Enoch Joseph Aboi had been serving as a pastor for his church in Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria when in 2015 he started teaching full time at Evangelical Christian Winning All (ECWA) Theological Seminary. But Aboi soon realized that he was ready for more theological training of his own, and this time, he was eager to study in a multireligious setting.
He received encouragement from two of his former professors to apply to Harvard Divinity School. Professor Yusufu Turaki had been a classmate of HDS Professor Jacob K. Olupona while pursuing his PhD at Boston University. And Professor Randee I-Morphe knew of Dean David Hempton. These men helped Aboi, now a second-year MTS candidate at HDS, decide to leave Nigeria for the first time and move to Cambridge.
Before arriving at HDS, Aboi remembers thinking, “It’s going to be good not to just talk about people of other faiths, but to talk with people of other faiths.”
During his time at HDS, Aboi has focused on gaining the knowledge and skills to become a more skillful peace builder in anticipation of his return to Nigeria. This semester, he’s taking Professor Diane Moore’s class, “Religion, Conflict, and Peace,” as part of his concentration in Religion, Ethics, and Politics. This class is helping him better understand the structural, cultural, and direct forms of violence and peace. After participating in Religions and the Practice of Peace last year, he now serves as an inaugural member of the Sustainable Peace Initiative.
“RPP provides innovative practical possible solutions and examples from peace practitioners around the world, including Nigeria. This learning experience is an important preparation for someone like me who wants to build bridges across differences—to transcend but not obliterate them.”
Aboi appreciates the opportunity to study in a pluralistic environment and learn alongside students of different faith traditions. However, he believes that conversations about religious and spiritual differences are still not happening deeply enough at HDS.
“My absolute truths have not been challenged,” he says, but he wishes that they would. “I believe that I am being trained here to be able to impact the real world. But in some ways, it is like I am insulated from the real world because in the real world, you don’t just bring your similarities, you also bring your differences. And the differences are what really matter in the real world because those are the things that could either decide peaceful coexistence or conflict.”
Aboi recognizes that having these conversations requires sensitivity and respect. He envisions the creation of “Why” discussion forums, where students could come together to share why they believe what they believe, and have space to ask one another questions. Aboi wonders what it would be like to discuss evangelicalism in this type of context.
Aboi lives with a sense of urgency. He’s witnessed religious and ethnic conflicts. Those experiences now motivate him to work for peace. He also holds onto memories of his childhood in Ungwan Yelwa in Kaduna State, where he had Muslim and Christian neighbors. Unlike many Christians from his region, Aboi also had Muslim relatives.
“We celebrated Christmas with them and Ramadan and other Islamic festivals alongside, but things changed and the communities became segregated. The rhetoric of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ was created,” he explains.
When he returns to Nigeria, Aboi hopes to return to teaching, but this time to an academic setting where he can mentor students of different faiths.
“What I’ve learned here based on my classwork and my interaction with diversity at HDS could be translated and then transmitted to students as well in the Nigerian context, so that we will be able to live peacefully.”
He elaborates, “The opportunity to interact in and outside of classroom with people from different nationalities, race, and religious backgrounds at HDS made me more accepting of difference. And I believe that accepting and celebrating our differences is what makes our common humanity beautiful.”
In addition to working with students from different religious traditions, he also hopes to continue to serve his Christian community as a pastor and encourage them to build peace. He recognizes his own ability to impact this community, and believes that he can help dismantle the structural and ideological obstacles to peace.
—by Bridget Power