A Future for Africa: Critical Essays in Christian Social Imagination (review)

Fundamental conceptual frameworks are changing in many fields. These transformations involve more than giving new answers to basic questions in those fields. Instead, new questions are being asked, defining the issues and fields in new ways. Emmanuel Katongole works to transform the conceptual frameworks involved in articulating Christian ethics in Africa. The core of this effort is the articulation of new narratives and the transformation of the Christian social imagination in Africa.

The first section of the book contains three essays that examine the "significance of memory for moral-theological reflection" (xiv). Chapter 1 deals with the role of Idi Amin in the historical memory of Ugandans. The violence of that era appears to be internalized, shaping the common patterns of life. The necessary response of Christian ethics is not to decide how to cope with the social habits created by that past violent era, but rather how to create a new narrative of community "in which the memory of violence begins to give way to practices of peace and reconciliation" (25).

The first chapter sets the pattern for other essays, as Katongole contrasts current approaches in Christian ethics with possible new, transformative approaches. In each chapter he describes a troubling situation and then notes that the current approach through "Christian ethics" formulates a response framed within the premise of the situation itself, thus creating a palliative response rather than a transformative solution. However, in each case, Katongole argues that new Christian narratives and imagination can create a transformed future for Africans. The second chapter deals with AIDs and the "condomization" of morality. On this issue, the "church needs to change from being a moral and spiritual umpire, to engendering a practice of moral empowerment" (44). Chapter 3 starts with the global shock brought about by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and argues that this temporary sense of global identity needs to be enhanced through "the cultivation of a global imagination" (67).

The next three chapters deal with aspects of community and identity in relationship to modernity. Chapter 4 deals with the issues of defining narrative and imagination in a world of postmodernism. In an analysis of the Rwanda massacres (in chapter 5), Katangole argues that Christian ethics premised on the principle that "tribes" need to develop ways of getting along simply accept the colonialist-created tribal imagination of society rather than transcending "tribalism." In Chapter 6, the destruction of the members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments in Uganda provides the focus for an analysis of the extent to which "Christianity in Africa has come to be marked by the same habits of hopelessness and violence" as the rest of African society (122).

The final four essays put forward the foundations for a new African Christian imagination, examining a variety of sources and concluding with a conceptualization influenced by the thought of Stanley Hauerwas. The vision is for a new world-conscious Christianity that is not tied to nation-state concepts, that goes beyond the narrowness of emerging Pentacostalism, and that can provide "an alternative vision of the world" that interrupts the story of the McWorld" (244). The reconceptualizations are inevitably based on Christian assumptions and solutions are tied to Christian institutions and rituals. This means that one of the major issues that needs to be addressed by Christian ethics in Africa receives no attention: Africa is not solely a Christian continent; Christians must therefore decide how they will live in religiously plural societies.

Those who want analysis to be separate from faith and who think that problems can be (and should be) resolved within the secular framework of existing social scientists will find this book annoying. However, for those interested in transformative conceptualizations that deal with newly framed questions rather than repeated revisionist answers to old questions, this volume will be thought-provoking and informative.