Understanding the Stranger: Aspects of Inter-religious Hermeneutics

In Germany, where her father was on furlough, the little daughter of a missionary, grown up in Western Africa, saw some Africans at a railway station. She caught her father's hand and cried: 'Look, father, there are real human persons!' Like a burning glass this scene is focussing the problems concerning the question of being familiar or strange. From an early age the girl was familiar with African people, with their appearance, their character, their dealing with each other, their sociality. Africans represented the familiar world of her childhood. They reminded her of her home; this feeling she expressed in the word 'real human persons', in which she connected familiarity and sense of belonging. It need not surprise that she did not name a distinction to her parents, who are looking different. Her parents and the African people together are representing what she wanted to express with this word: she felt again at home!