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- Anthropology, Languages and Linguistics, Linguistics, Theology, Postcolonial Studies, Church History, and 32 moreDevelopment, Christianity, Magic, Missiology, African American Culture, Kenya, Theological Education, Swahili, Zambia, Swahili (Languages And Linguistics), Post Modernism, Kiswahili, African Independent Churches, language learning and teaching, Kiswahili and English linguistics, African Indigenous Churches, Luo orthography, Marxism, Development Theories And Policies, Imperialism, World System, Dependency Theory, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Religion, Leadership, Anthropology of Religion/ Theories of Conversion/ Religious Pluralism In Modern Africa/ Social Sciences and Missions Studies/ Photography and Anthropology/ Anthropology of Health/ Health, Medicine & Religions/ Alternative Movements., Swahili Language and Bantu languages, Vulnerable Mission, Conceptual Metaphor, Cultural linguistics, Tanzania, and COVID-19 PANDEMICedit
- Jim Harries, (PhD University of Birmingham, UK) originally from UK, has lived in Siaya, western Kenya, since 1993 (pr... moreJim Harries, (PhD University of Birmingham, UK) originally from UK, has lived in Siaya, western Kenya, since 1993 (previously, since 1988, in NW Province of Zambia). Jim is the chairman of the AVM (Alliance for Vulnerable Mission); he encourages people to do mission and development work using indigenous languages and resources. Jim believes that context is important to scholarship. Hence he communicates important contextual impacts on understanding arising from contemporary Africa. His primary work, in addition to research and writing, is bible teaching using African languages (Luo and Swahili) especially with indigenous churches. Jim is adjunct faculty at William Carey International University in California.
Jim is particularly occupied in promoting vulnerable mission (vulnerablemission.org):
Alliance for Vulnerable Mission Purpose Statement
Vulnerable mission aims to encourage cross-cultural workers to follow the humble example of Jesus, who demonstrated His vulnerability in part by living like the Jews of His time and place. Examples of humble vulnerability include but are not limited to carrying out ministry in culturally appropriate ways, refusing a high-status position, learning a local language, and avoiding the use of imported resources in favor of local ones.
Introduction to AVM (Alliance for Vulnerable Mission)
The AVM (Alliance for Vulnerable Mission) seeks to encourage wider use of mission and development strategies that depend on locally available resources and local languages. These strategies are “vulnerable” in the sense that they do not have fringe benefits built into them, deliberately or otherwise. They will therefore fail unless or until there is strong local confidence in their spiritual or developmental value. The missionary or development worker will allow them to fail rather than prop them up with outside money.
“Vulnerable mission” may be seen as part of the movement toward contextualization of the Gospel of Jesus, which we regard as the theory of many and the practice of few. We would like to see more people take the risks of contextualization and vulnerability in order to reap the rewards that only come to those who value local resources and invest in local languages. If local tools seem slow or weak by comparison with foreign money and English (Spanish etc. – European language), then we say with a wise missionary of long ago, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor. 12:10) While vulnerable mission may not be the only biblical approach to mission, it deserves much more attention than it has been getting. Let’s talk.
Safeguarding Statement
I believe that all people are valuable and worthy of both respect and care, because they are made in the image of God. I believe that God is the defender of the vulnerable and that the Lord Jesus cares for and values all children.
I believe I have a responsibility, before God, to care for children and vulnerable adults I come across and to protect them from harm. I recognise that this harm may be intentional or unintentional, may come from a parent, another adult or child, or even from the child’s own actions.
This safeguarding policy is designed to reduce the risk of harm to children and vulnerable people with who I come into contact.
We expect every individual to be treated with dignity, care and respect. All should earnestly strive to protect vulnerable people from harm and seriously address concerns and safety issues, which may include physical harm, sexual harm, emotional harm, self-harm and neglect.
