{"id":24589,"date":"2015-06-15T15:25:25","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T19:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=24589"},"modified":"2016-06-29T14:39:57","modified_gmt":"2016-06-29T18:39:57","slug":"victor-dogos-chadian-pastor-has-dedicated-his-life-to-interfaith-goodwill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2015\/victor-dogos-chadian-pastor-has-dedicated-his-life-to-interfaith-goodwill\/","title":{"rendered":"Victor Dogos, Chadian pastor, has dedicated his life to interfaith goodwill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Victor Dogos coordinates three interfaith peacebuilding workshops<\/a> \u2013<\/span> one each for religious leaders, youth and women\u00a0\u2013<\/span> in Chad every year, working with the financial and staff support from Mennonite Central Committee<\/a>. This summer, he enrolled in all four sessions, approximately five weeks, of Eastern Mennonite University’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute<\/a> to deepen his knowledge and improve his own skills as a peacemaker.<\/p>\n

In a recent interview on campus, Dogos told the following story as an example of the kind of work he does: In December 2012, in the rural Chadian town of Mongo, a group of religious leaders met for an interfaith peacebuilding workshop sponsored each year by the Coalition of Evangelical Churches in Chad (known by its French acronym, EEMET). Among the roughly 30 leaders who attended \u2013 equally representing Muslims, Catholics and Protestants, Chad\u2019s three main religious groups \u2013 were an imam and a pastor who both adhered to particularly strict, fundamentalist interpretations of their respective faiths.<\/p>\n

As the recently hired coordinator of EEMET\u2019s Ethics, Peace and Justice program, Dogos was responsible for the event\u2019s logistics. In order to address potential friction between the imam and the pastor head-on, he made them roommates during the week-long workshop. On their first night together, an animated theological debate kept the two up late.<\/p>\n

The next morning, when the imam rose early to pray, the pastor one-upped him by spending extra time with his devotions. The morning after that, the imam, determined to demonstrate his own devoutness, read the Koran until the very moment the day\u2019s schedule began.<\/p>\n

Later that week, the caterers were late preparing the evening meal Dogos had arranged for the participants. The imam and the pastor got too hungry to wait, and Dogos noticed them walking off to town to get something to eat together. The roommate decision had paid off. Somehow, some way, the two had bridged the gulf between their sharply divergent worldviews with mutual respect.<\/p>\n

They still, Dogos says, maintain their improbable friendship.<\/p>\n

Other work is impossible without peace
\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Dogos was in high school in N\u2019Djamena, Chad\u2019s capital, in 1980 when Hiss\u00e8ne Habr\u00e9\u2019s forces were fighting against the military of the former president.<\/p>\n

“There were three options then,” he says in a 2014 interview.<\/a> “You could take up arms and fight. You could go into the villages and work in the fields, because the war was really in the city. Or you could leave Chad. I went to Ivory Coast in June 1982. It was there that I decided I would not do anything else but to serve God.”<\/p>\n

Dogos, who speaks Arabic and has close ties to the Muslim community, says that peace is the “foundation” and the “base” for other work. “We have to understand that we cannot do any other work without peace.”<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are living in a post-war context in Chad, but the threat of inter-ethnic violence, terrorist activity and wars from bordering nations continue to cast a dark shadow on our current fragile peace,\u201d he wrote in his SPI application packet.<\/p>\n

The story like the one about the imam and the pastor is one example among many, another victory for the cause of understanding in an ethnically and religiously diverse country that\u2019s surrounded by wars and violence in neighboring ones.<\/p>\n

\u2018God put us in this same country\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Prior to joining EEMET, Dogos spent 12 years as missions director for his denomination, Assembl\u00e9es Evang\u00e9liques au Tchad. Dogos, who has master\u2019s degrees in communications as well as missiology, has also been a pastor in Chad and C\u00f4te D\u2019Ivoire. One of the assets he brings to his peacebuilding work now is the network of contacts he developed among religious leaders. He also has a deep, personal familiarity with the theology, mindset and beliefs of Chad\u2019s Islamic community.<\/p>\n

\u201cGod put us in this same country. Our children attend the same schools, our women go to the same shops, we share the same offices,\u201d says Dogos. \u201cIt\u2019s very important to live in peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe deep healing and interfaith collaboration\u201d sparked by Dogos\u2019 work was an inspiration to fellow SPI participant Trina Trotter Nussbaum<\/a>, assistant director of EMU\u2019s Center for Interfaith Engagement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cVictor\u2019s faith shines through him and the sincerity of that faith spills out onto everyone he meets,\u201d said Nussbaum, who is also a student in the graduate program at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding<\/a>. \u201cHe not only has a deep faith in his Creator, but also that people can eventually see humanity in the other. He has a passion for wholeness and healing, and it is contagious, in the best possible way.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Victor Dogos coordinates three interfaith peacebuilding workshops \u2013 one each for religious leaders, youth and women\u00a0\u2013 in Chad every year, working with the financial and staff support from Mennonite Central ... read more about Victor Dogos, Chadian pastor, has dedicated his life to interfaith goodwill<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4515,5583,13679,12503,264,5623,12499],"tags":[5668,6100,5690],"feature":[],"class_list":["post-24589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-campus-community","category-center-for-interfaith-engagement","category-cjp","category-graduate-programs","category-special-programs","category-spi","tag-interfaith","tag-mennonite-central-committee","tag-peacebuilding"],"yoast_head":"\nVictor Dogos, Chadian pastor, has dedicated his life to interfaith goodwill - 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