Regeneration/Reconstruction
Date
2002-02
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Tangaza University College
Abstract
Theology of Reconstruction is a modern theological trend born in Africa, fruit of
the reflection of African theologians. It appears as an original attempt to perceive,
evaluate and transform the African reality from a local perspective, so as to keep the
pace with world events without losing identity as persons, cultures and nations.
The term reconstruction can be closely related to regeneration, the latter being
essential to the charism of Blessed Daniel Comboni (1831-1881), which is currently
portrayed by three missionary institutes inspired by the same founder.' Besides the
similarities of those concepts, I add the fact that also Comboni dedicated his life for the
African continent, trusting and hoping that one day the African Church would be the
artisan of her own destiny. In that line, I'd like to look at Theology of Reconstruction as one more sign that
Comboni's dream is being fulfilled: the African Church is now producing her own
material for the foundation of a really African Christian Church. Furthermore, in
recovering the essential aspects of the regeneration proposed by Comboni, Theology of
Reconstruction is also challenging the Comboni charism to continually renew its own
strength present since the moment the seed was planted through the work done by the
founder.
This work pretends to show the close inter-connectedness between theology of
Reconstruction and the Comboni charism. That will be achieved by comparing the
contexts for the birth of the two trends, which is done in chapter one, and the two
theological reflections they have produced, which are summarised in chapter 2. In order
to narrow down the approach, the topic of Justice and Peace has been chosen as the
point of reference for the parallelism, the tread that joins both approaches.The third chapter brings down to a concrete context the reflection of the two first
chapters. It tries to see to which extent Theology of Reconstruction challenges the
Comboni charism as it is lived out in an urban Parish like Holy Trinity Parish in
Kariobangi, Nairobi. The information collected for this chapter is the result of an
experience of two months living in the Comboni community that is running the Parish.
Besides that, for more that one year I did pastoral work in one of the outstations of the
same Parish: St. Martin's, doing youth ministry and pastoral care of the sick. Members
of the justice and Peace ministry of the four outstations of the Parish were involved in
the research.
The main objective of this paper is to show how new theological trends need to
be regarded as a challenge to different charisms of missionaries working in Africa. The
earlier should encourage different institutes and congregations to continually revise the
way the charism of the founder is lived out in a meaningful way, according to different
contexts and the demands of history.