Any concerns: please contact safeguarding@jim-mission.org.ukedit
Missionaries adopting anthropologists’ “radical openness” to people can, in vital ways, improve Western comprehension of, and ongoing participation with, indigenous African Christianity and its theologies. Many anthropologists have... more
Missionaries adopting anthropologists’ “radical openness” to people can, in vital ways, improve Western comprehension of, and ongoing participation with, indigenous African Christianity and its theologies. Many anthropologists have recently turned to studying Christianity. Western missionaries’ selective adoption of anthropologists’ rules of engagement, guided by “vulnerable mission” principles, could facilitate a healing of damaging extant intercultural comprehension gaps. Drawing on personal field missionary experience, and especially the work of Vähäkangas, this article seeks to bring hope to greater unity between theological expertise in the West governed by written texts and predominantly oral ecclesial expression in Africa and elsewhere.
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Experiences of working with vulnerable mission in Kenya have shown ways in which ‘truth’ is shaped differently in much of Africa than in the Western world. Truth having a different shape means that addressing it needs a different approach... more
Experiences of working with vulnerable mission in Kenya have shown ways in which ‘truth’ is shaped differently in much of Africa than in the Western world. Truth having a different shape means that addressing it needs a different approach to that often practiced in the West. Use of European languages in Africa occludes such need for cultural adaption and tends to result in the advocacy of non-fitting ‘solutions’. Westerners’ identities as donors can make them into creators of rather than observers of or communicators of truth. Unfortunately the truths they ‘create’ in turn create dependency. Rather than enabling Africa to thrive on its own accord, such ‘truths’ require African people to be a compliment to a dominant Western presence. Hence this article supports the proposal put forward by the AVM (Alliance for Vulnerable Mission) that some Western missionaries should engage in ministry outside of the West in places like Africa using local languages and resources.
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Video recording of this chapter can be seen here: https://youtu.be/ZMV-stDN2TM
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Envy, an unhealthy desire for what someone else has, is handled and countered differently in the West than in Africa. It is largely considered psychological, and is repressed, in the West, in a way that arguably facilitates prosperity.... more
Envy, an unhealthy desire for what someone else has, is handled and countered differently in the West than in Africa. It is largely considered psychological, and is repressed, in the West, in a way that arguably facilitates prosperity. Africans often express envy openly, at least to outsiders, a practice that underlies contemporary formal education in Africa, that as a result has little local fit. Unlike in the West, envy in Africa translates into witchcraft. This is not magical, or supernatural, in the Western senses of these terms, but a way of handling a powerful and potentially destructive human emotion. Freedom from envy comes through faith in Christ. The need for mission, discipleship, and culturally relevant theological education, is made clear.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00918296231189123
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00918296231189123
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Embarrassing international revelations of aid workers’ sexual involvement with populations they serve have contributed to major efforts at eradicating sexual and other abuses of vulnerable people in international work. With buy-in from... more
Embarrassing international revelations of aid workers’ sexual involvement with populations they serve have contributed to major efforts at eradicating sexual and other abuses of vulnerable people in international work. With buy-in from diverse governments, the United Nations and the World Health Organization have led an endeavour at countering abuses globally, especially among those in receipt of various forms of international aid. This article provides an overall introduction to this effort, adds a case study of how the British government sees itself as taking a lead, and concludes with ways in which this endeavour impacts Christian mission work by British citizens.
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The above scenario may, at least in some cases, leave room for a “middle road.” So far, we have a dual system of healing. The inappropriateness of the biomedical system arises because of its vast expense, perceived by some as being a way... more
The above scenario may, at least in some cases, leave room for a “middle road.” So far, we have a dual system of healing. The inappropriateness of the biomedical system arises because of its vast expense, perceived by some as being a way for foreigners to make money out of sick people and it’s not seeming to actually deal with the perceived cause of the misfortune concerned. The problem with the relational solution is innate to the means it uses to bring healing: identifying those causing one’s problems and then endeavouring to banish them, or to inflict suffering onto them, or even to kill them. A “middle road” will fall somewhere between these two.
