Christ has been presented as the answer to the questions a white man would ask, the solution to the needs that Western man would feel, the Saviour of the world of the European world-view, the object of the adoration and prayer of historic Christendom. But if Christ were to appear […]
Adelaideans will be well familiar with the statistic that South Australia is the driest state on the driest continent on earth. I was wondering about how this compares with Dodoma the other day and here’s what I found: Adelaide is drier. It gets 546mm of rain per year; Dodoma gets […]
An excluded middle denies the presence or at least the power of the spirits. Animism, on the other hand, seeks to control a situation by means of the spirit world: you need to have the most powerful spirit in order to get what you want. One way of viewing Jesus […]
As Tamie and I prepare to move to Tanzania, we’ve been trying to get a sense of the religious world of East Africa. ‘Animism’ — the world of tribe and tradition, of folk religion — is an ever-present background to religious life in Tanzania, whether Christian, Muslim or otherwise. One […]
I believe in contextualisation, of putting off my own cultural baggage to take up another culture. I believe in it as an act of love, because it communicates the dignity of that culture and an act of humility, because it doesn’t assume that my culture is superior. People like Roberto […]
Andrew Errington has kindly reproduced the entirety of his talk on gender at Sydney Uni EU. It’s a great example of how to talk about this issue for a few reasons: He recognises his own privilege and doesn’t dismiss it. Instead, he redirects the conversation towards how Scripture has affected […]
When I began this series in 2010, we were part way through the CMS Australia application process. Now we’re nearing the end of the final stage, the five-month intercultural training course. For the past few years, however, we’ve been working on partnerships. One dimension of this is the online tools […]
Meet Jesus at uni 