The Bible and Politics in Africa

Gunda & Kügler, Introduction

Bible and politics. Clearly, As Gerald West (1995:447) observes “Chris-
tian faith continues to grow in Africa, particularly among the poor mar-
ginalized,” meaning any solutions to their plight must of necessity in-
clude their manual of hope, that is, the Bible.

Africa and Europe: Different ways of the Bible

While we had initially planned to have a conference that critically and
comparatively considered the function of the Bible in politics in Africa
and in Europe, the European side of the discussion failed to receive
interest in the form of viable abstracts hence the conference ended up
being a conference on “Bible and Politics in Africa.” The lack of interest
from the European side could be explained by noting that once one had
understood “politics” to mean national politics or party politics; then
those from most European countries would see no such direct relation-
ship. It is widely assumed by many biblical scholars in Europe that the
era of a Bible-influenced politics is past them, much in the same way
that some scholars would argue that the role of religion in the public
sphere has waned since the 1970s as Europe secularized herself (Forres-
ter and Kee 1993). Further, it is also a rare occurrence that politicians
will seek to justify their official responsibilities by resorting to the Bible
in contemporary Europe, in that regard it is relatively true that the Bible
is absent in European politics. The lack of interest could also be a result
of the fact that Europe suffered a lot of “biblical” warfare, where wars
between states and civil wars were caused by religious difference and the
interpretation of the Bible played a major role in these battles (Harris-
ville and Sundberg 1995:1-9), hence talking of the Bible and politics may
actually be opening up a sad past. A past which sought to rigidly separate
state and church because “the Westphalian constitutional treaties (1648)
successfully solved the problem of deep religious disagreement by im-
posing protoliberal religious liberties on the estates of the Holy Roman
Empire, which left the subjects with exclusively secular duties towards
their authorities” (Straumann 2008). Having experienced the extremes
of highly biblified environments, it is not surprising therefore that peace
treaties following religious wars in Europe sought to eliminate the Bible
(and religion generally) from the public discourse on political topics,
essentially, as Gunda argues in this book, “Europe had de-biblified the
public or political sphere.” These developments are understandable also
when one considers the earlier thrust and impact of historical criticism