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Intercultural use of digital ethnography may be used to replace traditional research with processes that can be guided using a computer from one’s office, avoiding getting one’s feet dirty, or “physical discomfort, vulnerability, … anger... more
Intercultural use of digital ethnography may be used to replace traditional research with processes that can be guided using a computer from one’s office, avoiding getting one’s feet dirty, or “physical discomfort, vulnerability, … anger … anxiety” (Al-Azem 2022: 310). Particularly should it be used interculturally, it can result in researchers failing to perceive contexts that may be vital to making results meaningful. The likelihood is that once digital ethnography becomes mainstream within the West, it will be hard to prevent digital ethnography from being used interculturally, to “peek” (Boughton, 2021) into the lives of non-Westernized people, without an in-depth understanding about them with which to interpret the outcome of such peeking.
Book details: https://www.igi-global.com/book/practices-challenges-prospects-digital-ethnography/288544
Book details: https://www.igi-global.com/book/practices-challenges-prospects-digital-ethnography/288544
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Intentionally rooting this article in a church visit by the author connects to African contextual reality. Interpretation by the author may be unlike indigenous African interpretation, that will be affected by financial and other... more
Intentionally rooting this article in a church visit by the author connects to African contextual reality. Interpretation by the author may be unlike indigenous African interpretation, that will be affected by financial and other dependencies, and arise from contextual presuppositions unfamiliar to the West. Practice of vulnerable mission (use local languages and resources), implemented with determined conviction, is proposed for a Westerner to acquire eyes and ears in indigenous contexts. For Westerners to communicate good sense in the light of indigenous realities is difficult. God's love is universal, but how his love is understood is not.
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Paper to download.
Video recording of the event is available here: https://www.ocms.ac.uk/lecture/the-case-against-english-in-africa-and-the-majority-world-and-its-implication-for-christian-mission-today/
Video recording of the event is available here: https://www.ocms.ac.uk/lecture/the-case-against-english-in-africa-and-the-majority-world-and-its-implication-for-christian-mission-today/
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Strategies designed by Western nations to counter racism can conceal difference between non-Western and Western peoples. Such concealment results in a misleading obscuring of social reality outside of the West. Because the globalised... more
Strategies designed by Western nations to counter racism can conceal difference between non-Western and Western peoples. Such concealment results in a misleading obscuring of social reality outside of the West. Because the globalised world is dominated by European languages and scholarship, non-Western academics can be forced to plan their strategies for socio-economic development in the light of contexts and peoples other than their own. By preventing development in the majority world this provides a back door to the ongoing stoking of racist thinking in the West. “Anti-racist” strategies in the West and the tidal spread of globalisation seem at the moment to be relentless. This article suggests that Christian champions practicing vulnerable mission make a contribution taking us towards a society more accepting of ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity that can understand rather than condemn difference. Once understood, difference can be compensated for and appreciated rather than ignored.
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Thus we have a puzzle. Left alone, tribal people’s ways of life may be far from idyllic. Leaving them alone may not be much different from ignoring the pleas of a woman who is constantly being beaten by a violent husband. Should one... more
Thus we have a puzzle. Left alone, tribal people’s ways of life may be far from idyllic. Leaving them alone may not be much different from ignoring the pleas of a woman who is constantly being beaten by a violent husband. Should one intervene? Add to that, Jesus’ command to take his word to ‘all nations’ (Matthew 28:19). The question I raise is: In the light of today’s ongoing accumulation of stories about inappropriate paternalism by Western people vis-à-vis those considered ‘primitive’, how should one intervene?
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My research finds that theological education in English in East Africa creates several problems: 1) It keeps indigenous believers from communicating their faith directly in their heart-language. 2) It does not account for variations... more
My research finds that theological education in English in East Africa creates several problems: 1) It keeps indigenous believers from communicating their faith directly in their heart-language. 2) It does not account for variations between regional dialects of English. 3) English may be used only to ensure orthodoxy to satisfy Western patrons. 4) Thanks to use of English, theological education can be perceived as a path to financial or 5) spiritual power. 6) Use of English positions “Africanness” as a failure and does not deal honestly with the African context. To overcome these problems, I advocate for theological education in Africa in indigenous languages.
