��Ī - divinity

The Bible as a weapon of war

sjr81 — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 12:13:21 +0000

In 2012, one of the world’s most wanted war criminals, Joseph Kony, became one of the most repeated names on the planet thanks to a YouTube documentary (Kony 2012) and a call to action that sought to expose the terror and slaughter he inflicted on thousands of men, women and children in Central Africa.

Indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, Kony is now believed to be in hiding with his followers. He remains the genocidal leader of the murderous Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) who claimed to have been sent by God to liberate the people of Northern Uganda from the rival National Resistance Army (NRA). From the start of their insurgency in 1987, Kony’s LRA claimed as their major objective the establishment of a government based on the Ten Commandments.

In the decades since, his army – often made up of thousands of forcibly conscripted child soldiers – have wounded, widowed and orphaned indiscriminately as they prosecuted a campaign of violence with a vigour befitting Kony’s vengeful readings of the Old Testament.

In the process, the LRA are thought to have displaced as many as two million Ugandans, the vast majority from Uganda’s Acholiland, where Kony originally hails from.

Today, Acholiland is a haunted place; haunted by the ghosts and memories of a recent past that has been written in blood rather than ink during nearly two decades of conflict.

But what happens when former LRA soldiers, those who have used the Bible as a weapon of war, return home from the front lines? How do former soldiers – male and female, adults and children – learn to reread and reinterpret scriptures that once spoke to them of fire and brimstone?

Kony says it is God who sent him to kill people so nobody should stop him. You know this thing is very difficult to understand as Kony refers us to the Bible... In Kony’s time, God has sent the Holy Spirit, and it is the one which is doing the work through Kony.
Zacchaeus, a former LRA commander

This is the puzzle facing Dr Helen Nambalirwa Nkabala from Makerere University in Uganda. As a CAPREx fellow, she spent time in ��Ī working with Dr Emma Wild-Wood, from the Faculty of Divinity and the ��Ī Centre for Christianity Worldwide.

Nambalirwa Nkabala interviewed returning LRA soldiers in Uganda in order to examine how a positive engagement with biblical texts – especially those that seem to support violence – can help to promote peace instead.

She says: “My project identifies difficult texts in the Old Testament and seeks to identify the means by which they can be used in a constructive and meaningful way – with the central focus being on whether a particular interpretation promotes human dignity or not.

“The way the LRA used the Bible, in a literal sense, to justify their violent actions has caused a complete overturn of the social and generational structures of the Acholi people.

“The former LRA members I interviewed claim that all their actions are in accordance with Bible teachings; obedience to the law meant that anyone considered to have broken the Ten Commandments had to be destroyed.”

Kelly, a former child soldier, told Nambalirwa Nkabala that the Bible teaches that ‘somebody who does not obey must be killed’. This is the level of indoctrination that ��Ī researchers are trying to untangle as they work alongside Acholi leaders of varying denominations to promote peace and reconciliation using texts that were once wielded to justify murder on an industrial scale.

However, their work is complicated by the fact that Acholi cultural beliefs – as well as some readings of the Old Testament – also permit killing in exceptional circumstances, meaning that the LRA may have appropriated elements of Acholi culture to justify their own murderous ideology. For instance, the Achioli Chief and elders can pass ngolo kop me too – or ‘judgement of death’ – where killing is permitted, Likewise, Kony, a former altar boy in the Catholic Church, was brought up by a catechist father whom Nambalirwa Nkabala believes exposed him to Old Testament passages of death and punishment from an early age.

“Former LRA soldiers must be ready to reread the texts they were exposed to in a different way,” adds Nambalirwa Nkabala. “Texts with a violent message should be read with an ethical and nonviolent stance. Rather than passively accept what the text says, we must engage in dialogue with it. It is every Christian’s duty to expose and challenge any textual message which permits violence.

“The Bible must be read contextually. By asking about the role of the text to a particular context, interpreters will automatically be pushed into the habit of checking what implications a particular reading/interpretation could have on a particular community.”

Wild-Wood met with Christian and Muslim leaders of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative (ARLPI) during her trip to Uganda in 2015 as she sought to understand how the Bible is now being used to rebuild society. She was struck by the commitment to peace across differing faiths and denominations.

“A great deal of thought has gone into how former combatants can be rehabilitated,” says Wild-Wood. “From my focus groups, the religious leaders were optimistic about the future, but the challenges are many. They are dealing with people who are very traumatised. Some see the LRA soldiers as perpetrators, some see them as victims. But there is a recognition that people have dealt with awful situations – and may fall apart afterwards.”

