Change-making in a (post)apartheid city: An auto-ethnographical essay

HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Change-making in a (post)apartheid city: An auto-ethnographical essay
 
Creator de Beer, Stephan F. de Beer, Wilna
 
Subject — Change-making; transformational change; spirituality of change-making; praxis-approach; communities of congruence
Description 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, embraced and fostered. We argue for an epistemology from below or within, drawing from Parker Palmer’s notion of knowing as loving – in community – and reflecting on his idea that ‘to know’ is ‘to be known’. In stressing the importance of reading the city, we show how reading the city means to be read by the city too. It is in the journeys of ongoing self-awareness, and personal confrontation, change and conversion – in relation to issues of gender, race, location and class – that transformational urban imaginaries can be birthed. Finally, we reflect on urban change-making as a process of personal, communal, institutional and systemic transformation, happening on many different levels at the same time, through creating conditions and spaces for change to occur. It is an ongoing call for deepening our journeys in response to the overwhelming groans, of humanity and creation alike, for Gods’ urban shalom.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2018-11-13
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — —
Format text/html application/epub+zip application/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/hts.v74i3.4986
 
Source HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies; Vol 74, No 3 (2018); 13 pages 2072-8050 0259-9422
 
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://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/4986/12082 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/4986/12081 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/4986/12083 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/4986/12025
 
Coverage — — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2018 Stephan F. de Beer, Wilna de Beer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
ADVERTISEMENT