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“These people are so different from us,” I thought after working for a while as a missionary in Zambia. Zambians did not like admitting to being different. Lucrative jobs were got by taking over from whites. To get on, one had to... more
“These people are so different from us,” I thought after working for a while as a missionary in Zambia. Zambians did not like admitting to being different. Lucrative jobs were got by taking over from whites. To get on, one had to emphasize sameness, not difference, with Westerners. I found my fellow missionaries also preferred to see Zambian people as the same as them, but needing education. That made life simple; the solution is education. If the people’s culture is fundamentally different, what might the solution be?
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Drawing on René Girard, (1923-2015), a French scholar who spent most of his life at Stanford University in the USA, this essay shifts from anthropology to the Gospel. It reveals the central role of desire in human living. Thus, removing... more
Drawing on René Girard, (1923-2015), a French scholar who spent most of his life at Stanford University in the USA, this essay shifts from anthropology to the Gospel. It reveals the central role of desire in human living. Thus, removing the focus from the need for capital to achieve majority world development, it demonstrates the necessary centrality of the Gospel, as unique means of countering the rivalry and resultant killing of victims known as witches that otherwise occur. The Gospel offers a level of ‘peace’ previously unknown to human communities. Having been the foundation for its own development, to be responsible the West needs to keep the Gospel of Jesus as flagship to its involvement with the majority world. Girard’s thinking explains how the foundation for sustainable development is not foreign capital, but demystification that arises from the Resurrection. Western missionaries promoting this message need, in order to connect with indigenous people’s ways, to use African and not European languages.
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In summary I would like to respond to Gehman by saying that; the adoption of African languages in formal theological education on the African continent is really essential for the future health of the church. What we as foreign... more
In summary I would like to respond to Gehman by saying that; the adoption of African languages in formal theological education on the African continent is really essential for the future health of the church. What we as foreign missionaries can best do; is to take African languages very seriously in our own ministries.
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Because accounts of the development of SS (social science) ignore the formative role of Christianity on its history, its adherents remain incapable of accurately representing people not long-honed by the Western Church. SS has deep roots... more
Because accounts of the development of SS (social science) ignore the formative role of Christianity on its history, its adherents remain incapable of accurately representing people not long-honed by the Western Church. SS has deep roots in racism; it is primarily relevant to people of European origin, the extent of ‘humanity’ as understood in the 19th century West. While SS terminologies do not translate into Black African worldviews, because Blacks who ratify it acquire finance and prestige they are inclined to ignore or even conceal its lack of relevance. SS’s not having an ongoing role for the Gospel, which centers on Christ’s self-giving on the cross, renders it incapable of grasping African people’s relation to blood sacrifice. Finally, dependence of SS on outdated Newtonian physics, leads to a dichotomy between ‘supernatural’ and ‘natural’, that is irrelevant in traditional African culture.
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This short article looks at how holistic healing in traditional societies is seen to happen by manipulating forces of death, and how this orientation is superseded by the Gospel of Christ. Because the notion that death-heals tends to be... more
This short article looks at how holistic healing in traditional societies is seen to happen by manipulating forces of death, and how this orientation is superseded by the Gospel of Christ. Because the notion that death-heals tends to be concealed, I begin by articulating its contemporary reality amongst Westerners, my presumed target readership. I then go on to explore ways in which this observation is helpful for understanding healing in traditional and contemporary Africa. Perceiving death as healing can help us grasp certain African traditions and behaviours, such as the fear of envy or witchcraft, and attention given to funeral celebration. I consider broadly how improved understanding can be turned to missiological advantage. I conclude with some observations pertaining to relative mortality in Europe and Africa in the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.
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Comments arising from discussion of this article on academia.edu June/July 2021 are available here: https://vulnerablemission.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/health-care-priority-ac.edu-comments-2021.pdf This article is divided into two... more
Comments arising from discussion of this article on academia.edu June/July 2021 are available here: https://vulnerablemission.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/health-care-priority-ac.edu-comments-2021.pdf
This article is divided into two sections. The first seeks to undermine Christian-backed initiatives that seek to priorities eradication of diseases. It finds that the case for prioritizing such action is riddled with historical anachronisms linked to deceptive efforts (up to contemporary times) by the West at universalizing secularism. For all its benefits, success at finding biomedical means to eradicate disease is here shown to be a likely means to dangerously disempower African people, especially in relation to the West. The second section looks at possible alternative priorities for action. These include an urgent need to honestly share God’s Word with African people in word and deed, requiring a vulnerable approach from the West. African people can thus be empowered through divine truth to begin to grasp aspects of secularism that the West currently uses to its own benefit. This requires beginning with pre-colonial African theology, often expressed today as the prosperity Gospel, as well as perception of other areas of African life recently concealed as a result of attempts at achieving global secular hegemony. The gifts of the Spirit being found to be of more immediate pertinence to Africa than technology and science suggests that Christian mission should emphasize the Gospel over and above what is sometimes known as ‘secular development’, including biomedicine.