When you look at what happened in the north and you go to the Bible and you read from the beginning to the last part you may find that 90 per cent of what happened here is in the Bible. Whatever has happened is exactly how God designed it.
Steve, a former LRA commander

Wild-Wood says that the ARLPI’s initial desire to publicise the atrocities being carried out by the LRA – and to protect civilians where possible – has now refocused to aid the process of reintegrating former combatants, and is working alongside international charities like World Vision to facilitate the transfer of former LRA soldiers from reception centres back to their communities.

“Projects of post-war reconciliation often engage with traditional beliefs and customs in order to effect lasting peace,” adds Wild-Wood. “Acholiland is no exception, and Acholi practices have been ultilised in restoring human relations. However, in the LRA and the wider population there are many Christians and a significant number of Muslims. It is important to engage the beliefs of those religious traditions when working towards long-term solutions to the destruction of society.”

While there may be a distance yet to travel, Nambalirwa Nkabala remains optimistic about Uganda’s future as it seeks to heal the deep scars caused by Kony and the decades of division and war he brought to his country.

“The advantage in all this is that the Acholi have a deep sense of community and solidarity,” she says. “This is exemplified in the various means they use to reincorporate wrongdoers back into their community. If the Acholi communities can be encouraged to maintain their cultural values of healing and reconciliation – even while reading texts that may have a violent message – then they can in the future avoid situations that can lead to the destruction and erosion of these most important of values.”

Dr Helen Nambalirwa Nkabala was funded by the ��Ī-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx) and The ALBORADA Trust, through the ��Ī-Africa Programme.

To keep up to date with the latest stories about ��Ī’s engagement with Africa, follow #CamAfrica on Twitter.

How do former Lord’s Resistance Army soldiers – men, women and children who have used the Bible as a weapon of war – learn to reread the scriptures once they return home? This is the puzzle facing researchers from Uganda and ��Ī.

The way the LRA used the Bible, in a literal sense, to justify their violent actions has caused a complete overturn of the social and generational structures of the Acholi people."

Helen Nambalirwa Nkabala

Charles Roffey

Kony 2012

The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Where God meets physics

amb206 — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 06:22:41 +0000

Science and religion are two of the most powerful influences in contemporary society. Some see them as competing alternatives but, as someone who is both a former ��Ī science professor and an Anglican priest, I want to take them with equal seriousness. I am proud that ��Ī was the first university in the UK to endow a post in theology and science: the Starbridge Lectureship is held by Dr Fraser Watts.

The possibility of fruitful interaction between science and religion arises from the fact that both are concerned with the search for truthful understanding, to be attained through motivated beliefs. Of course, this is a philosophically contested claim, but my scientific experience encourages me to adopt the stance of ‘critical realism’ in relation for the insights of both science and religion. The term ‘realism’ signifies the belief that we can gain actual insight into the nature of reality, while the description ‘critical’ signals that this knowledge is never complete or absolutely certain, though sufficiently well supported by evidence to make commitment to it a rational act.

Science and religion look at different domains of encounter with reality. Sciences deals with an objective dimension, in which things can be manipulated and events repeated, thereby affording it access to the great weapon of experimental verifiability. Yet we all know that there are many levels of encounter with reality – both personal and, I would say, the transpersonal encounter with divine reality – in which neither manipulation nor repetition are possible without doing violence to the reality encountered. We never hear a Beethoven quartet the same way twice, even if we replay the same recording. In this personal realm, testing has to give way to something like trusting.

The difference in domains means that science and religion ask different questions of reality: in the former case how things happen; in the latter whether there is meaning, purpose and value in what is happening – issues that science tends to rule out of its discourse. Science and religion, therefore, complement each other, rather than being rivals on the same turf. For full understanding, we need both sets of insights. To take a homely example, the kettle is boiling because gas heats the water (process) and because I want to make a cup of tea (purpose). Some people have argued that these differences are so completely separate that they have nothing to say to each other, but I believe that this view is mistaken. Their questions are different but the answers given must be mutually compatible. Returning to the homely example, putting the kettle in the refrigerator would cast doubt on my intention to make a cup of tea.

The common quest for truth makes science and religion friends and not foes, with gifts to offer each other. Science can tell religion what the nature and history of the universe is actually like, a gift to be received with gratitude as theology seeks to understand the cosmos as a divine creation. It makes me sad to see some religious people refusing to take seriously the truth that science has to offer. The gift that religion has to offer to science is not to answer its questions - for we have every reason to expect that scientific questions will receive scientific answers – but to take science’s insights and set them within a broader and deeper context of intelligibility.

The metaquestions that arise from the experience of doing science take us beyond science’s ability to answer. One example must suffice: ‘Why is science possible at all in the deep way that ir has proved to be?’ Of course, evolutionary process must have shaped human brains so that we can understand the everyday world in which our ancestors had to survive. But why are we also able to understand the cloudy and fitful world of quantum physics, which appears so far removed from the everyday world? Why is it that mathematics – the most abstract of disciplines – which furnishes the key to unlock the deep secrets of the physical world?

