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Read moreDiscerning a theological agenda for spatial justice in South Africa: An imperative for sustained reconciliation – Stephan de Beer
A spatial turn has occurred in various disciplines over the past decades. This article holds that it has not occurred in a similar decisive manner in theological discourse and not in South Africa in particular. After considering the necessity of a spatial turn and spatial consciousness, the article examines the concept of spatial justice against the backdrop of..
Read moreTheological education and African cities: An imperative for action
Africa’s urban explosion presents a clear challenge to the way theological education in Africa is done today. The backdrop of this article is a collaborative research project that involved 15 theological institutions across the African continent, contemplating what theological education and formation should look like, considering Africa’s current and future urban realities. It proposes paradigmatic..
Read moreFaith-based agency and theological education: A failed opportunity?
After attending to shifts in the landscape of theological education at a public university in South Africa, this article explores the re-imagination of theological education as fostering faith based agency. With reference to the (potential) role faith-based organisations play in response to developmental challenges in local communities, it then suggests a deliberate retrieval of faith-based..
Read moreJames Cone, the Urban Church in South Africa, and Theological (Re)Education: A Personal Reflection
This essay uses as backdrop the work of James Cone, and is foregrounded by a personal reflection of epistemological and theological rupture. Through the lenses of Cone’s black theology of liberation, I lament the irrelevance of both black and white churches, as well as theological education, in relation to contemporary urban struggles in South Africa...
Read moreUrban social movements in South Africa today: Its meaning for theological education and the church
In the past decade, significant social movements emerged in South Africa, in response to specific urban challenges of injustice or exclusion. This article will interrogate the meaning of such urban social movements for theological education and the church. Departing from a firm conviction that such movements are irruptions of the poor, in the way described..
Read moreThe ‘good city’ or ‘post-colonial catch-basins of violent empire’? A contextual theological appraisal of South Africa’s Integrated Urban Development Framework
The Integrated Urban Development Framework (IUDF) was constructed as a ‘new deal’ for South African cities and towns. It outlines a vision with four overarching goals and eight priorities or policy levers meant to overcome the apartheid legacy through comprehensive spatial restructuring and strategic urban–rural linkages. This article is a contextual theological reflection ‘from below’,..
Read moreReading Psalms, and other urban poems, in a fractured city
This article was an attempt to (re-)read Psalms in the context of fractured cities, marked by socio-economic inequalities, woundedness, migration and exclusion. It explored urban motifs in selected psalms and considered their possible meanings in relation to both the socio-cultural contexts in which they were written but also how they could be read and understood..
Read moreUbuntu is homeless: An urban theological reflection
This article is reading ubuntu in the light of homelessness in the cities and towns of South Africa. It suggests that ubuntu itself is homeless and displaced as a way of being human together. Instead of the mediation of dignity and justice through an ubuntu-solidarity, street homeless people and others living vulnerably and in precarious..
Read moreThe university, the city and the clown: A theological essay on solidarity, mutuality and prophecy – Stephan de Beer
This essay is informed by five different but interrelated conversations all focusing on the relationship between the city and the university. Suggesting the clown as metaphor, I explore the particular role of the activist scholar, and in particular the liberation theologian that is based at the public university, in his or her engagement with the..
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