Ivan Petrella argues that the goals of liberation theology can sometimes be better served by doing it undercover. This article reflects on responses to homelessness during Covid-19 in the City of Tshwane, describing and reflecting upon it from the perspective of a researcher theologian as well as activist-urbanist. It employed two lenses in its reflection:..
Read moreA reflection on Vuyani Vellem’s longing for liberation: A spirituality of life and freedom
Vuyani Vellem was insistent on fostering a spirituality that could ground and sustain resistance of death as expressed in multiple unfreedoms, and the quest for life and freedom in abundance. After naming a number of themes evident in the life of Vuyani – ranging from racism and pigmentocracy to the managerialist university and the shackled..
Read moreA practical theology of liberation: Mimetic theory, liberation theology and practical theology
In this article, the authors bring two personal journeys together: one author’s liberationist journey, sparked by a search for justice and liberation in the slums of Guatemala City, and the other’s lifelong commitment to practical theology and spatial justice in South Africa. A practical theology of liberation is the result of life experiences in countries..
Read moreMigration, precariousness, and the linked lives of newcomers in Hong Kong
We develop the concept of linked lives to deepen understanding of the relationship between migration and precarity. Linked lives and precariousness are mutually constitutive as they embed subjects in the social, spatial, and temporal relations of everyday life while referencing transitions, trajectories, and biographies that unfold through the life course. Studying linked lives draws attention..
Read moreCity-making from below: A call for communities of resistance and reconstruction
This article laments the exclusion of small, local communities, voices and visions, from participating in making the city. It makes a case for ‘small communities’ practising resistance and reconstruction in multiple ways and places. Instead of viewing such actions as naïve or a-political, it calls for an understanding of such practices as alternatives to ‘top-down’..
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 moreChange-making in a (post)apartheid city: An auto-ethnographical essay
We reflect on living and doing ministry in a (post)apartheid South African city, negotiating ongoing demographic and sociopolitical transitions and discerning appropriate faith responses. We speak about the inevitability of these transitions, but then suggest that a view of theology and ministry as change-making is not inevitable but a vocation and art to be acknowledged,..
Read moreTransforming curricula into the next century: Doing theology collaboratively with local communities
The FT at the UP celebrates its centenary in 2017. This coincides with a renewed urgency for free, decolonised education, fuelled by student protests on campuses across the national landscape but also by theoretical discourse. Considering the transformation of curricula in SA today, in all disciplines but also in theology, cannot be done in isolation..
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