Isiphambano Centre for Biblical Justice Homepage

Reconciliation as Mission: How Vulnerability Enables Us to Think Beyond Integration

Seminar, Video
Churches in post-apartheid South Africa have rightly emphasised the need for reconciliation and intercultural relationship building. For white people, this has often translated into strategies of inclusion and of sharing. For all their value, though, such approaches usually build on linguistic, cultural, material, and spiritual resources that are the norm for the historically privileged. What...
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Africanising the Faith: Liberating Christianity from European Captivity

Seminar
Christianity has been subject to European dominance of the faith for over a thousand years, Dr Havey Kwiyani contends. However, over the last century as Christianity has increasingly transformed into a world religion at home in a multitude of contexts there has been an increasing dissatisfaction with a gospel clothed primarily in Western culture. The cry has resounded for a decolonised Christianity. The necessary work of Christian decolonial efforts has,…
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Hermeneutics and Justice Seminar

Seminar, Video
This seminar raises questions concerning our inherited methods of biblical interpretation developed as they were by the beneficiaries of colonisation may (inadvertently?) perpetuate theologies of oppression and injustice. Our inherited Western hermeneutics values a heavily rationalistic, objective reading of Scripture, detached from the context of the reader. These interpretative methods seldom produce theology to challenge the power and the privileged. This seminar will instead explore a hermeneutical method that is…
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Isiphambano Centre for Biblical Justice is a study and training centre dedicated to developing a holistic, theological and cross-centred response to racial and economic injustice within the South African context.

Refresh – Heal – Reset

Blog
The last few years have been brutal for most, if not all of us. NGOs, churches, and other not-for-profit organisations have been particularly hard hit in terms of financial income, volunteer fatigue, and uncertainty about the future. Isiphambano is no different. Our staff and volunteers have worked incredibly hard over the past few years to keep the doors open and to keep us engaging on issues of cross-centred and contextual…
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Julle Mense

The Church and Spatial Justice (with Caroline Powell)

Podcasts
Land in South Africa today remains a critical issue for which people have fought for, been moved from, legislated for, and even gone to prison for. Land is intricately tied up to not only economic stability but also identity and belonging. What is significant is just how much of that land the church owns - more than 180 000 hectares. How could churches begin to use this land to start…
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Redeeming Reconciliation: Roundtable

Seminar
In part two of our Redeeming Reconciliation series (watch part one here) Ryan Saville sat down with One Mokgatle and Jennie Tsekwa to talk about the practicalities of reconciliation. How do we actually practice reconciliation when our country and our churches remain so divided and divisive? How do we work towards deep and meaningful reconciliation in a context saturated with cheap concepts of reconciliation? What do meaningful acts of reconciliation…
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A Lament for the Place That Proclaims Your Word

Blog
O, Father, you know my heart, you know my fears and worries, you know my disappointment, my temptation to give in and give up. You are the Creator of these people, in this, your world; you are the Creator of me, in this, your world. You ordain steps, and you’ve brought us here; and yet you know my heart full of questions. You hem me in, behind and before, and…
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Brackenfell

Blog
Brackenfell wat wil jy my vertel? Vertel van die stryd Oor ‘n aand Wat min anders was as laas Saterdag aand Want elke aand sit ons bymekaar, Met min mense wat staar, Want ons almal lyk en klink soos mekaar.
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Children of the Kingdom

Blog
My two-year-old has recently learned the word MINE - “It’s not yours it’s MINE”. He says this with such conviction, snatching away anything you might have dared to touch - even if the item actually belongs to someone else. He’s developed an obsession with possession. Dare to mention the sh word… ‘share’, and a meltdown might ensue. Even when there is objectively more than enough to go around. As a…
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Imagine a City…

Blog
One afternoon my children and I drove past a school where the students coming out and parents waiting were overwhelmingly white. Less than a kilometre away, on the same street, we drove past another school, where the students and parents were only black or coloured. My son noticed this and asked me why there was such a different picture outside these two schools, so close and yet so far. Another…
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Apartheid
Black Experience
Cross Centred Justice
Cultural Violence
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Reconciliation
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