Date of Award

5-2017

Document Type

Dissertation

Publisher

Santa Clara : Santa Clara University, 2017.

Degree Name

Licentiate in Sacred Theology (STL)

Director

George Griener

Abstract

Kenya, like many other African countries, continues to experience, fifty years after independence, various challenges including political instability and violence resulting from negative ethnicity. Kenya‘s history is rife with examples of divisive politics and negative ethnicity ranging from ethnic violence, ethnicized politics, dictatorship of the ethnic majority and ethnic clashes. Evidence of the deeply seated hatred can be found in the apparent reality of ethnic division and intertribal clashes often experienced either before, during or after elections.

The 2007 post-election violence which claimed over 1300 lives and the displacement of more than 300,000 people demonstrated the depth of the culture of negative ethnicity. This violence, together with previous intertribal clashes especially experienced in the country in the 1990s, exposed a thorny issue regarding the impact of a deformed conscience in society. It demonstrates the extent to which human actions based on blind choices can cause immense human suffering and loss of life.

This study proposes a liberative ecclesiology based on the formation of conscience as a pastoral strategy from below capable of renewing moral imagination and reawakening of the moral endowment inherent in every human being. The strength of this ecclesiology lies in the fact that it integrates both the top-down and bottom-up approaches capable of fostering the kind of social agents capable of creating a just and peaceful society. The characteristics of this ecclesiology include expanding moral imagination through telling and sharing stories and myths, and historicizing the formation of conscience in the Small Christian Communities (SCCs) through educational and formational programs.

Download

Included in

Religion Commons

Share

COinS