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Dr. Stephen Martin

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Dr. Stephen Martin is associate professor of theology at The King's University College in Edmonton, Alta. A specialist in political theology and ethics, he graduated from the University of Cape Town (PhD 1999) where he studied under South African theologian John de Gruchy. Mr. Martin is currently a parishioner at Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Old Strathcona.

Public theology: some concluding thoughts

While in South Africa, our team of Christian scholars was exposed to a number of examples of public theology—compelling accounts of how the church should be in the world.

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Mvume Dandala: a Christian in office

Without question, Mvume Dandala has been one of the most widely respected church leaders in South Africa’s recent past. A presiding bishop of the Methodist Church from 1996 to 2003, and most recently general secretary of the All Africa Conference of Churches, Mr. Dandala is best known outside the church for mediating an end to the violence that broke out in Johannesburg hostels between African National Congress (ANC) supporters and Inkatha supporters over a decade ago.

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A think tank for the new South Africa

Once the seat of apartheid South Africa’s Calvinist, intellectual elite, Stellenbosch University is yet another site of social transformation. Its School of Theology is evidence of this. While it once trained pastors for the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC), the school now provides theological education to members of the DRC’s former “daughter” or mission churches, linked together under the rubric of “The Uniting Reformed Church of Southern Africa.”

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Old bricks, new hope in Johannesburg

Central Methodist and J.L. Zwane churches demonstrate the transforming power of the gospel in how they embrace the outcast. But what of South Africa outside the church? Can we discern God’s claim in so-called “secular space”?

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The AIDS church

J. L. Zwane Church has AIDS.

This Presbyterian congregation runs a series of impressive programs reaching out to members of the Guguletu community striken or affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which has reached staggering proportions in South Africa’s townships.

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From “fashionable church” to “den of iniquity”

From “fashionable church” to “den of iniquity”

The place resembled a train station. People were seated on rows of wooden benches, mounds of blankets, with heaps of clothes and bags next to them. Some blankets, spread on the floor, were makeshift beds, taking up the interior of the church.

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