By Dr. Stephen Martin on January 7, 2010
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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By Dr. Stephen Martin on December 17, 2009
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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By Dr. Stephen Martin on November 26, 2009
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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By Dr. Stephen Martin on November 5, 2009
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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By Dr. Stephen Martin on October 15, 2009
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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By Dr. Stephen Martin on September 22, 2009
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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