In the many cases of conflicts co-fuelled by sociocultural identity contestations, religions cannot play the role of reconcilers, because they have become part of the problem through association with one of the contesting parties. This contribution argues that, in order to come to terms with this, religions have to rediscover the reconciliation practices within their traditions, become more critical of their own past reconciliation record, and develop a theology that pays proper attention to the challenges generated by sociocultural identities. The argument is illustrated with an analysis of the role played by Christian churches in South Africa during the apartheid era.
Within this article, three ecumenical documents that discuss reconciliation and healing memories and that were published in the twenty first century are analyzed. Th e focus is on the way they deal with the past link between church and ethnicity, and how this has contributed to the inability of actual national or ethnic churches to be an expression of the one, catholic church of the ancient creeds. Th e result of the analysis is disappointing. Th e texts avoid dealing with this issue.
Reconciliation shifted in South Africa during the transition from being a contested idea in the church struggle to a notion proposed and rejected by the fighting parties and finally embraced by the two main political protagonists when they reached an agreement on the transition to a democratic order. This article analyses the layered meaning of the reconciliation concept within the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. On the basis of this description the questions that will be explored are whether reconciliation functioned as a religious symbol at the trc, and if so, in what way. In the conclusion, the way the concept of reconciliation itself was transformed due to the role it played in the transition in South Africa will be summarized and the consequences for theological research will be indicated.
The Cottesloe Consultation (1960) is an important milestone in the ecumenical struggle against apartheid and racism in general. This article tries to find out whether the theological arguments developed within the ecumenical movement are solid enough to withstand the threat of divisions on the basis of race, nation, tribe, and ethnicity that have the potential to tear apart the one church of Christ. In order to answer the questions the historical and textual background of the text of the Cottesloe Consultation is analyzed. It reveals that exactly at the place where the text tries to theologically justify the diversity of people within the unity of the church of humanity, the drafters could not rely on help from the theological commission of the World Council of Churches, and relied on an expressions coming from the defense of the then apartheid churches in South Africa, that is "unity sanctifies diversity". It illustrates that next to a moral answer the theological argument still requires further development.
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