Communion Ecclesiology by Dr. K.T. Resane explores the concept of a communion ecclesiology in South Africa. The book provides the reader with a comprehensive overview of the concept in the Bible, in history and in different church traditions including the African Initiated Churches. The book also focuses on the different cultural groups in South Africa as they were organised within theological traditions. - Prof. S.D. Snyman, University of the Free State
Some of the studies in this publication excavate lost or disappearing indigenous toponyms. Those researchers contribute in a very concrete way to the preservation of indigenous toponyms, and thereby also the associated cultural heritage. The other papers explore how place naming functions as a mechanism with which to create mental maps and exert socio-political power.
African Pentecostal Theology: Modality, Disciplinarity, and Decoloniality explores research methodology, theological disciplines, and contextualization as important aspects in the process of studying Pentecostal theology in an African context. Mookgo Solomon Kgatle outlines different data collection and data analysis methods, including the skills of interpreting and presenting research findings in a responsible manner. This book illustrates that Pentecostal theology, given its pneumatological approach, goes beyond conventional theological disciplines in transdisciplinary research. The development of knowledge in African Pentecostal Theology should recognize African Indigenous Knowledge Systems (AIKS), African oral and traditional cultures, and African indigenous languages to be relevant to Africans. Pentecostal theologians from different theological disciplines in Africa and globally will find this book a worthwhile read.
This is a scholarly book that commemorates the legacy of Rev. Nicholas Bhekinkosi Hepworth Bhengu who was born on 05 September 1909 at eNtumeni, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He was the founder of the Back to God Crusade in the 1950s that has become institutionalised within the Assemblies of God. He taught his church to be self-sustaining and also encouraged material independence through hard work. He died on 07 October 1985 at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa, leaving many people in Africa influenced by his rich legacy as an evangelist, pastor, teacher and church planter to this day. Bhengu combined evangelism with development, which was critical for the black people who were under a repressive regime in South Africa and in sub-Saharan Africa. He was a religious revolutionary who ‘planted’ more than 2000 churches in South Africa and neighbouring countries by emphasising non-denominationalism without pressurising converts to discard their churches and join others. He was determined to build a movement that would be a vehicle to reach out to the continent of Africa through his churches. The book aims at providing academics and researchers with reference material of interactions between spirituality, church dynamics, socio-economic development and political environment. Its contribution to existing research with regard to the formative growth of Christianity in Africa is significant and innovative. The book’s target audience includes academics in the religious fields of missiology, church history and contextual theology, specifically researchers with intent to write scientific commentaries on the life history of Bhengu.
This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Transforming Encounters and Critical Reflection: African Thought, Critical Theory, and Liberation Theology in Dialogue" that was published in Religions
The thirteen essays in this volume offer a challenge to conventional scholarly approaches to the sociology of religion. They urge readers to look beyond congregational settings, beyond the United States, and to religions other than Christianity, and encourage critical engagement with religion's complex social consequences. By expanding conceptual categories, the essays reveal how aspects of the religious have always been part of allegedly non-religious spaces and show how, by attending to these intellectual blindspots, we can understand aspects of identity, modernity, and institutional life that have long been obscured. Religion on the Edge addresses a number of critical questions: What is revealed about the self, pluralism, or modernity when we look outside the U.S. or outside Christian settings? What do we learn about how and where the religious is actually at work and what its role is when we unpack the assumptions about it embedded in the categories we use? Religion on the Edge offers groundbreaking new methodologies and models, bringing to light conceptual lacunae, re-centering what is unsettled by their use, and inviting a significant reordering of long-accepted political and economic hierarchies. The book shows how social scientists across the disciplines can engage with the sociology of religion. By challenging many of its long-standing empirical and analytic tendencies, the contributors to this volume show how their work informs and is informed by debates in other fields and the analytical purchase gained by bringing these many conversations together. Religion on the Edge will be a crucial resource for any scholar seeking to understand our post-modern, post-secular world.
Conflict resolution and peacemaking are not enough. What makes real reconciliation possible? Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice work from their experiences in Uganda and Mississippi to recover distinctively Christian practices that will help the church be both a sign and an agent of God's reconciling love in the fragmented world of the twenty-first century.
The dream of 1994 has been betrayed. A dream that imagined equality, a thriving economy, and a just and prosperous future for all. But poverty has deepened, corruption is rampant, and social tensions are on the rise. The country needs to hope again. In this thoughtful analysis of what’s right and wrong in South Africa, Mamphela Ramphele speaks candidly about her own brief foray into party politics, considers the insights of black consciousness and other ideologies, and looks for solutions to the country’s problems. She argues that the political settlement of the 1990s needs to be accompanied by an ‘emotional settlement’ that will heal the trauma of colonialism and apartheid, and a ‘socio-economic settlement’ to promote social justice and equality for all. She seeks ways of reimagining the country and its future, and suggests innovative ways to solve the education crisis, to renew our cities, and to achieve a just and reconciled South Africa. ‘It is time,’ she says, ‘to reimagine the country and its future. We owe this to our children’s children. We dare not fail.’
