ASRSA Conference

Today I’m going to Durban to attend the conference of the Association for the Study of Religion in Southern Africa (ASRSA). I’ll be reading a paper on “Christian understandings of paganism and witchcraft”.
I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to blog while I’m there, but I might post a report on the conference on [...]

Coolness and dispassion

I was idly surfing through some blogs on Blog Catalog, and came across this piece, which I rather liked.
I have come to understand the meaning of “coolness” in spiritual terms.A person is `cool’ when he or she is free from pressing desires (grasping) which always produce dissonant emotions (uncoolness).
An uncool person squirms with needs, waiting [...]

The Samaritan Woman – a lekwerekwere

Yesterday was the 5th Sunday of Pascha, the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman.

Sunday of the Samaritan Woman
The Holy Martyr Photina (Svetlana) the Samaritan Woman, her sons Victor (named Photinus) and Joses; and her sisters Anatola, Phota, Photis, Paraskeva,…
Life of the Saint
Troparion and Kontakion

It was a most appropriate occasion for teaching about the evil of [...]

Xenophobia linked to genetically-modified crops?

The Strange Maps blog has posted maps of Germany showing a correlation between the growing of genetically modified crops and racist violence. It points out that the source of the maps is a satirical magazine, and warns that correlation does not necessarily mean causation:
Well, yes: there is an obvious correlation between the geography of transgenic [...]

Best day ever!

Yesterday was the best day yet for visitors to this blog, so I thought it might be worth recording what they were looking at.

There is, of course a list of top posts in the sidebar, but that changes every day, and Amatomu provides some rather pretty statistics.
This time most of the popular posts for the [...]

Makwerekwere

A couple of bloggers with an interest in language have asked about the the origin and meaning of the word “makwerekwere”. It is a slang word for foreigners, and especially illegal immigrants, which I used in a post about the anti-immigrant violence that has been taking place over the last couple of months. Both Languagehat [...]

The half-remembered ways — Alan Hirsch at Doornpoort

Last night I went to hear Alan Hirsch speak. He is the author of The forgotten ways, a book I haven’t read. I heard about his visit to South Africa from Nelus Niemand, and was interested in hearing what he had to say.
Why was I interested?
It’s quite hard to say. I’d heard of Alan Hirsch, [...]

No bread, no matches, no candles — thanks to xenophobia

A few weeks ago there was xenophobic violence at Atteridgeville, west of Pretoria. Two people were killed, and hundreds of foreigners were chased out of Brazzaville, an informal settlement in Atteridgeville West. Father Frumentius, the Orthodox priest there, gave about 20 of them refuge in the orphanage he runs with his wife Evgenia. He [...]

Xenophobia — the gatvol factor

Xenophobia has been around for a long time in South Africa, but only when it hit Joburg did the media begin to sit up and take notice (see, on my other blog, Notes from underground: Time to rename Gauteng?). Then the moralising began, and the op-ed articles began to appear, and condemnations of those media [...]

Christian civil disobedience

Today is the fortieth anniversary of the arrest of the Catonsville Nine, a group of Christian antiwar protesters who destroyed draft records of the Vietnam War.

clipped from www.baltimoresun.com

Forty years ago tomorrow, nine
committed followers of Christ entered the Selective Service Office
in Catonsville. They moved past
three surprised office workers,
who questioned what they were
doing but did not stop [...]