It is an actual technique of discovery in fundamental phyics to seek theories which are expressed in terms of what mathematicians can recognise and agree to be beautiful equations. This strategy is no act of aesthetic indulgence, for time and again it has proved to be the case that it is just such theories that provide the long-term fruitfulness of explanation which persuades us that they describe the way the physical world is. The universe has proved to be astonishingly rationally transparent and rationally beautiful. Is this just a random piece of luck or is it a fact of great significance? Science exploits this fact, but is unable to explain it,

I have been describing a world which in its deep intelligibility could fittingly be described as shot through with signs of mind. I believe that it is wholly reasonable to believe that it is the divine Mind of the Creator that lies behind the wonderful order of the cosmos. I like to say that I am ‘two-eyed’, viewing the world through the view of science and religion, a binocular vision that enables me to see further and deeper than I would with just a single eye. I need to take science and religion with an equal seriousness.

The talk A Destiny Beyond Death takes place at 1pm tomorrow in The Garden Room, St Edmund's College, ��Ī (sandwiches from 12.30pm). Free and open to all.

Eminent thinker and commentator Revd Dr John Polkinghorne, Fellow of the Royal Society, will be giving a public talk – titled A Destiny Beyond Death - tomorrow lunchtime at St Edmund’s College, ��Ī. It is part of a series organised by the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. Here he gives an overview of his understanding of the relationship between what are generally considered to be two opposing schools of thought.

The gift that religion has to offer to science is not to answer its questions but to take science’s insights and set them within a broader and deeper context of intelligibility.

Revd Dr John Polkinghorne

Faraday Institute for Science and Religion

John Polkinghorne

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Yes

All in the script

bjb42 — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:34:36 +0000

Professor David Ford, who is also Director of the University’s Inter-Faith Programme, will give the Pope John Paul II Honorary Lecture today (Tuesday, 5 April). The highly prestigious annual lecture, which takes place at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum), examines interreligious understanding.

Scriptural reasoning brings together members of different religious traditions in small groups to read and discuss extracts from their sacred texts. Professor Ford will argue that the process can function as a bridge between Abrahamic faiths which, without necessarily leading to consensus, can result in mutual understanding and respect.

His lecture will begin by describing the 21^st century as a “kairos” – a particularly propitious moment – for engagement between faiths. Professor Ford himself was brought up as an Anglican in the Church of Ireland in Dublin (placing him in a 3% religious minority) and spent parts of his early academic career working in an inner city Anglican parish in Birmingham, which was both multi-ethnic and multi-faith.

“Scriptural Reasoning has transformed my understanding of both Judaism and Christianity,” he said.

“This is not about becoming clearer regarding any of the faiths – I was much clearer about Judaism and Islam before getting to know so many Jews and Muslims. To plunge into a sea of Talmud and Hadith while trying to interpret a scriptural text is often more bewildering than clarifying. To hear Jews or Muslims arguing among themselves subverts many textbook generalisations.”

The presentation will advocate Scriptural Reasoning as one way in which it is possible to achieve “wise faith”; an understanding of faith as something which doesn’t necessarily always involve clear assertions or imperatives, but is instead about asking questions and exploring and seeking a relationship with God. This, Professor Ford suggests, has the potential to lead not just a deeper understanding of one’s own faith, but to a broader commitment between Christians, Muslims and Jews to the wider, common good.

“The global inter-faith challenge we face requires institutional creativity, conversation, collaboration and thorough theological work and education – locally, nationally and internationally,” he concludes. “The thinking required for this has, I think, hardly got going. As a catalyst for this I have not found anything as helpful as Scriptural Reasoning.”

The lecture is a central event of the John Paul II Centre for Interreligious Dialogue, created through a partnership between the Russell Berrie Foundation and the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum). The Centre aims to build bridges between Catholic, Jewish and other religious traditions by providing the next generation of religious leaders with a comprehensive understanding of and dedication to inter-faith issues.

Details of the event can be found at https://jp2center.org/, where a full copy of Professor Ford’s lecture will also be published.

The power of “scriptural reasoning” to transform the way in which different faiths understand one another is to be the subject of a major lecture in Rome, by ��Ī’s Regius Professor of Divinity.

Scriptural Reasoning has transformed my understanding of both Judaism and Christianity.

Professor David Ford

��Ī Inter-Faith Programme

Scriptural reasoning.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes

�������������Ī - divinity

The Bible as a weapon of war

Where God meets physics

All in the script

��Ī - divinity