Khanya Blog

The main aim of this blog is to interpret the Christian Order in the light of current affairs, philosophy, literature and the arts — and vice versa. So it’s about ideas. Social, political and religious comment. Links, notes on people, places, events, books, movies etc. And mainly a place where I can post half-baked ideas in the hope that other people, or the passing of time, will help me to bake them.

It started off in February 2007 as an experimental blog, which I used to try out WordPress, when Blogger, which I had been using up till then, became unreliable, and many of my blogging friends were moving to WordPress and saying how much better it was. It became my main blog in May 2008, when Blogspot became completely inaccessible for a while.

My other blogs are:

• Notes from underground – views and opinions on theology, literature, politics and society, generally from an Orthodox Christian point of view, because I am an Orthodox Christian, but that does not necessarily mean that other Orthodox Christians, or the Orthodox Church generally, hold or support such views. It used to be my main blog, but now Khanya is. It tends to be more “secular” than my Khanya blog, and less “serious”, and has things like reviews of secular books, comments on social trends, occasional rants about things I don’t like (such as toll roads, American-style peanut butter, Black Friday) and so on.
• Methodius’s LiveJournal – mainly about events or things that have happened to me, or books that I have read, and reflections on them, or summaries of stuff posted in my other blogs..
• Hayes & Greene Family History – about genealogy and family history, partly a record of research, and also family stories, news, anecdotes, and other bits and pieces.
• Genealogy Notes and News – about genealogy generally (ie not relating to our family). Notes about research resources, methods, computer programs and so on.
• Simple Links – a blog that fulfils the original purpose of a blog — a web log of web sites I have visited and may want to visit again, with extracts and comments from them. There is no “value added” in the sense that there are no comments, there is no analysis or evaluation. Its a simple log of sites visited.

This blog, Khanya, may contain the kind of material that appears in the other blogs, or stuff that doesn’t fit into any of them. It is more “serious” and more theological than Notes from Underground.

About Khanya

Khanya is a Zulu word that means “shine” or “enlighten”, and a Sotho word that means “glory”. Khanya e isoe ho Molimo holimo means “Glory to God in the highest” in South Sotho. I once edited a magazine of the Anglican Students Federation of South Africa, which was called Khanya, and with some friends ran Khanya Publications, which published a few church-related booklets and magazines, and the Khanya TEE newsletter, which dealt with Theological Education by Extension (TEE).

khanya is the doxy in Orthodoxy.