The cry of freedom - happy 101st birthday Beyers Naudé

Tomorrow we will celebrate the 101st anniversary of the birth of Beyers Naudé.

He was a courageous prophet against injustice - living for a better future for all of South Africa's citizens.

The reality is that not much has changed for the majority of South Africans since 1994 - we still hear the cry for freedom in our land.

We are facing rising economic inequality, increasing enmity between the races, and the continued subjugation of the rights of the most needy and disenfranchised members of society by both the state and those who hold economic and social power.

Please can I invite you to watch this powerful documentary on the life of Beyers Naudé in celebration of his life and witness, but also to remind us of the important and critical task that we face at present?

Tomorrow we shall celebrate his legacy in the residence at Stellenbosch University where he was a student - Wilgenhof. My colleague and friend, Rev Jaco Botha will speak about the legacy and witness of Oom Bey and remind us that his work is not yet done.

We have so much work to do, and it is the work of citizens. We cannot wait for the state and political parties - we are the people we have been waiting for.

A spirituality for daily living

In today's VLOG we talk about spirituality for daily living. I visit a beautiful wine farm in Franschhoek and interview a friend, Jacques Bornman @jacquesbornman http://www.jacquesbornman.com

The books we mentioned were:

Eugene Peterson ‘Under the unpredictable plant’ http://amzn.to/1rteUkh and ‘Working the angles’ http://amzn.to/1UvKrh1
Trevor Hudson ‘Beyond loneliness: The gift of God’s friendship’ http://amzn.to/1rtf2Ap
Dallas Willard ‘Renovation of the heart’ http://amzn.to/1UvKEAM

Remember, it's not a lecture, just a thought…

I’d love you hear your feedback, comments, questions and ideas!

Please subscribe and like the video!

Is there something we can do? The church and social change (in South Africa)

Human rights might just begin to become a reality with 'right humanity'! Today I interview Dr Braam Hanekom the Director of the Centre for Public Witness of the Dutch Reformed Church. We talk about what can be done by privileged Churches to help make South Africa a more just society for all our citizens. You also get to see some beautiful scenery between Stellenbosch and Franschhoek in the Western Cape as I drive my trusty old BMW F650 GS.

What do you think? Can you make some more suggestions?

We mention the following books:

Church in hard places http://amzn.to/1q2ifFR

Oneself as another http://amzn.to/1T3MWbg

Road to daybreak http://amzn.to/1rwQiaw

I'd love to hear your ideas, feedback and comments!

Remember, this is not a lecture... just a thought!

Please subscribe and like the video! 

We don't decide who's invited: The Church as inclusive Eucharistic community

Is the Church intended to be a closed (exclusive) community, or an open (inclusive) community?

Today I talk about an image of the Church as a Eucharistic community - and I show you some incredible views of the Helderberg mountains!

My views on this were shaped by the theology (and ethics) of the Anglican theologian Sam Wells, who I met first at Cambridge and then at Duke Divinity school when he arrived there in 2005.

Read this document for some further insight into this view

The image is that of a the Eucharistic table - many contemporary Churches have structured themselves more like a restaurant table than a Eucharistic table. What do I mean by that? Well, at a restaurant table you decide who sits with you, you expect service and you are the center of the social attention, you pay for what you want, you are a client. I hear people using this language in relation to their Church, 'I don't like that type of person here', or 'The sermon and music were not very good', 'I am not feeling satisfied with my Church, it is not doing much for me'.

The Eucharistic table is very different, however, at the Eucharistic table we are not the hosts - Christ is the Host! We are invited. That means that we don't get to decide who is at the table. Our responsibility, out of love for Christ and those whom He loves and has invited, is to work out how best to love those around the table. They may be very different from who and how we are. But, like us, they have been welcomed in grace.

Watch the video if you can - I'd love to hear your take on this!

Remember, it's not a lecture, just a thought…

A blessed workers' day - the joy and struggle of work, and the greater good

A blessed workers' day to all those who have the privilege to work, for those who long to work, for those who find joy in their work, and for those whose work brings life. Blessings to those who work to survive, to those who are faithful in spite of struggle or hardship. Blessing to the workers and work seekers. May our work make the world a better place. May we commit our creativity, energy and our time to the work of justice, peace and love, and may it be seen in the things we do and make.

