https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/9924 2026-05-01T09:10:57Z 2026-05-01T09:10:57Z Brunsdon, Alfred R. Van der Merwe, Sarel https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/9984 2022-06-30T12:40:22Z 2013-05-01T00:00:00Z

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.

2013-05-01T00:00:00Z Du Toit, Cornel W https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/9983 2022-06-30T12:39:03Z 2013-05-01T00:00:00Z

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.

2013-05-01T00:00:00Z Bentley, Wessel https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/9981 2022-06-30T12:37:31Z 2013-05-01T00:00:00Z

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.

2013-05-01T00:00:00Z Landman, C. (Christina) https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/9980 2022-06-30T12:33:22Z 2013-05-01T00:00:00Z

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