The Church & the Challenge of Democratization in Africa

By Dr. Charles H. Kitima

Lecturer in Laws and Vice Chancellor of St. Augustine University of Tanzania 
  
 [Full Text]

 
Presented April, 2008
  
1. INTRODUCTION
  
The western way of explaining different realities of man’s life
dominated modern civilization. According to this mentality the only
religion accepted by the people used to be Christianity. For
Christianity the Church is the religious community that is capable of
establishing relations with other communities, the political community
not being an exception.
 
The religious situation has undergone a transformation in the world.
Religious pluralism is accepted by most of the modern states. Under
this pluralism, the long discussed subject of Church and state is
accommodated to include those issues of religious policy of the state,
religious freedom, the relation of law and religion, and the relation
of religions and Government in the state. The Church-State terminology
has an European origin and reflects a historico-juridical background
which is different from that of Tanzania. In Europe, the Church was a
single monolithic Church and Governmental power was centered in a
single authority which had changed into a democratic one; in this case
it was fitting to use the term Church without the inclusion of other
religious communities. For our work an accommodation is necessary in
order to concretize the subject where religious pluralism has shaped
the Church-state relations right from the beginning of the states. It
spells well for Tanzania, where the first organized religious to exist
were different from Christianity. The first kingdoms in Tanzania
recognized and experienced religious pluralism.
 
African religions were common in every kingdom, the king as the
supreme authority of the kingdom guaranteed the freedom of every
religion even to the new conquered tribes, provided they would promote
the common good of the kingdom.
 
This was the basis for future religions to enter into Tanzanian
societies without any objection by the people or the kings. Islam was
peacefully received by the people in the tenth century. The same
happened to Christianity in the sixteenth and in the nineteenth
century. Having this in mind, it is not a mistake to represent
religious bodies with the term Church, the term commonly sued in former
times to signify the Christian community as an institution. In the
Catholic Church the term can be welcomed for ecumenical reasons and
above all for inter-religious dialogue. The non-Christian religions
would accommodate this traditional western term to represent themselves
without diminishing the importance of their religion for the sake of
jurisprudence in Church and state relations. The basis of these
relations is the human person with his fundamental rights, as an
individual and a member of human society at the same time.