This article is divided into two sections. The first seeks to undermine Christian-backed initiatives that seek to priorities eradication of diseases. It finds that the case for prioritizing such action is riddled with historical anachronisms linked to deceptive efforts (up to contemporary times) by the West at universalizing secularism. For all its benefits, success at finding biomedical means to eradicate disease is here shown to be a likely means to dangerously disempower African people, especially in relation to the West. The second section looks at possible alternative priorities for action. These include an urgent need to honestly share God’s Word with African people in word and deed, requiring a vulnerable approach from the West. African people can thus be empowered through divine truth to begin to grasp aspects of secularism that the West currently uses to its own benefit. This requires beginning with pre-colonial African theology, often expressed today as the prosperity Gospel, as well as perception of other areas of African life recently concealed as a result of attempts at achieving global secular hegemony. The gifts of the Spirit being found to be of more immediate pertinence to Africa than technology and science suggests that Christian mission should emphasize the Gospel over and above what is sometimes known as ‘secular development’, including biomedicine.
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Missionaries from outside of Africa should realise that taking identities as donors has potentially undesirable theological and relational implications. Many foreign missionaries struggle to reconcile African people’s orientation to... more
Missionaries from outside of Africa should realise that taking identities as donors has potentially undesirable theological and relational implications. Many foreign missionaries struggle to reconcile African people’s orientation to prosperity teaching with the Gospel. This chapter has shown how, for the Luo people of Kenya, ‘prosperity’ teaching can emerge from local pre-understandings of God’s nature engaged using a particular missionary approach. This chapter advocates working from a position of understanding and from within local constraints as a key means towards communicating about Jesus in ways that make sense of indigenous contexts. There is no formula on how to engage with what to new missionaries is ‘unknown,’ except that some of them should concentrate on remaining vulnerable to feedback from the people being reached. Such vulnerability to feedback can be achieved through the missionaries’ use of local languages and through their avoiding identities as donors.
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('Original submission. See here for full submission: DOI: 10.1177/0265378821994595) The notion that Western ways are superior can be used to justify subsidising advocacy to the poor in Africa who might otherwise reject those ways out of... more
('Original submission. See here for full submission: DOI: 10.1177/0265378821994595) The notion that Western ways are superior can be used to justify subsidising advocacy to the poor in Africa who might otherwise reject those ways out of ignorance. This ignores differences in culture that can trip up Western logic in Africa. When generosity is the reason to subsidise Western interventions, outside agents can be paid back in honour in ways not appropriate for Christians to accept. Perceived global inequalities used to convince donors to part with their money are impositions when those inequalities are not realised by recipients. When something inherently good, like the gospel, is routinely subsidised, some African people only value it when it comes with money. This disenfranchises poor evangelists. In order to overcome missionary ignorance, promotion of the prosperity gospel, and corruption associated with excessive foreign subsidies, this article advocates that vulnerable mission, namely, foreign intervention using local languages and resources, be permitted.
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Linguistic research showing dependence on context in deriving language meaning discloses the integral linking of the Luo language with their departed ancestors and the upholding of customary laws. Meaning and impact being transformed in... more
Linguistic research showing dependence on context in deriving language meaning discloses the integral linking of the Luo language with their departed ancestors and the upholding of customary laws. Meaning and impact being transformed in the process of translation from one context to another explains the severe limitations found in previous attempts at cross- cultural understanding between Western and Luo (African) peoples.
