Sacred Promises, Shattered Realities: Papal Responses to Religion and the Human Condition in Africa
Keywords:
Editorial, Religion, Human Condition in Africa, The Catholic ChruchAbstract
The call for papers on this issue underscored the paradoxical reality of many Africans, particularly the apparent disconnect between singing believers and sinking citizens. While several pieces of research evidence, such as the studies of the 2020 Afrobarometer survey (Dispatch No. 339), Statista, and the Pew Research Centre, highlight the growing rate of religious devotees in sub-Saharan Africa, in reality, the continent is far from reaping material dividends (real, imagined or in some cases promised) of religion. Most African streets seem to have no resemblance to the serenity and beauty of cultic sanctuaries within their respective geographical context. The more religion flourishes in Africa, the more the conditions of life seem to worsen. The more religious devotees increase, the more the continent witnesses an increase in conflicts and wars, ravaging faith communities. Religion now seems synonymous with violence on the continent. Although the term “human condition” refers to the state of being of a person or people, encompassing the human experience of love and loss, communality and loneliness, joy and sadness, as well as wondrous and woeful feelings, the tendency to consider it to be synonymous with suffering, woes, and tragic experiences based on the day-to-day existential dynamism
of Africans, is not far-fetched.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Hekima Review

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.