JESUS RESPONSE TO ECUMENICAL DIALOGUE IN AFRICAN CONTEXT

Abstract

Various individuals, scholars and ecumenical organizations have made attempts at addressing the issue of religious conflicts; a situation that has resulted in the killings of innocent people in the name of faith affiliations. While some chose the comparative dialogue method to expose to adherents of various faiths that what they are practicing is the same, but in a different approach, others chose the use of ecumenical centres such as Inter-religious Dialogue Commission, Liberian Council of Churches and Islamic Study Group of Nigeria (ISGON) among others to advocate for peace. However, the Jesus approach to solving religious conflicts has often been neglected or not properly looked into. This is the gap created that this paper intends to fill. Using the secondary sources of data collection, this paper will use the evaluative method of important scriptures to expose to readers and concerned peace brokers that this is the mind of Christ on religious crisis cum conflicts in the African context. The paper recommends that the issue of peaceful co-existence with different religious faiths lies with the relationship with one’s neighbour as revealed by Christ, when he said in Mathew 22:29: And the second is like it ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself ‘δὲ δευτέρα ὁμοία αὐτῇ Ἀγαπήσεις σου πλησίον ὡς σεαυτόν’