Ubuntu Peacebuilding

Before there were churches, mosques, the Bible, or the Qur'an, Africans used the traditional values handed down from their ancestors to deal with conflict. These values were rooted in the concepts of togetherness and in community building and preserving. When the Bible and the Qur'an were introduced in Africa, the values and the ethics contained in these religious works were found to be compatible with traditional thought and were applied by Africans to complement their indigenous conflict-transformation skills. Fidele Lumeya shares with other Africanists the belief that African religion cannot be viewed as an anti-Judeo-Christian religion; rather, it is a lens Africans use to understand and interpret the world and God, who is unseen but whose presence is sensed. On conflict and peacebuilding issues, African religion integrates the values found in the three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. This book explores the peacebuilding ethic of African religion from an Afro-Christian perspective.