The rivalry amounts to “a futile game” because there will never be a day when all of Africa will be either entirely Muslim or entirely Christian, he explained at the conference that the Global Peace Foundation, the Interreligious Council of Kenya, and the Chandaria Foundation organized.
The Nairobi conference that brought together delegates from Africa and around the world to explore and discuss ways to promote peace, development, and cooperation aimed to promote an African Renaissance that draws on Africa’s unique heritage and the strength of its spirituality and traditional values; to grow African leadership; to strengthen intracontinental partnerships, and to cultivate ethical global citizenship.
In his June 27 presentation, Cardinal Onaiyekan called for “a drastic change of attitude” that would see an end to wasting time in “heated and sometimes violent and blood rivalry to increase membership” of respective religious groups.
“We should be competing to excel in bringing our membership to embrace the African and global spiritual values sacred to our religion as well as our traditional religion and culture for a true human fraternity,” he said during the three-day conference that started on Tuesday, June 25.
The struggle to make more membership “has led to many conflicts and wars claiming to be holy”, the Nigerian Cardinal lamented, and added, “It’s my conviction derived from my Catholic faith that our almighty and merciful God is moving us to a paradigm shift in our long entrenched exclusive religious attitudes.”
“We can and should take this positive inclusive position and we can do that while maintaining our conviction in the truth of our faith as a valid guide to Godliness and righteousness,” said the Cardinal, who started his Episcopal Ministry in January 1983 as Auxiliary Bishop of Nigeria’s Catholic Diocese of Ilorin.
He said that the hope for Africa’s reawakening lies in its spiritual values, which he said need re-evaluation.
“We have the basis for hope in our native African spiritual values which have remained resilient and relevant despite the natural eroding influence of the passage of time and generations and the strong impact of both Arabian and European cultures,” the 80-year-old Nigerian Cardinal who retired as Archbishop of Nigeria’s Abuja Archdiocese in November 2019 said
The African spiritual values, he went on to say, “now need to be rediscovered, re-evaluated, showcased and effectively deployed for the building of the Africa of our dreams.”
“Africans recognize their basic spiritual values in the religions and willingly accepted conversion; this is because these basic values have one common source in God who makes Himself known to all humanity despite their religious values, organizations, and structures,” Cardinal Onaiyekan said.
