can’t speak about Amahoro

Do you remember those youth camps from high school where you’d drive back in the bus, and suddenly realize that for you the whole world has changed in a weeks time, but for everybody else, this was just another week? While sharing comunion last night, I realized that this has  been one of those weeks. For some of us who attended Amahoro, the whole world has changed this week.

I guess that’s why I struggle to speak about it at this stage. My one colleague asked a few hours ago whether I’m back all inspired and with lots of ideas and made a lot of new friends? The answer is “no” to the first two. I made many dear friends, but I’m not back inspired, siked up, with many ideas of how I’m going to change the world. The change that happened this week was on a much deeper level.

I’m back, and I’m a different Afrikaner than I was a week ago. I’m back, and I’ll be going in a slightly different direction theologically than I did a week ago. The change was in identity, in the direction that I take in my personal story. It’s the kind of change where I know that most probably nothing will change today, or tomorrow, or in the next week even. But in weeks to come, I will have to process the experiences, the challenging conversations, the meaning of the new relationships, the emotions, the thoughts on my people, my history, my culture, and in a years time, maybe something of what happened this week would become part of who I am on the deepest level.

So, 2010 in Nairobi. I hope to connect with the Amahoro family and my new friends from Kenya, Nairobi.

Acts 15-20 for South Africa today

I’ve spent the past 2 days with some 15-20 reverends from the Dutch Reformed Church, Smith, Reggie Nel, Gert Steyn, the lecturer that taught me exegesis (although maybe he don’t want to be linked to that), and Scot McKnight. We started a discussion on the theology of Acts and what that might mean in practice for the church in South Africa today. The final reports was done by myself and three others that also blog, so we’ll be giving some thoughts on our reports. I’ll add the links as the posts come in.

Reggie Nel on Acts 21-28

Our group worked on Acts 15-20. Between 11:00 and 12:00 today, we identified the following as the most important theological thread for South Africa today:

Looking at our text, but also at the whole of Acts, we notice that Acts tell the story of boundries that was crossed. Of course, we didn’t notice this first, the scholars that introduced he discussion also pointed us to this.  However, what we believe is important is that the boundry crossing always caused the Jerusalem church to change their theology. When Peter visit Cornelius, the theology change. At the meeting in Jerusalem, the fact that boundries have been crossed changes the theology.

That we need to cross boundries is commonly accepted in South Africa today. But crossing boundries need to change the theology of those on the inside. The Dutch Reformed Church need to cross the racial and economic boundries (among others) that form our context, and this need to deeply change the theology of our church.

Missiologists call this contextualization. Contextualization should not be misunderstood as mere translation. Bosch pointed to this in Transforming Mission. I’ve written some thoughts on this about 2 years ago (check page 4 about of this document). Translation would imply a rethinking of symbols and language. Contextualization would imply a rethinking of theology, a transformation of our reflection on God and what that would mean for this day and age, within a differing context.

The core question for our church today: How would our understanding of God and the gospel be transformed when we cross the borders of our community? How would this changing reflection on God impact the practice of congregational and church life today?

Thoughts?

Why the need for public theology?

I’m finally getting around to writing my dissertation. First chapter is a broad outline of public theology, very broad! Here is a few draft pages from chapter 1. I’ll have the whole of chapter 1 on the wikispace as soon as I’ve written the complete draft. Any critique welcome.

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Why the need for public theology

If the field of public theology is only two decades old, one must ask whether theology has not had a public voice before the emergence of this field. And if theology did take part in a public conversation, why did a field like public theology become necessary? In his important work, The Analogical Imagination, which has had a mayor influence on the field of public theology, David Tracy argues that all theological discourse is public discourse, and that the theologian need to identify the public which is being addressed, which would then influence the theological language which is used (bronverwysing).

In a similar way, Jűrgen Moltmann said that “From the perspective of its origins and its goal, Christian theology is public theology, for it is the theology of the kingdom of God” Moltmann in Marshall 2005:11). “As such it must engage with the political, cultural, educational, economic and ecological spheres of life, not just with the private and ecclesial spheres” (Marshall 2005:11). Both Moltmann and Tracy by implication challenge the idea that there is a part of theology which is public, while another part is not. Why then the sudden need for public theology?

