ON OUR THEOLOGICAL CORRESPONDENCE:

Hello Revered Bukenya –

My earnest hope is that you, the family, and not forgetting ministry – are well. 

I was glad to hear that your journey back to Moroto was safe, though I take that shouldn’t imply uneventful.

I must again offer my deep thanks for the correspondence we’ve been having these past few months, since we first touched base at that theological debate which occurred at Kampala’s Makerere University, in early March of this year.

The opportunity you and your team offered me to defend my irreligious views in the proverbial public square, was as generous as it was unprecedented in our part of the world.

For that, I am doubly grateful. 

Usually – nonconformists like myself are given a wide berth, often wider than necessary – and most devout religionists (including the nominal and outright hypocritical) wouldn’t deign to as much as touch us with a fifty-foot conversational pole.

Alas – not even in the private confines of one-on-one exchanges is this stigma seen to diminish.

This of course, I understand, given the acute conservatism of our society – to which we all are often the unsuspecting and inattentive victims, albeit to differing degrees.

For you therefore, to have planned and successfully orchestrated a public exchange on the truths of faith between me and Brother Gideon Ekele Odoma – attended by a sizeable and almost entirely religious audience – is a feat as remarkable as it is laudable.

I can’t even begin to imagine the number of powerful people you had to persuade, or the weight of assurances you had to give your rightfully concerned fellows in the Anglican clergy, regarding the eventual benefit and healthful intentions of said debate.

I strongly suspect you couldn't help but tread on a few 'hallowed' toes along the way, as you navigated that pebbly terrain.
I do hope you found a softer landing in the event's wake, and that your endeavors were, even slightly, vindicated by mine and Ekele's exertions.

Permit me thus, in my own typically humble but clearly incommensurate way, to congratulate you and your team at the African Evangelistic Enterprise (AEE) and the Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) for the history you were irrefutably able to engineer.

And what is even better – following that engagement at Makerere, you and I have fortunately been able to retain contact.

Reverend Raymond, I would understand if your intention for doing so was merely out of fascination with this odd phenomenon that I am aware I have now come to represent.
There aren’t many African atheists going around, after all – and perhaps even fewer as unerringly vocal as myself.
Indeed – I wouldn’t be entirely to blame were I to harbor the lingering suspicion that this was your own diplomatic way of re-gathering a stray lamb into the faith’s protective fold.

However, following the few occasions we’ve sat down – at your polite behest, I find necessity to add – to a steaming pot somewhere in a Kampala coffeehouse; I have not once felt myself the subject of an abstract theological inquiry or psycho-social experiment.

In those sittings, rather, we’ve had conversations so deep and beautiful and candid, yet lacking naught be way of provocation – that we’ve often lost count of the hours and had to bid each other farewell in the dark and traffic-less serenity of a late Kampala evening.

I would be unforgivably dishonest didn’t I confess how I look forward to more of such colloquies, should the time be found on both our parts in the months and years to come.

And then, how could I forget that overnight interview we conducted in April?

I did more of the talking, rather, and you the listening – over those unseen miles between Karamoja and Kampala we successfully compressed under the aegis of Skype’s video-calling feature.

Never in my hitherto brief religious-nonbelief, have I been required to think through my formative life, question many of the earlier choices that were both made for and by me – as well as really puzzle over the philosophy that spirits through my experiences.

Our April interview definitively led me down that path, Reverend.

And as if that invaluable learning episode weren’t already adequate – a few weeks in the interview’s aftermath – you gifted me with a copy of a comprehensive, well-written and highly-informative volume titled JESUS AMONG SECULAR GODS, co-authored by that razor-minded duo of Ravi Zacharias and Vincent Vitale.

I am reading the book still – since good meals, intellectual or otherwise, are not to be blitzed through – and each flip of the page widens my knowledge horizons.

I might go on and on, Reverend, but then I fear this little electronic tool I’m using to compose our correspondence might not take the strain of it.

But more important – it is not lost on me that you yourself are hugely busy with the noble work you’re presently undertaking among what are perhaps our young country’s most neglected peoples – the Karamojong and Tepeth of North-Eastern Uganda.

I therefore, shall leave this missive at this, and you to that gallant task.

I assure you, good Reverend – that for me, these exchanges long-ago ceased to constitute sheer intellectual sparring, and have solidly taken-on a very personal, introspective dimension.

May the good Lord whom you so fervently serve, and in whose able hands your faith rests, continue to smile upon you and yours.

Your friend,

Surumani Manzi

13^th/June/2017.

*This is a letter I penned to a friend and intellectual correspondent I’ve had the honor to know, but also come to respect in the past half year. It attempts – in abortive humor – to capture and convey some of the early glimmers of brotherly sentiment we’ve exchanged in our hitherto short acquaintanceship.