DE LA DECHEANCE A LA DISSIDENCE: QUEL CHRISTIANISME POUR LA RENAISSANCE DU CAMEROUN?

Abstract

Cameroon, just as many other African countries, is plagued by a number of political and socio-economic problems: bribery and corruption, embezzlement of public funds, homosexuality, paedophilia, cyber prostitution, etc. The political decline of the country inexorably engenders the moral decline of the people (10). Resourcefulness, the other name for resignation, has become the modus vivendi of many Cameroonians. Far from being the solution to their problems, this is nothing but a form of cooperation with the evil that maintains an entire people in servitude — a voluntary servitude which inevitably leads to collective suicide. In this book, Lado tells Cameroonian Christians that the time has come for them to reclaim their prophetic vocation and act as the conscience of a country that needs a political revolution as well as a moral revolution. For him, the true solution to the ills that plague the country resides in collective resistance. For this to be effective, Christians have to rediscover the subversive substance of Jesus’ message. They have to learn anew how to triumph over evil by doing what is good. For Lado, Christian ethics is fundamentally an ethics of resistance which consists in overcoming evil by love. Without the love of neighbour proclaimed in words and deeds by Jesus Christ, our earthly pilgrimage will be nothing but a foretaste of hell, for hell is nothing but the absence of love (13). Christian faith is neither a sterile utopia nor opium turned towards the hereafter. It is the power of Love that transforms man’s heart so that he may, in turn, transform his milieu for the bliss of all (14).