11:00 - 12:30
Room: Poynting – Lecture Theatre S06
Stream: The Everyday in DR Congo: Negotiating Change and Continuity in Precarious Times
Discussant/s:
David Maxwell
Organiser/s:
Sublime Mabiala, Katrien Pype
What if Caesar were under Christ’s rule?: Re-Imagining the Religion-Politics nexus in the post-cold war D.R. Congo
Sublime Mabiala
University of Edinburgh's School of Social and Political Science, Edinburgh

The debate on the Religion-Politics nexus is not new, but has increasingly become a subject of academic inquiry. Two phenomena require considerable investigation for public theologians and social scientists interested in contemporary Africa. First, the resilience of religion in regards to statistic reports that indicate a striking southward growth of Christianity in spite of modernism. The second feature is the salience of people-oriented approaches that strive to promote local communities’ participation in their own societal welfare. For these reasons, it is important to reflect on the transformative role of religion in African politics and statecraft. The demise of the soviet empire and the ending of the Cold War in the early 1990s launched a new revolutionary era labeled as “third democratic wave” (Gifford, 1998; Huntington, 1997). The Benin government in 1989 initiated a national platform to discuss political reform under the leadership of a local clergyman. This model was replicated in many other francophone African countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, formerly Zaire). These national conferences became a powerful catalyst for raising pressures on authoritarian regimes to accept political pluralism and democracy (Fawcett & Sayigh, 1999, pp.37-42). With an emic, constructivist and prognostic perspective, my paper draws attention to DRC by retracing the historical trajectory of local Christian ecumenical engagement in the country’s politics since the early 1990s and analyzing the recent appearance of President Joseph Kabila on local media calling for the separation between Church and State after political protests initiated and led by religious actors and institutions on a national scale.


Reference:
We-A45 Everyday in DR Congo-P-002
Presenter/s:
Sublime Mabiala
Presentation type:
Panel
Room:
Poynting – Lecture Theatre S06
Date:
Wednesday, 12 September
Time:
11:15 - 11:30
Session times:
11:00 - 12:30