Studying Luo people’s understanding of ‘bad’ in the light of the above reveals much that often remains invisible to Westerners. ‘Bad’ arises from the activities of ghosts acting through people’s hearts often as a result of breaking taboos. Cleansing, especially of ghosts, through prayer, keeping customary laws and salvation are used to counteract such ‘bad’.
Conventional Biblical and mission hermeneutics are, in failing to account for pragmatic linguistics, found seriously wanting. Forces and powers being spiritually based in a monistic worldview amongst the Luo render clear cross-cultural communication with a rationalist and monotheist West impossible.
Theological education based on African languages is advocated as the way to engage the challenges of Christianity with Luo ways of life in a way that will result in a deeply rooted African church, and a moral, vibrant, intellectually and economically active African society.
Studying Luo people’s understanding of ‘bad’ in the light of the above reveals much that often remains invisible to Westerners. ‘Bad’ arises from the activities of ghosts acting through people’s hearts often as a result of breaking taboos. Cleansing, especially of ghosts, through prayer, keeping customary laws and salvation are used to counteract such ‘bad’.
Conventional Biblical and mission hermeneutics are, in failing to account for pragmatic linguistics, found seriously wanting. Forces and powers being spiritually based in a monistic worldview amongst the Luo render clear cross-cultural communication with a rationalist and monotheist West impossible.
Theological education based on African languages is advocated as the way to engage the challenges of Christianity with Luo ways of life in a way that will result in a deeply rooted African church, and a moral, vibrant, intellectually and economically active African society.
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This article critiques the practice whereby research language and methodology designed in the West (first world) is applied to intercultural research of indigenous (majority world) contexts. Different contexts of the indigenous, of which... more
This article critiques the practice whereby research language and methodology designed in the West (first world) is applied to intercultural research of indigenous (majority world) contexts. Different contexts of the indigenous, of which case studies are given, require research considerations not needed within the Western world. A focus on language and translation points to the need for research in indigenous contexts to be engaged by Western people using indigenous languages. The prominence of patron/client systems in indigenous communities disqualifies research by people who are or who are perceived to be powerful. Western researchers are encouraged to take a vulnerable stance, using indigenous resources and languages in their research relationships.
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Traditional African systems of payment and punishment often being in the so-called ‘mystical realm’ is miscomprehended by the West in a way that can contribute to violence against blacks. Use of curses to punish misdemeanours, a practice... more
Traditional African systems of payment and punishment often being in the so-called ‘mystical realm’ is miscomprehended by the West in a way that can contribute to violence against blacks. Use of curses to punish misdemeanours, a practice largely unknown or condemned by the West, being widely practiced in traditional Africa, confuses intercultural communication. The deep and profound acceptance of the Gospel of Jesus in the West over many centuries, through the Middle ages and beyond, in which Jesus’ readiness to sacrifice himself on the cross cancels mystical debts, enabled Western people to escape the need for sacrifice. Today’s black communities until recent times not having participated in Christendom, has resulted in the conceptual gaps in worldviews that underlie massive ongoing contemporary interracial tensions.
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Traditional African systems of payment and punishment often being in the so-called ‘mystical realm’ is miscomprehended by the West in a way that can contribute to violence against blacks. Use of curses to punish misdemeanours, a practice... more
Traditional African systems of payment and punishment often being in the so-called ‘mystical realm’ is miscomprehended by the West in a way that can contribute to violence against blacks. Use of curses to punish misdemeanours, a practice largely unknown or condemned by the West, being widely practiced in traditional Africa, confuses intercultural communication. The deep and profound acceptance of the Gospel of Jesus in the West over many centuries, through the Middle ages and beyond, in which Jesus’ readiness to sacrifice himself on the cross cancels mystical debts, enabled Western people to escape the need for sacrifice. Today’s black communities until recent times not having participated in Christendom, has resulted in the conceptual gaps in worldviews that underlie massive ongoing contemporary interracial tensions.
