An expat friend who has lived in Tanzania longer than I have mentioned the other day that she had been asked for the Swahili for ‘comfortable shoes’ and had found it weird. There’s a literal translation you can make (viatu vya kustarehe) except no one would ever say that. You […]
A common critique of the prosperity gospel, and one I’ve been delving into a bit this week, is that it presents the gospel in a human-centric way: have faith in God and get all this great stuff. Someone once said, never has so much been offered for so little! There’s […]
At TAFES Bible study this morning we looked at Proverbs 28. I was struck by how many of the verses were about the rich and not at all complimentary. For example: v.6 Better the poor whose walk is blameless / than the rich whose ways are perverse. v.8 Whoever increases […]
I had the privilege of attending Stretch Women’s Summit this weekend, presented by Soaring Women International which was founded by Luphurise Mawere. The name Stretch comes from the idea that many women remain in the situation they are because they don’t step outside of their comfort zones or think flexibly; […]
This year we were again called upon to represent Australia at Elliot’s school’s International Day. In many of Australia’s national narratives, the archetypal Australian is white (and often male). We are also white so it would be easy for us to tell those stories: they’re the ones we grew up […]
After church on Sunday, a friend of mine mentioned that the kind of prosperity teaching I’ve been blogging about, which doesn’t neatly fit the western stereotype of prosperity gospel and which conceives of itself quite differently, is somewhat new in Tanzania. Often we hear of the prosperity gospel itself as […]
The service leader at church joked that today’s preacher should be called ‘Engineer’ as well as ‘Professor’ and ‘Pastor’. It was the first time I’d heard this guy preach and I didn’t catch his name. It was definitely a different kind of sermon from normal, both in style (much more […]
