November and December are in Africa a time for meetings, conferences, seminars.
The staff members and correspondents of Africanews participated to three of
them. Catholic theologians and missionaries met in Enugu (Nigeria) to charter
new paths for the mission of the church in the next century; journalists and
social scientists met in Accra (Ghana) to reflect on conflict resolution and
peace; while leaders of the African Independent churches met in Johannesburg
(South Africa) to study roles and strategies for their churches in relation to
development. You will find our correspondents' reports in this issue.
Mission, peace, development, are three key issues for African Christian and it
is positive that people devote time and effort to reflect on them.
Unfortunately too often the results of the seminars and conferences do not
reach a wider audience. The African communication system is still so incomplete
and fragile that what happens in Nigeria is not known in Zaire, and to try to
communicate between Kenya and Mali is a daring enterprise. Local media pay
scant attention to pan-African issues also because it is expensive and
difficult, sometimes impossible, to get information on what is going on beyond
the national boundaries.
All this happens while in the rest of the world the new electronic media allow
people to exchange an ever increasing amount of information and ideas. In an
article dedicated to the presence of religious organizations in the Internet
and the Web, in the American magazine TIME (December 16, 1996), J. Cooper Ramo
writes: Like schools, like business, like governments, like nearly everyone, it
seems, religious groups are rushing on-line, setting up church home pages,
broadcasting dogma and establishing theological news-groups, bulletin boards
and chat rooms. Almost overnight, the electronic community of the Internet has
come to resemble a high-speed spiritual bazaar, where thousands of faithful -
and equal number of the faithless - meet and debate and swap ideas about things
many of us had long since stopped discussing in public, like our faith and
religious belief... Perhaps the most ambitious site on the Web is the one now
being patiently cobbled together on the first floor of the Vatican's Apostolic
Palace... Running 24 hours a day on three powerful computers (nicknamed
Raphael, Michael and Gabriel), it will offer Vatican press releases, John Paul
II's schedule and most of the Pontiff's writings, translated into six
languages. It will also have the capacity to field thousands of simultaneous
information requests from all over the world. "The Internet is exploding, and
the church has got to be there," says Sister Judith Zoebelein, the American-
born nun who runs the site. "The Holy Father wanted it". Indeed, the Pope, who
has always looked for innovative ways to spread the Word, including travel,
books and even records, was writing as early as 1989 about the opportunities
offered by computer telecommunications to fulfill the church's mission.
It is good news that the churches are determined to be present in the exploding
field of electronic media. Yet here in Africa the churches and all groups
dedicated to human advancement, have the task to keep open more basic channels
of communication and of fostering a mentality of freedom and respect for human
rights.
Africanews staff