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This article considers how the African mission field can be a level playing field for Westerners and locals. Mission presenting of the gospel must be contextually appropriate. Choice of language is a part of this. Use of English as global... more
This article considers how the African mission field can be a level playing field for Westerners and locals. Mission presenting of the gospel must be contextually appropriate. Choice of language is a part of this. Use of English as global language today is different from use of Greek in New Testament times. This article shows how terms can travel between cultures with or without their ‘cultural roots’. Local cultural characteristics, such as the prominence of witchcraft in much of Africa, should not be ignored. Africa in the 1970s called for a moratorium on Western mission. This article considers the implications of this not having happened. Western education is found to create an ‘island’ of knowledge in Africa. Vulnerable mission is proposed as the way forward, keeping Western missionaries on the ground.
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Am Beispiel der aktuellen Covid-19-Pandemie illustriert dieser Beitrag, wie verschiedene Weltbilder die gleichen Informationen und Maßnahmen unterschiedlich interpretieren. Insbesondere werden „Soziale Distanz“ und „Zauberei“... more
Am Beispiel der aktuellen Covid-19-Pandemie illustriert dieser Beitrag, wie verschiedene Weltbilder die gleichen Informationen und Maßnahmen unterschiedlich interpretieren. Insbesondere werden „Soziale Distanz“ und „Zauberei“ thematisiert. Der Autor macht auf die Gefahr aufmerksam, dass internationale Empfehlungen zur Eindämmung der Covid-19 Pandemie ihr Ziel verfehlen, wenn sie ohne Berücksichtigung des lokalen Kontexts umgesetzt werden. Die Verantwortung der lokalen Kirche sieht er in der Vermittlung eines biblischen Verständnisses von Leid und Isolation.
From intercultural experience, and following scholarly analysis, this article blows the whistle on the supposed advantages of the development of diverse “World Englishes.” While native-speaker English is rooted in biblical faith, global... more
From intercultural experience, and following scholarly analysis, this article blows the whistle on the supposed advantages of the development of diverse “World Englishes.” While native-speaker English is rooted in biblical faith, global Englishes may not represent either good theology, or good sense. The ongoing popularity of native-speaker English as standard amongst Englishes reflects the inadequacy of prior understandings that all languages are neutral, equally functional, and extra-contextual. Native-agency of colonised people historically having raised English’s profile, does not excuse the West from responsibility for subsidising its language globally. English nowadays spreads in a supposedly secular world as if it is itself divine, displacing the Gospel of Jesus from its rightful ascendance.
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My contention based on considerable first-hand experience is that secular-government policy tries to expunge both the Gospel, and ‘real’ needs of Africa, from view. Of course, to counter the problems of politically-correct antiracism,... more
My contention based on considerable first-hand experience is that secular-government policy tries to expunge both the Gospel, and ‘real’ needs of Africa, from view. Of course, to counter the problems of politically-correct antiracism, does not require us to become ‘racist'. The challenge is to recognise that cultural-differences cannot suddenly disappear into thin air. It is to recognise that important cultural differences do not have genetic origins. It is to come back to Christ, and to seek to reach African (and other) people in vulnerable ways – i.e. to use their languages and resources in our outreach activities . It is to seek to relate to people on the basis of biblical love rather than on the back of secular notions of impartiality.
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African self-understanding has, since the beginning of the colonial era, come increasingly under attack. The dominance of European languages on the continent has made it very difficult for African people to express themselves clearly in... more
African self-understanding has, since the beginning of the colonial era, come increasingly under attack. The dominance of European languages on the continent has made it very difficult for African people to express themselves clearly in formal contexts. Taboos on racism in the West have added to this difficulty, effectively making it impossible to express oneself honestly about the nature and distinctiveness of contemporary African cultures. As a result, from the perspective of the West, African ways of life remain shrouded in mystery. Africans who have benefitted financially and in other ways from a close relationship with the West (which is almost all prominent African people) have had to deny their own identities and histories. Given his long devotion to extensive research that led him to advocate for radically unconventional paradigms, Girard’s legitimizing in Western thought of something that is far from Western offers a possible way out of this impasse.
