Abstract
Churches, seminaries, and faculties of theology in South Africa need to create and enhance aesthetic space in building a new culture out of diversity.1 What is needed is to enter into a shared learning space as pilgrims, as people constituting a new community—postulating an open transformative agenda in relation to power and culture. Transformation of the power dynamics in faith-based communities and the academy is a precondition.2 Multicultural space engenders transformative space for identity formation.3 Multicultural faithbased institutions in South Africa are required with “a theology of difference”—in living and learning to do difference differently.4
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Notes
James Cochrane, John de Gruchy, and Robin Petersen, In Word and Deed. Towards a Practical Theology in Social Transformation (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 1991), pp. 1, 6, 36–37;
David Esterline and Ogbu Kalu, Shaping Beloved Community: Multicultural Theological Education, (Louisville: John Knox, Westminster Press, 2006).
Gordon Dames, “Intercultural Theological Education: Towards a New Future for Faculties of Theology at Higher Education Institutions in South Africa,” Scriptura 110, 2 (2012): 237–248;
Gordon Dames, “Missional Encounter of the Gospel Engaging Cultural Edges as Agents of Adaptive Change,” Practical Theology in South Africa 23, 1 (2008): 55–79;
Gordon Dames, “New Frontiers for Mission in a Post-Modern Era: Creating Missional Communities,” Missionalia 35, 1 (2007): 34–53.
Mark L. Branson and Juan F. Martinez, Churches, Cultures and Leadership: A Practical Theology of Congregations and Ethnicities (Illinois: IVP Academic, 2011), Kindle edition.
David Tracy, “Defending the Public Character of Theology,” Christian Century 1, (1981): 350–356. We borrow Tracy’s theory of the three publics (society, academy, and church) and apply it to refer to the church, society, seminaries, and faculties of theology.
Dale Andrews, Practical Theology for Black Churches. Bridging Black Theology and African American Folk Religion (London: Westminster John Knox, 2002), Kindle edition.
David Bosch, Transforming Mission. Paradigm Shifts in Theology and Mission (New York: Orbis, 2005).
Klippies J. N. Kritzinger and Willem Saayman, David J., Bosch: Prophetic Integrity, Cruciform Praxis (Dorpspruit: Cluster Publications, 2011), p. 20.
Peter C. Phan, “A New Christianity, But What Kind?,” Mission Studies, Journal of the International Association for Mission 22, 1 (2005): 62–63.
Gordon, E., Dames (ed.), Ethical Leadership for a Morally Transformed Society (Stellenbosch: SunMedia, 2009).
Kobus Schoeman et al., “Practical Theology at a Public University: The Road Travelled and the Road Ahead at the University of the Free State,” in Rian Venter and Francois Tolmie (ed.), Transforming Theological Knowledge: Essays on Theology and the University After Apartheid (Bloemfontein: SUN MeDIA, 2012), p. 136.
Leslie van Rooi, “Identity Boundaries and the Eucharist: In Search of the Unity, Catholicity and Apostolicity of the Church from the Fringes of the Kalahari Desert,” Dutch Reformed Theological Journal 51, 1 and 2 (2010): 177.
Ibid., p. 385–390; Richard, R. Osmer, Practical Theology. An Introduction (Michigan: Eerdmans, 2008), p. 172.
Tracy Kuperus, “The Political Role and Democratic Contribution of Churches in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” Journal of Church and State 53, 2 (2011): 278–306.
Pieter Grove, “Integriteit in Donkertye (Integrity in Dark Times),” in Ernst Conradie and Christo Lombard (eds.), Discerning God’s Justice in Church, Society and Academy, Festschrift for Jaap Durand (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2009), pp. 201–202.
Kalemba Mwambazambi, “A Missiological Reflection on African Ecclesiology,” Verbum et Ecclesia 32, 1 (2011): 8.
Cas Wepener, “Liminality: Recent Avatars of this Notion in a South African Context,” Scriptura, International Journal of Bible, Religion and Theology in South Africa 110, (2012): 302, 307.
Jae-Buhm Hwang, “Theological Poverty of Churches in the Developing World: Its Causes and E ffects,” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 67, 3 (2011): 1. On his part, Dale Andrews (2002), argues: “ Under the confluence of a capitalistic individualism and resilient racism, black churches contend with the frustrations of unrealised values and unmet needs” (pp. 691–698). A lack of corporate resolution and the limitations of individual power have resulted in what C ornel W est refers to as nihilism—“the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopeIessness, and [most important] [sic] lovelessness.”
Nico Koopman, “On Violence, the Belhar Confession and Human Dignity,” Dutch Reformed Theological Journal 49, 3 and 4 (2008): 159–166.