The end of Christendom

Although there is no consensus among historians as to whether the rise of Constantianism was a positive development or not, they do agree that the church was decisively changed by the decisions taken by Emperor Constantine after A.D. 313 that ultimately led to Christianity being recognized as the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 under Emperor Theodosius I. Christianity was transformed from a movement located on the margins of society into the official religion of the Roman Empire, from being perceived as a threat to the security of the empire into a guardian of the status quo. Such a profound change in the identity of the church could not fail to have far-reaching implications. Indeed Europe would be known as Christendom until the twentieth century. (Shenk 2005:74)

In Hauerwas and Willimon’s Resident Aliens, as well as the first article of the International Journal of Public Theology, we find similar pictures of Christendom in the mid twentieth century: It was a time where children grew up to be Christian simply by growing up. What was taught at home, school, church, community and even the media, all contributed to Christian formation (Hauwerwas & Willimon 1989:16; Storrar 2007:6-7). This was a time when biblical faith and society lived in a symbiotic relationship, when society was eager to receive the moral fruit of the church (Hunsberger 2006:16).

Since the time of the enlightenment, attempts came to moderate or restrict the public role of religion. Public policy was to be formed using reason, positive law and individual human rights. Theology was welcome at the public table, as long as its voice conformed to the truths of reason, and could be validated by social consensus (Marshall 2005:13). As long as the consensus remained nominally Christian, theology continued its potent public role, but with the growth of secularization and the final fall of Christendom, this positive reception was lost. Although the right of Christian theology is protected by the democratic principle, and therefore Christian theology has the right to take part in public conversation, its voice is tolerated, not welcomed (Marshall 2005:13). On a tacit level a Christian consensus remained part of society until the 1960, but churches continued to operate within this supposed Christendom-consensus well after this time (Drew 2005:21). But even today attempts at a continuation of Christendom is found (Drew 2005:23)

Hauerwas & Willimon (1990:15-16) speak of the night in Greenville, South Carolina, when Fox theatre opened their doors on a Sunday evening and the church suddenly had to compete with the theatre for the worldview of the youth. Although the end of Christendom didn’t happen overnight, the picture they sketch does ring true for anyone who has experienced this shift, like the sudden shift in a South African society when professional sport was allowed on a Sunday. Looking back, we can point to certain events which should have warned us that this symbiotic relationship was over, but for a long time church and society was still perceived to be one, since our eyes were trained to see them as one. Whether church and society ever could have been one, or was one, is open for debate, but by the time it was impossible to see them as one any longer, it wasn’t a slight move apart, the whole image was scrambled (Hunsberger 2005:315-316).

Today, however, the post-Christendom era is not characterized by the victory of secularism, of philosophical materialism, over religion. Rather a pluralism of spiritualities are available, but none are allowed public control (Drew 2005:23). The secularization thesis predicted religions demise, but as studies appeared proving this thesis, others pointed to the failure of religion to disappear, or even to remain completely privatized (Maddox 2007:84).

“…just as the adoption of the church into the cultural center in the fourth-century radically changed the nature of its existence, the recognition of its end has created a radical sense of loss and marginalization to which the churches are responding in a variety of ways. The fourth and twentieth centuries form bookends marking transition points in the history of the church. Just as the fourth century adoption of Christianity by Constantine forced the church to struggle with it’s self-understanding as the new center of the culture, twentieth-century Christians must now struggle to understand the meaning of their social location in a decentered [sic] world (Roxburgh 1997:7-8).

The end of Christendom cost Christian theology and the church its privileged position in the public conversation. Within the public conversation it had to take part using the rules of modernity, and was tolerated as long as it supported the consensus. The church mostly remained tied to this irrelevant self-understanding, found in a former authoritative role within Christendom (Drew 2005:21). With the demise of Christendom, and the shift in consensus, if Christian theology claims that it has public relevance, a new approach towards the public conversation will need to be found.

Religious faith constricted to the private realm

Together with the demise of Christendom, a second factor contributes to the need for a specifically public theology. Where pre-enlightenment and pre-twentieth century times knew a worldview where religious faith had definite impact on all aspects of life, the Enlightenment brought the idealization of reason and positivism, which made faith redundant within the public realm, since all moral truth was supposedly accessible via reason. By the twentieth century religion, as least within the European context, was confined to the private realm of a overshapened public/private distinction (Morton 2004:26).

This was not only propagated by those outside the church, but also from within. Christian pietism has long provided the soil for fideism, and from within theology many theologians followed Rudolf Bultmann by accepting the positivist constraints, agreeing that Christian faith is not a matter of public truths, but of privatized, individual truths (Drew 2005:21). As pointed out above, the consensus within society remained Christian, but with Christian faith privatized, the end of Christendom suddenly left Christian theology without a way of pointing to the public relevance of theology, within a society that is no longer distinctively Christian.