"What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend"

- Dorothy Day, Founder of the Catholic Worker Movement.

Celebrating Freedom Day! Is South Africa post apartheid or MOST apartheid 22 years later?

As we celebrate Freedom Day in South Africa we have so much to be thankful for! We have a constitution that intends the protection of all our citizens. We have a functional judiciary, we have section 9 institutions that are still free and fair, we have an active civil society and faith based organisations, we have beautiful citizens and one of the most beautiful countries on earth!

Yet, the reality is that we are still facing such significant challenges in South Africa! As you will see in this VLOG we are more unequal (economically) than we were in 1994, the Reconciliation barometer of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation shows that there is growing distrust between the races. Our nation is not yet in a Post Apartheid condition - we are not yet free! 27 April 1994 won the possibility of Freedom, but as citizens we need to find ways to make that freedom a reality for all - where every person is free to excel and flourish, where there is both personal and institutional solidarity for life.

• Read the IJR Reconciliation Barometer report here.
• Sampie Terreblanche 'A History of inequality in South Africa 1652-2002' here.
• And my paper
• Forster, D.A. 2015. What hope is there for South Africa? A public theological reflection on the role of the church as a bearer of hope for the future. HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies, 71(1):1–10.

I'd love to hear your take on this!

Remember, it's not a lecture, just a thought…

I’d love you hear your feedback, comments, questions and ideas!

Can you trust everything YOU read? The Bible and Christian ethics

The Bible is the most important source for Christians in moral and ethical decision making. It should shape both our beliefs and our actions. However, it is often abused and dealt with in a careful and responsible manner when it comes to Christian ethics.

In this VLOG I talk about a chapter I wrote in a book called 'Restorative Readings: The Old Testament, Ethics and Human Dignity' (Claassens and Birch, eds) see it here:  http://amzn.to/1Nvuw0w

My chapter is focussed around the notion of hospitality and the need to create some space for the 'other', in this case the 'other' of the text and the 'other' of different readers of the text.

I also share a chapter that I wrote in 'What is a good life: An introduction to Christian Ethics' http://amzn.to/232BPi5

This chapter shows that as Christians we sometimes forget that our gender, age, education, race, social class and a host of other factors shapes how we understand and read the text - and that our reading may not be the only one!

I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas!

Remember, it's not a lecture, just a thought…

I’d love you hear your feedback, comments, questions and ideas!

Please subscribe and like the video!

Deep solidarity with humanity, creation and God

A few years ago, at the height of the HIV and AIDS pandemic in Southern Africa, I wrote that the Church would need to cultivate a deep sense of solidarity with HIV positive persons if it was to uphold the integrity of its witness and work. 

I wrote,

Schillebeeeckx notes that without true solidarity the “gospel becomes impossible to believe and understand”^[i].  The notion of true solidarity cannot be divorced from contextual solidarity.  Our solidarity is not merely some spiritual concept that has no bearing on our real lives.  So, in relation to HIV/AIDS Haight reminds us, “Jesus cannot be Christ and salvation cannot be real without having some bearing on this situation”^[ii]. 

The Southern African context is not unfamiliar with suffering and solidarity.  Albert Nolan wrote during the height of the atrocities of Apartheid in the 1980’s that solidarity with the suffering will be “the new starting point for modern theology and spirituality in most of the Christian world today”^[iii].  

This weekend I came across the quote below as I was reading some ecological theology on the Sunday aftern Earth Day.

If we are to hope to correct our abuses of each other and of other races and of our land, and if our effort to correct these abuses is to be more than a political fad that will in the long run be only another form of abuse, then we are going to have to go far beyond public protest and political action. We are going to have to rebuild the substance and the integrity of private life in this country. We are going to have to gather up the fragments of knowledge and responsibility that we have parceled out to the bureaus and the corporations and the specialists, and we are going to have to put those fragments back together again in our own minds and in our families and households and neighborhoods. We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities. We need persons and households that do not have to wait upon organizations, but can make necessary changes in themselves, on their own.

- Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace

This challenging quote, on the Sunday after 'earth day' reminds me that we need loving solidarity rather than conquering violence. The way of the prince of peace is love not conquest. Christ rules from a cross as a servant rather than a conquering King. I shared some of these thoughts in my recent VLOG on the Cross of Christ and the language of Empire.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, reflections and ideas - leave me a comment, send me a tweet @digitaldion.

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[i] Schillebeeckx, E Jesus: An experiment in Christology.  Translated by Hoskings, H.  New York:  Vintage books 1981:623.

[ii] Haight, R, Jesus symbol of God. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books (1999:26).

[iii] Nolan, A, God in South Africa. Cape Town:  David Philiip publishers. (1988:43).

The decline of religion and the rise of spirituality?

In today's VLOG I interview Professor Jan Jans from Tilburg University in the Netherlands. He was at Stellenbosch University to teach our Master of Divinity class and my third year Public Theology class on Secularism, Secularization and the decline of formal religion and the rise of spirituality in Europe. We learnt a lot of interesting things for our own context - you may find the same.

I apologize for my poor framing of the video in the first few minutes! I either need to learn to frame my camera better, or save up to get a camera that has a flip screen to see what my shots look like! It gets better and I am learning!

The books that are mentioned in today's VLOG are:

• Linda Woodhead, 'Religions in the modern world: Traditions and Transformations' http://amzn.to/1Nm09tu
• Diana Butler Bass 'Christianity after religion' http://amzn.to/1VlP7qH
• Charles Taylor 'A secular age' http://amzn.to/2436WfS (This is a very important book! I get all my PhD students to read it). You can also read the following great 'introduction' and engagement with 'A secular age', entitled 'How not to be secular' by James K Smith http://amzn.to/1Wf43FZ
• Peter Berger 'The Sacred Canopy' http://amzn.to/1VlPh1i and 'The desecularization of the world' http://amzn.to/1T0OxbU

I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas!

Remember, it's not a lecture, just a thought…

Please subscribe and like the video!

Detrimental health? Just health and a just health care system

Prof Jean Pierre Wils delivered a paper at a biomedical ethics conference at Stellenbosch University in August last year (if I recall correctly). He made a deeply challenging and thought provoking point that contemporary ethics seems obsessed with just health care, but the more important ethical issue is just health. Simply stated, unjust societies contribute to illness among their populations. This is not just a matter of providing adequate health care, it is a larger issue, it has to do with gender, economics, access to a healthy diet, sexual and reproductive rights etc.

I was asked to write a paper in response to his paper - which I have done and it is currently under review for a special edition of the journal 'In luce verbi' in which his paper and mine will appear. I will let you know when they are published.

In the meantime I discuss the issue of just health care and the South African biomedical theological ethical context in this video entitle 'Detrimental to your health'. I'd love to hear your insights, thoughts and comments!

Stellenbosch - The most unequal city in the world? Economics, inequality and justice

Is Stellenbosch really the most unequal city in the world?

Today I rode my Brompton through Stellenbosch - I had 25 minutes between meetings and wanted to get something for lunch. It was the first time I had been on the bike in more than a week. I came back form Johannesburg with a rather nasty flu and still wasn't feeling great. But it was awesome to be out in the sun and enjoying the fresh air and beautiful western Cape scenery!

As I was riding my bike I reflected on Stellenbosch, which is the most unequal city in South Africa (a country which is among the most economically unequal countries in the world).

Watch the VLOG for some beautiful scenery, and think with me about a better economic system in which no one has too much while anyone has too little.

I’d love to hear your feedback and thoughts! Don’t you love my old folding bike? It goes with me when I travel.

Accepting the way of Jesus - A blessed Easter

“The Christian God is no little god of fortune, in whose kingdom it is possible to remain free of want and sorrow. Jesus—multiplying loaves and healing the sick—could have had all this; indeed can have it. Instead Jesus identified with the suffering and for the sake of their sicknesses became sick; for the sufferers’ sake he suffered abuse; in order to overcome death he, like everyone else, became mortal. To accept the way of Jesus means also to hold on to the paradox.”

- Dorothee Soelle, Suffering