Dialogue Beyond Documents: Theological and Social Criteria for Sustainable Christian-Muslim Coexistence in Nigeria

The official documents of the Christian-Muslim dialogue, such as Nostra Aetate, Fratelli Tutti, Lumen Gentium, Ecclesiam Suam, pastoral letters, A Common Word, the Marrakesh Declaration and the Abu Dhabi Document, clearly have guidelines of mutual perception, freedom of religion, and Fraternity among people. However, everyday coexistence in Nigeria remains precarious, revealing a difference between the document and reality presented on paper and the one on ground. Employing a normative-analytical methodology grounded in documentary analysis and secondary scholarship, and basing this paper on a three-layer approach, comprised of macro (law and politics), meso (peace-building infrastructure), and micro (daily life), this paper promotes both theological and sociological standards that help in determining whether the propositions made in the literature of dialogues turn out to be real and ensures sustainable pluralism. Based on the legal pluralism, interfaith institutions, and routine interreligious interactions in Nigeria as a running case study this paper ask nine hard questions to examine fear, state neutrality, impunity, and the legacy of wounded memory. This paper then proposes a theology of stratified co-existence which is a framework that reconciles doctrinal commitments with institutional structure and daily practise. The result is a normative-empirical matrix with the capacity to evaluate initiatives without regard to their textual affect: do they regulate structures, staff institutions and reanimate practises that instil trust? An action plan that is sequenced, context-relevant, recommendations are the final part of this paper to give Nigeria that means to move beyond a document to systematic and daily transformation.

Christian-Muslim dialogue, Interreligious coexistence, Nigeria, Legal pluralism, Peace infrastructure, Religious freedom, Religious freedom.

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