Chapters in Books (Practical Theology and Missiology)

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Transforming (Christian) apartheid
(African Sun Media, 2020) Verwoerd, Wilhelm
Ugandan Catholic Archbishop John Odama visited Belfast in March 2012, towards the end of my decade as a peace practitioner on the island of Ireland. During this visit a few colleagues and I spent a precious few hours around a small, round table with him. He told us about going into very dangerous remote areas to meet with leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), including the notorious Joseph Kony. For Archbishop Odama it was about being true to his calling as a peacemaker. He also talked about the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative (ARLPI), which includes the Anglican Archbishop, an Orthodox Christian leader and a Muslim Imam.2 He then demonstrated his solidarity with humanity by relating to my colleagues how he prayed for them during the “Troubles”, the euphemistic term often used for the deeply rooted, bloody conflict in and about Northern Ireland. He fasts every Thursday and prays for every conflict in the world that he is aware of. Then he held up his hands in the familiar gesture of prayer – with the palms and fingers against each other – and slowly explained what these two hands symbolise for him. Each finger represents one of the five continents; one hand stands for men, the other for women; his light brown palms bring to mind all people who are light-skinned, the dark brown on the outside reminds him to pray for all people of color.