I recently learned that in 2008, the people of Earth hit a new milestone: we became ‘majority urban’. Over half of us now live in cities. Tanzania, where I live, will be majority urban within the next 10-15 years, and being a university minister invests me in that emerging reality. Australia, where I’m from, is overwhelmingly urbanised, […]
Let’s return to Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations and the chapter by Victor Ifeanyi Ezigbo and Reggie L Williams, ‘Converting a colonialist Christ: toward an African postcolonial Christology’. Ezigbo and Williams begin by pointing to the African theological quest to reimagine Jesus’ identity and significance for today. It might sound strange to reimagine […]
Last Friday we looked at some of Vinoth Ramachandra’s theological reflections in Subverting Global Myths — reflections for Christians to take on board. He also has some considerations of what Christians might have to offer in postcolonial conversations. In part these flow out of Ramachandra’s concern for context. He suggests that unless we safeguard the multiplicity and particularity […]
Before continuing with Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations, let’s dip into a different book, Subverting Global Myths (2009), and Vinoth Ramachandra’s chapter on postcolonialism. Ramachandra begins by making a case for decentred world history.* To characterise globalisation (good or bad) as a recent product of Western capitalism is to engage in top-down, […]
Part of the narrative of modern-day Africa is that it is all changing so fast. Working at a university and living in a university town, we get to see some of that change. Expats who were in Dodoma 10 years ago tell me that they owned one of the few […]
Tutorials for my Swahili literature course have finished now as the semester draws to a close. They’ve been a highlight of the course. There are about 40 people in mine and everyone sits in rows on one half of the classroom, facing into the middle. The presenter stands in front […]
We’re coming up to 18 months here in Tanzania which is giving us cause for reflection on some of the preparation we did before leaving Australia. We can’t recommend CMS’ 5 month training course highly enough and there were some general things we were glad we did at Bible college. […]
Meet Jesus at uni 