‘The Right To Be Different’: Tite Tiénou's Engagement with Ali Mazrui's Synthesis of Religions

This article analyses Tite Tiénou’s engagement with Ali Mazrui’s proposal for a synthesis of religions. Kenyan scholar Ali Al’amin Mazrui (1933–2014) is widely acclaimed as one of Africa's intellectual giants of the twentieth century. One of Mazrui's main convictions was that Africa’s contemporary problems are tied to the long (and continuing) Western domination of Africa, which has utterly destroyed African societies. He pointed to the problematic link between colonialism and Christian missions, claiming that missionary Christianity has caused the religious and cultural alienation of Africans. According to Mazrui, there is room for Christianity in Africa only when it renounces its missionary zeal and merges with other religions. Remarkably, except for Burkinabe theologian Tite Tiénou, few Christian thinkers have responded to Mazrui's ideas. This study retraces Tiénou’s response to Mazrui’s politico-religious reflections. It will be argued that Tiénou embraces Mazrui’s position, but simultaneously claims that African Christians have every right to be different, both from Western Christianity and Africa’s pre-colonial past, maintaining that there is space for a distinct expression of Christianity in postcolonial Africa.