On being African and Reformed? Towards an African Reformed theology enthused by an interlocution of those on the margins of society

While it cannot be denied that the 16th-century Reformation, which challenged papal authority and questioned the Catholic Church’s ability to define Christian moral practice in a just manner, indeed came with deep and lasting political changes, it remained a male-dominated discourse. The Reformation was arguably patriarchal and points to a patriarchal culture of subordination and oppression of women that prevailed then and is still pertinent in the church and all spheres of society today. The absence of Elmina and the silenced yet loud voices and cries from the female dungeons below a Dutch Reformed Church in the upper levels of the castle in the retelling of the narrative of the Reformation leaves much to be desired and has a bearing on how black women perceive the Reformation 500 years later. The article thus problematises the Reformation through the heuristic eyes of Elmina Castle in Ghana as the genesis of the ‘dungeoning’ of black women justified by faith. The article argues that black women are reformers from the dungeons following the historical experience of reformation and the Reformed faith as racist and sexist, among other ills experienced by blacks in the Global South, with black women literally kept in the dungeons below a Reformed Church building as they were in Elmina with a biblical inscription, Psalm 138, on the threshold of its main door. This article thus points to irreconcilable contradictions maintained by the Reformed faith that continues to bury black women in the ‘dungeons’ even today. The enfleshment of black bodies in the dungeons of the Elmina Castle underneath a Reformed Church building is seen as the historical and heuristic starting point of engaging Reformed faith from a womanist perspective.

Section: A Racist And/or Sexist Reformation?mentioning

confidence: 93%

Black women’s bodies as reformers from the dungeons: The Reformation and womanism

Kobo

2018

“…10.See, inter alia, Kobo (2016Kobo ( , 2019, Vellem (2014aVellem ( , 2015bVellem ( , 2016Vellem ( , 2017, Tshaka (2010Tshaka ( , 2014Tshaka ( , 2015 and Maluleke (2010Maluleke ( , 2015.…”

Section: Virtual Spirituality and The Disequilibrium Of Powers: The Workings Of Empire In An Age Of Informaticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unpacking the meanings of ‘virtual spirituality’ in Vuyani Vellem’s critique of Empire

Urbaniak

2020

My small tribute to a great person I was introduced to Prof. Vuyani Vellem by our mutual friend, Prof. Graham Duncan, when I started my postdoctoral fellowship at the (then) Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria, in 2013. The day I first met him, I remember being somewhat intimidated by his profound voice, loud laughter (he was one of the few at the Faculty who could compete with my then mentor, Prof. Duncan, in this regard) and his earthy jokes about white racists controlling the church. But, unlike in some other cases, I did not feel judged by him. Professor Vellem, whilst being candid and upfront, embraced me the way I was back then: a bit scared, a bit too serious and ambitious about my academic career, and perhaps a bit too self-righteous about my commitment to 'things black'. I knew I met a real person, well-grounded in his cultural and theological heritage.Every inch a Xhosa man and, despite all his criticism of church politics, every inch a committed Presbyterian churchman, unpretentious and authentic as he was, Prof. Vellem simply did not need to wear masks. But I believe it was also part of his deliberate choice, as one of the relatively few black academics at the Faculty at that time. In my eyes, that was his way of bearing a prophetic witness on the edge of the inside (Rohr 2014:34), particularly vis-à-vis racism in the church and in the academy. To recall the phrase Prof. Maluleke used in his eulogy, it was in such a context that Prof. Vellem's anger -this 'raging fire … put out so suddenly and, to our mind, so prematurely' (Maluleke 2020), would leave some feeling challenged or even threatened, and others -inspired and empowered to confront and name the (often ugly) reality of our hugely untransformed society.It would be fair to say, I guess, that Prof. Vellem has become something of an informal mentor to me, even though he has always treated me like an equal -a colleague and a research collaborator The modest goal of this article is to creatively unpack and render more accessible (mainly by means of cultural illustrations) Vuyani Vellem's account of the virtual spirituality of Empire. Geared towards the maximisation of the economic profit by the elite at the expense of the poor, today's Empire is a result of the unprecedented convergence of the military, political, economic and cultural powers, along with advanced sciences and technologies. All these forces are mediated through a particular kind of deadly spirituality, which is propelled chiefly through virtual images. Whether it manifests itself through an act of a political manipulation or through unconscious assimilation of the historically oppressive forms of religiosity, an imperial logic invariably leads to the 'capture' of the spiritual assets for political and/or economic ends, instead of God. As such, it reveals the fundamental incompatibility of these resources with their source of inspiration. What Vellem refers to as virtual spirituality appears, then, as a fatal disequilibrium of powers between the innermost being and the exterio...

“…The mandate of universities is not on producing too much information that is shallow, un-contextualised and lacks theoretical substance in research, tuition, teaching and community engagement. Tshaka (2014) laments:…”

Section: Decolonising the Commercialisation And Commodification Of Thmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decolonising the commercialisation and commodification of the university and theological education in South Africa

Methula

2017

This article problematises the critical subject of the decolonisation of the university and theological education in South Africa from the neo-colonisation of commercialisation and commodification. The article, written from a decolonial perspective, serves as an epistemic critique of the cultures of corporatisation, rationalisation and entrepreneurship in higher education driven by the marketisation of society by the neoliberal institutions of globalisation. The article engages the role of decolonising theological education by drawing insights from African/Black theologies, the discourse on Africanisation and liberation to counter the strangulation and dominance of the commodification and commercialisation of theological education and prosperity theology in Africa, particularly in South Africa.