an uncommon path (mini)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born on this day (4 February 1906). What will we do today, that can secure peace, justice, and flourishing for coming generations? Here are a few ideas from Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Steve Biko https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381062211_Dietrich_Bonhoeffer_and_Steve_Biko_Toward_a_Politics_of_Hope_among_Born_Free_South_Africans

‘The high watermark of faith in the Abrahamic religions involves the praxis of love, peace, and justice measured in relation to the widow, the orphan, and the poor, rather than in rational understanding. Contemporary religious institutions frequently reduce this ethic to charity and almsgiving rather than a serious commitment to social change. The prevailing ideas in any institution are, as a rule, those of the elite and benefactors of that institution, who keep a wary eye on those who deviate from the principles embedded in a Constantinian-type synthesis of religion and state. This has resulted in theological support for tribal and nationalistic beliefs that are more prevalent and emotionally persuasive in religion than many devout believers care to admit.’

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

‘We aren’t really free until we’re free from ourselves: our ego, our reputation, our self-image, our need to be right, our need to be successful, our need to have everything under control, even our need to be loved by others—or to think of ourselves as loving. The word “human” comes from the Latin humus, which means earth. Being human means acknowledging that we’re made from the earth and will return to the earth. For a few years we dance around on the stage of life and have the chance to reflect a little bit of God’s glory. We are earth that has come to consciousness. If we discover this power in ourselves and know that we are God’s creatures, that we come from God and return to God, that’s enough. As a human, I’m just a tiny moment of consciousness, a small part of creation, a particle that reflects only a fragment of God’s glory. And yet that’s enough.’

‘...even in a deeply divided world, even in the most deeply divided relationship, the way things are is not the way things have to be.... What we need is not simply better gear and techniques but a story that helps us remember another world is possible. The good news is that God’s story offers us just that. In the midst of our world’s deep brokenness, God’s kingdom breaks in to create new possibilities.’

‘[A]n act of writing is always an act of faith – a stepping out and into resonances that lie within words, between them and beneath them; sounding their depths.’

Here is a bit of painful, and hopeful, history on Youth Day.

This is an extract from the minutes of the first TEE College meeting that took place on 18 June 1976.

Desmond Tutu was elected as the first Chair of the board of the college. As you will see in these minutes, after opening the meeting, he was called away to Soweto, to support the community after the horrific police brutality in what is now known as the ‘Soweto Youth Uprising’.

TEE College was set up by the Eccumenical Churches to train women and men for ministry during a period when South Africa’s apartheid government would not allow black women and men to study theology at Universities.

In the years since 1976 TEE College has trained tens of thousands of persons for ministry and service via ‘extended’ learning (allowing persons to study while being employed, thus not taking scarce skills and limited resources away from the communities in which they were serving).

TEE College offers a Bachelor of Theology Degree, a Diploma in Theology, and numerous Higher Certificates in Theology and Ministry. We currently have over 3000 registered students.

I am very grateful to serve as the current Chair of the Board of TEE College.

Google Scholar alerted me that a chapter I wrote on Baptism and Ecclesiology in contemporary Wesleyan and Methodist theology was published.

See it here: https://amzn.to/3P4Z2CZ

Here is some of the abstract: