A Discussion with Ganoune Diop

Berkley Center, Georgetown University  

Background: Ganoune Diop is a leading intellectual within interfaith circles and has been part of the G20 Interfaith Forum since its inception in 2014, focusing on issues of religious freedom. He is currently leading the Association’s working group on religious dimensions of racism. He and Katherine Marshall spoke (by zoom) on July 27, to explore various dimensions of his path from Rufisque, Senegal to the Seventh Day Adventist headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. This has involved a constant focus on freedom and a remarkable intellectual journey crossing multiple disciplines and topics.

What did you do after you finished with your master’s degree?

I was offered an internship to become a pastor, in Paris, where I lived for many years. During the latter two years I was working as an associate pastor. I was then called to be the senior pastor in another city, Lille, a city with a well-known university with students from all over the world. I engaged many people. I focused then a great deal on philosophy, an area where my interest had never diminished, even as I was doing theology. From Lille, I was called to head the Department of Biblical Studies for the Adventist Church in France, which I did for three years.

The next large shift came when I was asked if I wanted to pursue an academic career as a teacher. That would entail going to the US, to Michigan, and doing a PhD in Old Testament. At the time, I was doing a PhD in New Testament in France at the Catholic University of Paris, linked to semiotics, the analysis of religious discourse. I was also studying at La Sorbonne. I found that fascinating. I stayed in the US for about five years, finishing a PhD in Old Testament. I then returned to France, this time as a teacher.

I had studied ancient languages, Hebrew especially, while I was in college, then for my masters. While I was working in Paris, I decided that I really needed to have a degree in philology, the science of languages. I did not just want to be a good student in Hebrew or a good student in Greek. If I was to teach these languages, I wanted to have the necessary credentials. I went to the Catholic University of Paris again, while I was teaching in France, pursuing a master's degree in philology at the School of Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations and Languages.

The Seventh Day Adventist Church is not part of the World Council of Churches. We have what we call observer status. I'm invited to events and I work with them personally. I was even part of the writing committee at the Busan General Assembly few years ago. We collaborate and we partner, but the Seventh Day Adventist Church has chosen, for freedom of conscience purposes, not to belong to an ecumenical entity with a central organization, because belonging to such a central organization is like surrendering one's constitutional conscience. This may be why the Catholic Church, for example, while having very close and cordial relationships, cannot be under the umbrella of another organization. We position ourselves in a similar way. We will join any table where people come with an equal footing. For reasons of freedom of conscience and preservation of our distinct identity, SDAs are involved in interchurch relations but not fusion of churches. We belong to the family of Christians who confess the Trinitarian God, the divinity of Jesus who is lord and savior. However, just to be clear, in some countries, the Seventh Day Adventist Church is part of, for example, the Protestant World Federation or similar organizations. France and Spain are such cases, because the government deals directly with these entities that include Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, etc. But we are not part of the World Council of Churches, nor of the Council of European Churches (CEC), even though we work so closely with them I personally teach every year at their European summer school on human rights, and I'm invited at their general assembly    More