Sijambo, @Ngong. Thank you for checking out on the Laussane spirit.

My position is that we must understand what this African culture entails in essence, in the present context, and especially considering advances in knowledge and understanding.

For example, can we have a model that embraces the traditional African worldview and also keeps abreast with advances in the whole body of knowledge?

My point exactly. The African isn't responding to Christianity and his heritage, the world has become more complex and there are many competing values. Should he hold fast to Christian values as interpreted and translated by the Colonialists who are now significantly transforming in values?

Or shouldn't the African consider his values and see they will help him survive and solve his problems?

On what grounds are we discarding our heritage?

There's this book by Walter Rodney 'How Europe colonized Africa' and in it he mentions an 'Ethiopian King' who was killed for asking that Africans be allowed to learn and choose how they'd embrace the Western culture.

Now we haven't only learnt the Western culture, but are capable of understanding/ overstanding our culture and making political decisions that will allow us to enjoy freedom and flourish.

Africans are using words (symbols) that have a bias for Western values. But what would happen if these values were put to question? We'd have alternative answers, and if we were to begin such a task we'd need appropriate objectives like globalization, clean environments, global harmony and the like.

It's about us accepting our symbols and giving them new meaning.

Hahaha! You raise many vital, and interesting ideas, and I'd be sad if your days were dark. And I'm always happy to find light in you.

You begin by saying that I should have said that we were talking about politics from the first. And you further ask, whether the moral, the spiritual is not to be involved in these political decisions.

While I am certain to reasonable degree that such words as 'prosperity', 'peace', 'freedom', 'universal brotherhood', 'continent', 'heritage', are all political words, I am not so surprised to find that you believe that the moral and spiritual are, or can be seperated from the political. Otherwise you'd probably not ask how African systems contribute to Political decisions.

But I count it as one idea of the West. The Jacobins seperated 'Church' from 'State', and Spirituality and morality were restricted to the private sphere. Just the other day the U.S. Supreme court upheld the same idea.

My 'Christian goggles', and 'God', became apparent when 'African Church' came up. Was this 'syncretism', what happened in Africa when the missionaries came? How political was that? How moral and spiritual was it?

Every spiritual event, is equally, and significantly political. Even Moses was a politician.

The garden of Eden is a body politic. The Jacobins had to pay homage to the Sun God.

African traditions have not only recognized the spirituality of politics, but that demons come from family members for the family is also a political body. Divination is an attempt at understanding ones' immediate political situation and the repressed, sublimated, . . ., ideas, attitudes, fears, 'demons', that bind, and prevent ease, peace, prosperity, freedom.

Even the international system, has its demons, and these demons are cast in the same way as in individuals.

I used 'reasonable probability' because I'm aware of my limits, and nature, and context of this 'conversation'.

I also realize that you have noted my concessions, and though I have put words in your mouth, we have some agreement, and you now want me to show the intricate relationship between politics and spirituality. And you ask what I know about the Church - State relationship.

I'll begin by telling you what I know about Church and State by using a historical example that will end by looking at our conversation.

Perhaps, we should begin with a word or two about Martin Luther, and the Spirit of his time. He was a monk in the Catholic Church at a time when the Pope was a powerful figure who intervened in the running of Kingdoms and other bodies politic. Luther, by virtue of his zeal for God, and being enlightened by the Spirit of his age, sought to reform the Church and keep it on her scriptural path. But he ran into political difficulty. For example, how could the Church not sell indulgences and maintain her political power? Luther had to be expelled. German princes saw an opportunity for loosening the Pope's grip on them and sheltered Luther who could gather the masses and provide the German rulers with legitimacy in their break from tradition. Luther refused to support the German peasant war, and consequently thousands of peasants died. Why? To save his own skin, and consequently prop the rulership of the day.

In England, the spirit of enlightenment, and chants of 'Sola scriptura', the Anglican church met some zealous dissenters who gathered behind Arthur Cromwell and demanded 'no bishop, no King'. When the Cromwell revolution was crushed these 'dissenters' ran to America and proceeded with their zealous search of the Scripture. And in order to maintain this freedom they even fought the English King for independence. They encouraged the Jacobins.

These pious dissenters burnt witches, encouraged the decimation of the red Indian population, and even owned African slaves.

One day, a zealous and Scholarly man by the name of William Miller made some calculations and came with some dates on when Christ would return. His friends had just discovered that the heavily Kingdom would be on earth, and he was not to be left behind.

He must have been a very respectable zealot, for he managed to gather a following.

This was an elite unit of believers who'd rule with Christ. Because the zealots around Miller were serious scholars, they demanded certainty which not even Miller could give.

A great disappointment followed and some modified their zeal and went to modest political units who'd safeguard the Constitution.

Other Millerite zealots couldn't surrender and lose face, so they gathered and came up with other Scriptural, reasonable, and certain reasons for the great disappointment. And to keep the matter sealed diversion came with missionary activity, and using state protected wealth they descended upon the primitives among who was your grandfather.

Within a few years your father's head was filled with unpalatable stuff, he tried to rebel, but the brainwashing was too tight. You were already zealously stirring your 'Soya' and telling your friends that the Pope is the 666, and an active pathfinder.

The church fits your personality. It shaped it. And you've performed well, so you've been rewarded with some respectable positions. Armed with such ideas and props do you come to Wazua to reinforce your beliefs!

Dont respond yet.

I want to add something.

Still reading up.

So. What do you mean by, 'concession'?

I didn't ask, what concession(s) I had made. The question is what you mean when you say, 'concede'.

I know why I started the thread. And that's not the question.

You asked me to define some words, and I did. To reasonable certainty.

Now I ask you to define 'Concede' for the third time. Will you?

What is being?