believers (46), and not enough on the incarnational (especially in relation to our inherited ethnic, national, and/or cultural identities).
Second, I worry that in reducing the theo-politics of Africa to a few heroic Christian leaders and their micro-communities, something critical is lost—namely, the importance of state politics and transnational economics. Even as K. rejects any notion of the church as a “colony” (58), there is still a whiff of sectarianism in his work, namely his general downplaying of Catholic Social Teaching’s commitment to the common good and the overall social polis. For example, K. offers a well-informed critique of the neo-colonial nature of the Central African Republic’s exploitative “phantom state” (99–104), yet his response is seemingly reduced to Kinvi’s Bossemptele hospital. But how can one serve the dignity of the human person without reaching ceasefires, developing a functioning constitution, improving development, or fostering peaceful coexistence (121)? Likewise, I worry that K.’s overriding emphasis on tribal “imagination” and “story” does not do justice to the concrete economic, military, political, and social factors that led to genocide in Rwanda (73). In sum, concern for the quotidian dimensions of state politics should not be derisively dismissed as neo-Niebuhrian “realism” or “prescriptive social ethics” (174). One need only look to the Burundian government’s recent suppression of Maggy Barankitse’s Maison Shalom (130) to be reminded that high politics matters, even if one should never reduce the gospel or public theology to this factor.
Whatever my concerns, Who Are My People is a probing, inspiring, and illuminating intellectual memoir by one of Africa’s shining theological lights.