Emory's Law and Religion Program has received a $490,000 two-year grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts to address the problem of proselytizing in sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet bloc. The project, to be directed by Emory professors Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, Johan van der Vyver and John Witte Jr., will involve scholars from around the world and result in a series of publications and an international public conference.
Religious proselytizing, or gaining converts, has emerged as a special problem in regions of the world that have been swept up in the current wave of democratization, according to Witte. "Democracy teaches that the state must foster a plurality of religious faiths within the community, without undue preference for any one of them," he said. Meanwhile, "religious faiths must participate in an open marketplace of ideas, which has liberated many local religions from past oppression, but also has raised sharp religious rivalries, especially in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet bloc."
According to Witte, director of the Law and Religion Program, the project will analyze and attempt to reconcile these rivalries through three main phases:
* building a project team of leading Christians, Muslims and other religious believers to determine the exact problems of proselytizing in selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet bloc, and formulating and circulating a set of human rights principles to regulate and help resolve these problems;
* educating the broader public through publications and international conferences on the problems of proselytizing and possible solutions; and
* convening political and religious leaders from the two target areas to draft and adopt locally tailored legislative and constitutional provisions on proselytizing and problems of religious rights, while educating other community leaders on the importance of these provisions.
The Pew Trusts have agreed to fund the first two phases of the program, said Witte. A project team of 18 to 20 leading Christian and Muslim scholars and activists drawn from North America, Africa and Eastern Europe will meet in early January to offer perspectives on religion, human rights and the problem of proselytizing.
The project team's findings and declaration on the problem of proselytizing in Eastern Europe and Africa will be published in both monograph and journal forms in multiple languages. The project also will convene a large public international conference in Atlanta in late 1997 or early 1998 on religious rights and the problem of proselytizing, which will involve government and religious leaders from the two target regions.
-- Elaine Justice