Maybe Marshall (2005:11) is correct when stating that the label public theology is an unhappy one, since it suggests that one part of theology is public, while another is not. As have been pointed out above, theology is by it’s very nature public (see also Drew 2005 21-23), however, similar to the way the demise of Christendom has caused Christian theology to loose it’s public voice, the relegation of religious faith to the private realm has done the same. This further contributed to the need for the rise of this unhappy label. For theology to be public the notion that religion affects only private life, must be rejected (Morton 2004:25).

A bibliography up to this stage can be found here.

answers to modern disillusioment

I’ve been thinking about writing on postmodernity for quite some time now. Two years back when I started blogging, I decided never to use the word postmodern, because I felt the meaning has become hollow with popularity, with everybody just using it however they want to, same with modernity. Rather, I decided to use alternative words which would better describe what I wanted to say, such as rationalism.

Well, it’s two years down the line, and I still feel quite the same. But the fact is, I still believe that a paradigm shift has happened, and is now working it’s way through every level of society, and this we need to talk about. Many call this postmodernism, and there seem to be a lot of good reasons for using this term.

Personally I become more and more convinced that the origin of this change in worldview should be traced to two things, first being Einstein’s theory of relativity, which helped us to see that time is not fixed, but relative to speed, and opened up doors to the obvious next step that then maybe many other things is relative to the point of vision. The second is the disillusionment with the optimism of man and the optimistic view of rationalism after especially the second world war. If Germany was capable of this kind of atrocities, and if rationalism wasn’t able to notice this kind of evil, then something must be extremely wrong!

This disillusionment is leading to the search for a new worldview. But now the problem is, what will it look like? Many are realizing that something is wrong, and many others have possible solutions for the way ahead. But should every possible answer to the disillusionment be considered postmodern? And if not, who is to judge? In short: Which changes to our worldview, which answers to our disillusionment, will provide a possible way ahead, and which will simply lead to a dead end?

We’ve seen the rise in Pentacostal and Charismatic expressions of faith in the same time that this disillusionment kicked in, does this make is a way forward? I don’t know. What about the rise of fundamentalism that increase as the last decade or so continue? Does this make it a good response to this disillusionment?  When should we talk about postmodern? Which maybe just bring me back to my point of two years ago… shouldn’t we maybe use more descriptive words when talking about either modernism and postmodernism?

the changing face of Church Square

One of my most favourite places in Pretoria must be Church Square. The historic centre of Pretoria, now feared by too many people.

When I first came to Pretoria, the Sunnyside name board in Lynnwood road was the kind of border, going past this border meant going into a danger zone. In my third year myself and two friends had to make a drive through the inner city (in daytime), and for the first time I got the idea that this place might not be that bad, might even be very interesting. In my fourth year I got the job of running outreaches at Universiteitsoord, and started investigating inner city projects. Early into my fifth year we had our first for the outreach group on church square, sitting in our context while talking about it.

Last night we took some friends to the inner city, to show them around. Some parents were somewhat worried (I think my mother was one of them), and some of my friends really feared what was going to happen. Over and over those of us who knew the inner city told them not to worry.

Now, I’m aware that there are more dangerous places than church square, but currently church square must be one of the places in the city where I feel most safe at night! Walking around I was again surprised at the amount of kids on church square at night, and this time also by the families walking around. One family (see photo’s) that really interested me was a father and mother who was telling their kid about Paul Kruger. Café Riche is the home of the Filosofiekafee, situated on church square, and we had coffee there before heading over to the union buildings to look at the city lights.

I get the feeling that church square is more and more being visited by middle-class black people. Might be wrong, but this is my perception from visiting it at night a couple of times over the past 18 months. Later in the evening we were in Hatfield, and I suddenly realised that I felt more safe on church square than I have in Hatfield. I didn’t even worry about working on my cellphone or camera in church square (I guess the kids really have a calming effect), but in Hatfield I constantly feel like I should just watch out!

Click to see some of the photo’s

teaching Biblical social values through The Kite Runner

I finally got around to watching The Kite Runner earlier. It was an above average movie, really worth watching, but I think I expected more from something that is screening for so long already.