Nico Koopman, “The Beyers Naudé Centre for Public Theology: Five Years On,” in Len Hansen (ed.), Christian in Public: Aims, Methodologies and Issues in Public Theology (The Beyers Naudé Centre Series on Public Theology, Volume 3) (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2007), pp. 281–290.
Johannes Adonis, Die afgebreekte skeidsmuur weer opgebou: die verstrengeling van die sendingsbeleid van die N ederduitse G ereformeerde K erk in Suid- A frika met die praktyk en ideologie van die apartheid in historiese perspektief ( R ebuilding the dismantled walls: the intertwining of the mission policy of the D utch R eformed C hurch in S outh A frica W ith the practice and ideology of apartheid in historical perspective) (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1982); Andrews, Practical Theology for Black Churches, p. 1021; Xolile Simon, “Mission as Frontier-Crossing and Identity Formation: An Integrating Contextual Missiology,” Scriptura, International Journal of Bible, Religion and Theology in Southern Africa 100, (2009): 94.
Stephen Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002): 60.
Willem Fourie and Van Rooi Leslie, “Division within the Family of Dutch Reformed Churches and the Quest for a Culture of Human Dignity in Southern Africa: Some Implications,” Dutch Reformed Theological Journal 50, 1 and 2 (2009): 92.
Louis M. Heyns and Hennie J. C. Pieterse, Eerste treë in die Praktiese Teologie (A primer in practical theology) (Pretoria: Gnosis, 1991).
Curtiss DeYoung et al., United by Faith. The Multicultural Congregation as an Answer to the Problem of Race (New York: Orbis, 2003), p. 74.
Andrews, Practical Theology for Black Churches, p. 971; Samuel, G. Hines and Curtiss P. DeYoung, Beyond Rhetoric. Reconciliation as a Way of Life (Valley Forge: Judson, 2000), p. 112.
Branson and Martínez, Churches, Cultures and Leadership; Lynn Zimmerman, Laura McQueen, and Guy Gwendolyn, “Connections, Interconnections, and Disconnections: The Impact of Race, Class and Gender in the University Classroom,” The Journal of Theory Construction and Testing 11, 1 (2011): 16–21.
Paulo Freire, Pedagogie van de Onderdrukten (Pedagogy of the oppressed) (Baarn: Anthos, 1973); Branson and Martínez, Churches, Cultures and Leadership, p. 407.
Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach. Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life, 10th ed. (San Francisco: Wiley, 2007), p. 106.
Jaap Furstenberg, Phil Robinson, and Daan Cloete, “So het ons Jaap leer ken… I ndrukke van drie vriende (This is how we came to know Jaap… impressions of three friends),” in Ernst Conradie and Christo Lombard (eds.), Discerning God’s Justice in Church, Society and Academy, Festschrift for Jaap Durand (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2009), pp. 3–24.
Compare Ronald W. Johnson, “Mission in the Kingdom Oriented Church,” Review and Expositor. Mission in the 21st Century 101, 3 (2004): 473–495.
Patrick Keifert, A Missional Journey of Spiritual Discovery. We are Here Now. A New Missional Era (Idaho: Allelon, 2006), p. 22.
Everett Rogers and Karyn Scott, The Diffusion of Innovations Model and Outreach from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine to Native American Communities (New Mexico, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1997).
Darrel L. Guder, The Continuing Conversion of the Church (Michigan: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 84–85; Keifert, A Missional Jouney of Spiritual Discovery, pp. 58, 93.
David Bosch, Transforming Mission. Paradigm Shifts in Theology and Mission, 12th ed. (New York: Orbis Books, 2005), p. 7.
Johan Cilliers, “The Beauty of Imagined Meaning: Profiling Practical Theological Aesthetics,” Practical Theology in South Africa 24, 1 (2009): 44–45: “In practical theology the praxis of God’s presence among us, his beauty, is revealed in certain embodied encounters. Practical theology studies the ways in which people try to make sense out of these embodied encounters, and one of the ways of doing this, or a method of deciphering, is aesthetics.”
Michel de Certeau in Steve Taylor, The Out of Bounds Church? Learning to Create a Community of Faith in a Culture of Change (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), pp. 35–37.
Cochrane et al., In Word and Deed, pp. 7, 37; Jan De Beer and Attie Van Niekerk, “The Missional Value of Belhar and the DRC-family’s Reunification Talks,” Dutch Reformed Theological Journal 50, 1 and 2 (2009): 50–52; Cf. Andrews, Practical Theology for Black Churches, p. 662.
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© 2014 R. Drew Smith, William Ackah, and Anthony G. Reddie
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Dames, G.E. (2014). A Multicultural Theology of Difference: A Practical Theological Perspective. In: Smith, R.D., Ackah, W., Reddie, A.G. (eds) Churches, Blackness, and Contested Multiculturalism. Black Religion / Womanist Thought / Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137386380_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137386380_13
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