The Kroc Institute’s spring conference in Jinja, Uganda, took place 7,800 miles from the University of Notre Dame. It featured 30 presenters — 18 of them from Africa, 13 of them women. There were two keynote speeches and eight academic panels. Scholars and practitioners came from 18 universities and 15 non-governmental organizations.

But numbers don’t begin to describe the March 31-April 3 conference, “Religion in African Conflicts and Peacebuilding Initiatives: Problems and Prospects for a Globalizing Africa.” Its essence was contained in scholarly perspective and in heart-rending stories.

Presentation topics ranged from indigenous revivalism to women’s rights. There was discussion of magic and marginalization in the Congo; of grassroots peacebuilding in Sudan; of teachers in Tanzania offering basic education in exchange for the chance to evangelize. The ongoing agony involving the Lord’s Resistance Army in Northern Uganda provided a focal point for exploring the ways in which religion can either foster conflict or work to end it.

The conference agenda is available at the institute web site, http://kroc.nd.edu, under “Religion, Conflict & Peacebuilding.” Also posted there are excerpts from the summary comments given in the final session by Africa experts Charles Villa-Vicencio and Jean Comaroff.

Comaroff is Bernard E. & Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. She said the conference provided “evidence of the intensified impact on local African life of religious forces of world-wide scale, forces at once cultural and material.”

She noted that Africa has long been the target of outside proselytizers, Christian and Muslim. “What is novel about current enterprises is both their source (they stem as much from the South and East as the North and West) and their methods (they rely heavily on electronic media).”

Villa-Vicencio is executive director of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, based in Cape Town, South Africa. After listening to the conference speakers, he identified four models of religion that encompass the good and the bad: religion as a source of political power, as a vehicle of dissent, as a means and hindrance to nation building, and as a source of peacebuilding. He urged those present in Jinja to “seize the moment to make positive difference in a continent that continues to seethe under the yoke of suffering that is imposed both from without and from within.”

Examples of suffering — as well as redemption and hope — poured forth as the Nile River flowed outside the red-roofed Jinja Nile Resort. Among the stories:

• A woman in Northern Uganda begged rebels to kill her instead of her three sons because she would not be able to raise her grandchildren alone, said Catholic Archbishop John Baptist Odama. They consented, trampling her in front of her children.

• There was a time in Ethiopia when victors amputated the right hands and left feet of defeated soldiers. “The right hand is the sword hand, the left foot is for mounting a horse,” said Valparaiso University researcher Chuck Schaefer, explaining the purpose of the restorative justice: The soldiers, while no longer fit for battle, could still return to society.

• Attorney and consultant Virginia Davies told of a pastor who lost his arm in religiously fueled conflict in Northern Nigeria. On the opposing side, a Muslim imam lost two brothers and a teacher in the fighting. Introduced by a mutual friend, the two religious leaders decided that the cost of vengeance was too high. Their resolve and compassion led to the creation of the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum in Kaduna.

Early in the conference, Deusdedit Nkurunziza of Makerere University used an African proverb to describe the best way to end conflict. “The crocodile must be led slowly, slowly to the river,” he said. “Peace is a dynamic process that comes slowly. We are searching for an alternative paradigm, one that must be based in African culture and religion.” Kroc Institute professor and renowned peacebuilder John Paul Lederach echoed that theme at the end of the conference. “Patience is hope practiced,” he said. “We are committed to Africa, to East Africa.”

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