Eglise Famille de Dieu et Loyauté Ethnique au Bénin

Abstract

Today, African Christianity is searching for authentic life and expression. Theology in Africa has the vocation of helping the church in this quest so that faith is more deeply rooted in Christ the Saviour and Lord on the African continent. This study shares this concern by exploring specifically one area of African theology, namely ecclesiology which should help the church to understand its identity and better accomplish its mission in Africa. The “Ecclesiology of the Church Family God “put forward for this purpose by the African Catholic clergy and relayed by Catholic theologians is the specific object of the study in relation to the context of ethnic loyalty. The study first presented some important contributions to the “Ecclesiology of the Church as family of God”. Then it examined the biblical evidence of this ecclesiology. The analysis of the contributions, the biblical evidence and the cultural rooting of ethnic / family loyalty, suggested the concept of “hospitality “as a bounding category in developing an “Ecclesiology of the Church as Family of God “to overcome the harmful manipulation of ethnicity. Finally, the study, taking into account the reality of ethnic diversity in southern Benin, the disastrous consequences of its mishandling and studies on ethnicity in the social sciences, suggested ways to live out “hospitality” in the church understood as family of God. As result, the study has discovered three main things. Firs, “relationality” (the fact of being in relation)as a way of understanding and managing life is an essential cultural element that must be taken in account in the development of a relevant ecclesiology in Benin; second, God’s salvation plan is also conceived and carried out as “relationality”; and third, more than “solidarity”, “encounter “and “listening “proposed in some previous studies, the concept of “hospitality “expresses and consolidates this “relationality “in the Adja-Tado-Foncultural area in the south of Benin as well as in the deployment of the redemption plan of God. The church is then the Family of God as a welcoming (hospitable)family in both vertical and horizontal dimensions. The task of evangelization, conversion experiences, Christian education and pastoral care must be driven by a hospitable mind and for the purpose of hospitality.