Anthropology source of problems, says Moscow Patriarch

Most Western reporting of the speech of the Patriarch of Moscow to the Council of Europe has ignored the main thrust of it, and the deeper questions raised, and concentrated entirely on the issue of sexual morality. Perhaps this reflects the Western obsession with sex. For those who find such things irresistible, there’s a [...]

A, B, no C

There has been a great deal of publicity about the ABCs of avoiding sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs), like HIV/Aids.

Abstain
Be faithful
Condomise

Some of those who advocated C accused those who advocated the other two of genocide and worse. But now it seems that some are acknowledging that those who advocated the first two were right all along.
With all [...]

Heartlines - moral regeneration for all

This morning I went to a meeting called by Heartlines, which describes itself as an outfit that uses mass media to get the nation thinking about values.
The meeting took the form of a breakfast at the Rosebank Union Church in Johannesburg and it took two hours of driving through heavy traffic to get there. [...]

Mobilising against crime

The Minister of Defence, Mosiuoa Lekota, met a group of about 30 religious leaders today to talk about mobilising against crime. He brought with him a couple of representatives of Business Against Crime (BAC), Derek Cooper and Siphiwe Nizimande.
We need to expand partnership, Lekota said — it should not just be government and business, but [...]

Pretoria 4 hours from Johannesburg

I’ve always been puzzled by Americans saying that one place is so many hours away from another, instead of mentioning the distance.
On that reckoning, and today’s experience, Pretoria is 4 hours away from Johannesburg. I left Yeoville at 3:30 pm after teaching a class, and had arranged to fetch my wife from work at [...]

Moral regeneration

South Africa is not the only country that needs moral regneration, it seems.
I don’t much care what these women wore to go to court. It’s what they were in court for that shows that moral degeneration proceeds apace.

Worshipping God and Mammon

In several blogs I have been reading recently I have seen comments in apparently Christian contexts where people have advocated what the ancient Russians called dvoeverie — doublemindedness, or double faith. I have seen people asserting, quite strenuously, that paying a living wage is not just unnecessary, but actually morally and ethically wrong. Yet when [...]

Ubuntu and moral regeneration

In South Africa we’ve been having an on/off debate about moral regeneration. A couple of days ago on talk radio — Morning Talk on SAFm, hosted by Xolani (or is it Cwelani? People seem to call him both) Gwala there was some guy saying that we should make spirituality rather than religion the basis [...]