Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, Volume 39 Number 1, May 2013
https://hdl.handle.net/10500/9924
2024-03-28T21:23:07ZFrom Mojadi to Mafikeng: notes on the newfound Department of Theology
https://hdl.handle.net/10500/9984
From Mojadi to Mafikeng: notes on the newfound Department of Theology
Brunsdon, Alfred R.; Van der Merwe, Sarel
In January 2011 an event of church historical significance took place when the new Department of
Theology opened its doors on the Mafikeng campus of North-West University. Forming part of
the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, this department is delivering theological training to
students in and from an African context.
Now operational for a year, this article will document and narrate its founding and
historical path, from humble beginnings as a mission project in Mareetsane to its current status as
the Department of Theology at a recognised university.
The article also conveys the current narrative for the department by providing biographical
information of students and reflecting on the content of curricula.
By means of deduction, the research also identifies some of the opportunities and
challenges awaiting this new department, creating a framework for further critical reflection on
theological training in an African context.
2013-05-01T00:00:00ZThe cul-de-sac of causal thinking: a challenge to build non-causal theology
https://hdl.handle.net/10500/9983
The cul-de-sac of causal thinking: a challenge to build non-causal theology
Du Toit, Cornel W
The nascent theory of emergence is not only a plausible model for the course of natural and
biological processes, but also of developments at an interpersonal and social level. In order to
apply it to theology, I propose a non-causal approach to the discipline. In this article non-causal
presupposes a non-linear, non-deterministic causality. Brief excerpts from the classical view of
causality highlight the problems it entails. The quantification of reality following the rise of
statistical science introduced all the elements that were to feature in the eventual theory of
emergence: chance, probability, chaos, multiplicity (which nonetheless translated into regularity,
and the notion of normativity associated with the mean and the dispersion of variables around it.
The control principle is criticised, and preference is given to the concepts of freedom and
spontaneity. The article concludes with some applications of a non-causal theology.
2013-05-01T00:00:00ZDefining Christianity's "prophetic witness" in the post-apartheid South African democracy
https://hdl.handle.net/10500/9981
Defining Christianity's "prophetic witness" in the post-apartheid South African democracy
Bentley, Wessel
The Christian religion in South Africa has a rich history of engaging state and society on a variety
of issues. These range from matters relating to governance, leadership and policy to dealing with
daily moral problems experienced and expressed by society as a whole. The church1 not only has
an opinion but has also historically set itself up to be a social commentator, believing it to be its
divine mandate, stemming from divine instruction to be the guardian of what it deems a soughtafter
universal morality. The Christian church in South Africa took a prominent social position
from colonial times, right through to the end of the apartheid era. With the dawn of a secular
democracy, the prominence of the church’s voice and authority has come into question for a
variety of reasons. This article explores some of the shifts in the Christian church’s social and
political standing in South Africa and asks what its contribution is going to be in the future South
African secular democracy.
2013-05-01T00:00:00ZThe (de)construction of religious identity in oral history research in South Africa
https://hdl.handle.net/10500/9980
The (de)construction of religious identity in oral history research in South Africa
Landman, C. (Christina)
Religious identity links a person to his or her religious beliefs or affiliations. However, in a secularised world,
religious identity no longer takes the lead in constructing a person’s life. It takes its place among other identities
of age, class, (dis)ability, ethnicity, gender, race, sexuality, indigeneity, locality and size (Hopkins 2010:8–9).
Religious identity, like all other identities, is constructed by social discourses. Oral history is not
blameless in this regard, supporting social construction by affirming people’s life stories. However, oral history
research in South Africa is well placed to play another role, that of constructing contra-cultures and
deconstructing the discourses that keep interviewees captive in the dominant discourses of ageism, sexism,
racism and oppression.
Apart from deconstructing identities of failure and captivity and reconstructing them as healthy religious
identities, some oral history research in South Africa also strives to heal memories with religious identity as
dialogic space and intertext. In this role, oral history research is not uncontested locally. In 2008, Sean Field,
Director of the Centre for Popular Memory at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, rejected the need of
the interviewer to have counselling skills in an article entitled “What can I do when the interviewee cries?”
(Field 2008:15). The aim of oral history interviewing, according to Field, is to gather information, and not to
heal. In a later article, “Disappointed remains”, he (Field 2011:149) repeats his position that “oral historians
generally do not – and should not – have healing or therapeutic aims”, since oral history research is defined by
research and not by the political aim of reconstructing a happy nation. Philippe Denis from the Sinomlando
Centre for Oral History and Memory Work at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, deviates from this
position in his latest book, A journey towards healing (2011) in which the stories of people in KwaZulu-Natal
“with multiple woundedness” are told and it demonstrates how their stories were deconstructed in an oral
history process towards healing. In the introductory chapter, Denis (2011:14) argues for “story-based
interventions” as a means towards the healing of trauma and traumatic memories.
This author views counselling skills as a prerequisite for oral history interviewing in the light of the
retraumatisation that occurs when interviewees relate traumatic experiences of the past. However, in terms of
social construction theory, healing ultimately lies in the deconstruction of the harmful discourses that keep
society captive in the name of religion, and in the reconstruction of healthy religious discourses that are based
on human dignity.
Consequently, this paper describes seven oral history projects recently conducted in South Africa in
which the deconstruction of harmful religious discourses and the construction of preferred life stories took
place, and in which the aim of healing “trauma” – used here in the broad sense of ongoing deprivation and
inhumanity – is presupposed. Not on purpose but incidentally, the oral history projects presented here were
conducted in predominantly Christian communities. All the projects described here were conducted by the
author as research professor at the Research Institute for Theology and Religion at the University of South
Africa. The only exception is the memory box project of the Sinomlanda Centre at the University of KwaZulu-
Natal (subsection 4).
2013-05-01T00:00:00Z