I am still planning to come back to the question of how the cross and the atonement feature in Tanzanian theology, but here I want to give a write up of our pastor’s sermon from just before Christmas, because it neatly summarises some important themes in Tanzanian theology. It was […]
Our pastor opened his sermon yesterday by talking about the importance of names. Most Tanzanian names have some kind of meaning. Sometimes these meanings are positive e.g. Amani (peace) or Furaha (joy). Sometimes they’re neutral, for example, you can be named after the day on which you were born. And […]
We’ve been discussing TB Joshua on and off for weeks, but thus far I’d mainly been listening and asking questions. They had obviously picked up that I was not enthusiastic about him, but I haven’t actually said why. But this week I decided to take the plunge, and what it […]
Those of us who live in a culture other than our own often talk about ‘cross-cultural tensions’ and it looms large for us as the stuff and stress of everyday life. However, I suspect it sounds kind of vague and wishy-washy to your average Joe. So I thought I’d give […]
I was fined for speeding on our way to Iringa for Go Conference. I wasn’t speeding. I knew I was in a 50 zone and I was watching the speedo carefully. I was so surprised to be pulled over that I even asked the guy holding the speed gun if […]
Merry Christmas! We celebrate Emmanuel, God with us. We had a sermon on this at church last Sunday, though it wasn’t initially apparent to me that it was a Christmas sermon. The text was Daniel 3:24-25, about the three young Jewish slaves who are thrown into the fire because they refuse […]
This Sunday at church I was struck by how fear/power language permeated everything. (I wrote recently on the fear/power cultural paradigm, and we’ve previously written on it referring to it as animism, and with reference to the prosperity gospel.) In the children’s program… great attention was given to scripture memorisation. Last week’s […]
