The unfinished business of Church history

Verbum et Ecclesia

 
 
Field Value
 
Title The unfinished business of Church history
 
Creator Oliver, Erna
 
Subject History; Church History South African Church history; mnemohistory; disunity; semper reformanda; priesthood of all believers; spirituality; missiology
Description The Church will presumably have unfinished business until the day when Christ returns. And Church history will, in gruesome details, bear witness to the missed opportunities, the failures and wrongdoings and all the mistakes made. This is especially true in South Africa where racial tensions, violence, crimes and numerous other evils prevail, while the bride of Christ, in hiding from the realities of life, is awaiting death. The first part of the article explains why this is the case and the second part proposes some rectifications towards how adjudication and reconciliation can be attained through new life in a novel way of being Church to the world.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Christians, theologians and Church historians must openly and honestly expose the use and abuse of (Church) history, and the role that collective memory played in constructing misleading perceptions of the past through the implementation of motivated reasoning. A comprehensive, amended rewriting of Church history that includes all sources that fed Christianity in South Africa during the past nearly 370 years must reconceptualise our religious past towards a healing future. This can promote unity and bring closure to at least some issues while providing a renewed focus on the ongoing need for constant reformation, a renewed comprehension of spirituality, and inspiring Missiology towards a new, serving Christianity in a broken and bleeding society.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2021-11-30
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Historical inquiry
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/ve.v42i1.2329
 
Source Verbum et Ecclesia; Vol 42, No 1 (2021); 9 pages 2074-7705 1609-9982
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://verbumetecclesia.org.za/index.php/ve/article/view/2329/5328 https://verbumetecclesia.org.za/index.php/ve/article/view/2329/5329 https://verbumetecclesia.org.za/index.php/ve/article/view/2329/5330 https://verbumetecclesia.org.za/index.php/ve/article/view/2329/5331
 
Coverage South Africa South African History —
Rights Copyright (c) 2021 Erna Oliver https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
ADVERTISEMENT