At the UP faculty of Theology as well as the Department of Ancient Languages a strong emphasis is places on the Biblical Social Values research of Pilch, Malina and others. We read the Afrikaans translation of Windows on the World of Jesus (Vensters wat die Woord laat oopgaan) in our first year, this book is accesible for anyone, even without any theological training. We used the Handbook of Biblical Social Values from time to time, read a number of articles over the years dealing with this, and I’ve also bought the Synoptic Gospels and the Book of Revelation social values commentaries, and been using them whenever I preach from these books. By year four we’ve generally become sick of honor and shame (some of the most prominent values), but it was so much part of us that we’d probably never again forget about it.

Funny that the world of Biblical interpretation took so long to realise the value of knowledge on these social values. The Kite Runner again pointed out that these values are still very strong in the Middle East. The movie can be used to illustrate honor and shame, family relationships, group relationships, the role of the father, the place of woman in ancient society (which differ from modern chauvinism), the marriage process and I believe a whole lot more.

ik ben een Afrikaander (I am an Afrikaner)

It’s been another great day. The best days of my life is when I meet with people who truly stretch my thought, and today has been one of them. But I blog my thoughts with some discomfort, it remain a difficult topic…

I was born in 1984. I think I got my Afrikaner blood from my mothers side, although my father is also an Afrikaner. My mother maiden name was Odendaal, it is told that during the Anglo-Boer war the English wanted to take the horses of a number of Odendaal brothers. The one chased his horses into the hills, climb up the mountain, sat behind a rock and shot the British soldiers who came looking for him. Later, he found out that his brothers gave their horses to the English, so he changed his surname to Odendal. But we are part of the double-“a” Odendaal’s.

The first known use of the word Afrikaner is that of Hendrik Biebouw, ik ben een Afrikaander, al slaat die landdrost mijn dood, of al setten hij mijn in the tronk, ik sal, nog wil niet swygen (I shall not leave, I am an Afrikaander, even it the landdrost beats me to death, or puts me in jail. I shall not, nor will be silent – Gilliomee 2003:22).

Afrikaner identity: Where do we find it?

I’m an Afrikaner. Yes, it was us who took part in the Great Trek, who fought the local people of the Transvaal and Natal, who slaughterer many, and many of us were killed. Yes, it was we Afrikaners who fought in the Anglo-Boer war, and yes, if you wondered, we still think we would have won if it weren’t for the Scorched Earth idea, and the English taking our woman and children and putting them in concentration camps. Yes, I for one still get mad from time to time. Yes, we became nationalistic after that, and we made some terrible mistakes. The whole world hated us for Apartheid (may I add that racism in other parts of the world wasn’t always so much better in these times!). This is the Afrikaners.

Where in this can we find identity? We’re not European anymore. Although we’d sometimes like to be Africans, we still struggle to become Africans again. It’s not politically correct to talk about the Anglo-Boer war, and fin identity in that, since we screwed up worse, and since that caused nationalism. Never should you find identity in Apartheid. So we end up with Braaivleis, Boerewors and Rugby… is this our identity?

Actually, I don’t find the word Afrikaner used that much, it seems to go with the word “Boer”, a term used by the conservatives and neo-nationalists, not something we nice politically correct and liberal white Afrikaans speaking people should do.

It was Mary’s questions today who got me thinking, our conversation also made it a worthwhile day. Thanks Mary! Mary from Scotland and doing a masters on us Afrikaners and the Dutch Reformed Church, I’ll be sure to link to her work when she is done. So, what do we call ourselves? Where do we find identity?

The post is getting long, so let me make my point. Klopjag sang the song nie langer, which talked about the fact that we young Afrikaans people had nothing to do with Apartheid, so we won’t say sorry, and won’t accept responsibility. The well-known De La Rey searched for Afrikaner identity by linking back to the Anglo-Boer war. The one broke with our history, the other chose to link us with that which preceded nationalism and Apartheid.

“Ik ben een Afrikaander”, Biebouw said. And with that he stated that he has broken from his European roots, and his now a child of this continent. But Afrikaner also distinguished me from an African, calling myself an Afrikaner links me to a long tradition, which is also a Western tradition. I choose to remain an Afrikaner. Both Beyers Naudé and PW Botha is part of my history, and as in every tradition, there is those you are proud, and those you’re are not proud of. I am from this continent, but I must admit that I’m also Western.

But by acknowledging this, I hope to come to the table of South Africa, because I’m fully South African, and totally committed. And maybe some would then call me an African, as Mary’s friend Wayne, himself an African, has, or Sibetiwe once saying: “You have a black heart”, but this is a label which I will not take liberty to assign to myself…