Ralph D. Winter, Missiologist (1924-2009)

It is sometimes said that the media just don’t don’t “get religion”. I’ve said so myself on occasion. All too often religion reporting in the secular news media is biased, tendentious, inaccurate and uninformative. But today I discovered a refreshing exception — a brief announcement of the death of Ralph D. Winter, the missiologist, in [...]

Is Allah the God of Christians?

Is Allah the God of Christians?
Not according to the Malaysian government, which has sought to ban Christians from using Allah as the name of God.
What’s in a Name? | Christianity Today:
Agnes Monica is the Miley Cyrus of Southeast Asia. The Indonesian teen singer s face is ubiquitous. Her performances are packed out. But in Selangor [...]

Silly Week: at a loss for words

I was trying to think of something suitably silly to say for Silly Week, as proposed by Man in a Shed, but was having difficulty in thinking of anything silly enough, and then I came across this news item, which seemed silly enough to qualify — Police: Asheville Firefighter Shot Bicyclist – Greenville News Story [...]

Funerals and inculturation

Today we had Nicholas Sibiya’s funeral at Mamelodi and as it was the first funeral of a baptised Orthodox Christian to be held there, it was probably unique for that place, and one of the challenges was the contrasting assumptions of the Orthodox service books and the cultural practices of Gauteng township funerals.
South Africa has [...]

Memory eternal: Nicholas (Blackie) Sibiya

Nicholas (Blackie) Sibiya died last week.
Ten years ago today we held a catechism class at his house in Mamelodi; tonight we will have a Memorial Service (Requiem, Panikhida) and tomorrow we will bury him.
Ten years ago I wrote in my diary
23-Jul-1999, Saturday
In the afternoon Bridget[1] came with me to Mamelodi for the AEOC[2] catechism class. [...]

Forty years on – hippies and moon landings

Forty years ago today Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, and I arrived in Namibia for the first time. It was a memorable day for me, and it often makes me think of what the late sixties were like.
I had left Johannesburg at 2:00 pm the previous day with my friend Dave [...]

Reading: The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett

The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett by S.E. Gontarski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“Currently reading” is a misnomer in this case — it is not a book one reads, but a book one refers to, a kind of concordance of Samuel Beckett’s works, with explanations of obscure allusions and such.
My first introduction to Beckett [...]

How to breed terrorists

Well it’s back to school time for the children of Gaza after a taste of hell. Those who were fortunate enough to find their schools in tact found a lot of empty seats in the classroom. A picture, which I was surprised to find on the Fox news website, shows the names of the children [...]

SACLA after 30 years

Thirty years ago today the South African Christian Leadership Assembly ended at the Pretoria Showgrounds, and 5000 South African Christians scattered to their homes after a week of learning and interaction.
What difference, if any, did it make to Christianity in South Africa?
What difference, if any, did it make to life in South Africa?
Did anything happen [...]

Apartheid amnesia

Others have written about the fading memory of the apartheid era, and one of the better recent pieces was by Pumla Gqola in The Weekender of June 27-28, 2009. If you missed it you can catch it on her blog Apartheid still lives on in SA — Loudrastress:
AN UNDERGRADUATE student of mine recently spoke of [...]