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The impact or sense of text translated into a different worldview must be transformed to engage its new cultural context. An understanding of why and how this happens is vital for the globalising church to get away from a unicentral model... more
The impact or sense of text translated into a different worldview must be transformed to engage its new cultural context. An understanding of why and how this happens is vital for the globalising church to get away from a unicentral model of theological truth rooted in economic dependency on the hegemony of Western English. This article portrays intercultural translation in vivid ways using Scriptural example to show how some current models of translation depend on either direct divine revelation or magic for their success. This article advocates Christian discipleship at depth through intercultural missionary engagement rooted in local languages and resources.
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This short article suggests that there are three possible translation-options when theological education from the West is transferred to Africa. None of those options are very satisfactory. The article concludes that a people need to... more
This short article suggests that there are three possible translation-options when theological education from the West is transferred to Africa. None of those options are very satisfactory. The article concludes that a people need to engage theological education using their own languages.
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Unwarranted trust brings relational tension that could be avoided using more caution. Hence advocating “trust” is sometimes ill-advised. Inter-culturally, trust is likely to be particularly fraught, as intercultural gaps result in reduced... more
Unwarranted trust brings relational tension that could be avoided using more caution. Hence advocating “trust” is sometimes ill-advised. Inter-culturally, trust is likely to be particularly fraught, as intercultural gaps result in reduced levels of mutual understanding. Breaches of trust, both historical and contemporary, probably contribute to much mission work in recent times being short-term. Issues related to trust, such as time-keeping, how to ask questions, levels of expectation arising from particular ways of phrasing things, and financial predictability, are culturally dependent. Vulnerable missionaries, those who use local languages and local resources, can through making fewer demands
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Exorcism, a much valued, rational and sensible ministry as far as many African Christians are concerned, is frequently not appreciated in the West. This results from linguistic naivety, and the West’s concealment of their own religious... more
Exorcism, a much valued, rational and sensible ministry as far as many African Christians are concerned, is frequently not appreciated in the West. This results from linguistic naivety, and the West’s concealment of their own religious history to undergird secular ideologies. Both African faith in God, and indigenous languages, must be taken seriously in Western scholarship.
A case study considering the use of the term “spirit” in Western English (that is misappropriated into African discourse) graphically illustrates errors being made when considering deliverance ministries in African Christian churches. There is an urgent need to overcome linguistic naivety and secular hegemony in this regard. Careful exploration of the literature on gift-giving, in light of African people’s affinity for ministries of exorcism, reveals the means by which “material” and “spiritual” are, in Africa, not mutually exclusive.
A case study considering the use of the term “spirit” in Western English (that is misappropriated into African discourse) graphically illustrates errors being made when considering deliverance ministries in African Christian churches. There is an urgent need to overcome linguistic naivety and secular hegemony in this regard. Careful exploration of the literature on gift-giving, in light of African people’s affinity for ministries of exorcism, reveals the means by which “material” and “spiritual” are, in Africa, not mutually exclusive.
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It is important for teachers to know their students, to translate into the ‘known’, rather than ‘into the unknown’. In practice Africa and the West translate for each other, into the unknown. A case study illustrates problems that result... more
It is important for teachers to know their students, to translate into the ‘known’, rather than ‘into the unknown’. In practice Africa and the West translate for each other, into the unknown. A case study illustrates problems that result by contrasting the sacred and the holy with biomedical practice, in healing, an issue pivotal to human thriving. This communication into the unknown brings intercultural confusion that can only be stemmed by acknowledging the impact of Christianity on Europe’s history.
This presentation examines the principle widely known in educational circles, that one should know one’s students, interculturally between the West and Africa. Because a teacher is a translator of knowledge who seeks to aid the learning of his students, I call this ‘translating into the known’. To impart education while not knowing your students, I consider to be ‘translation into the unknown’. African people’s use of English, and Western people’s desperate efforts to undergird waning secular presuppositions, forces both to communicate into the unknown. A case study is used to illustrate the problems that result. This case study considers the contrast between the sacred and the holy in relation to biomedical practice, with respect to healing. This topic is chosen because of its pivotal importance to human thriving. Pragmatic reasons underlying preferences for communication into the unknown are shown to be at the root of much intercultural confusion. Stemming the confusion requires overt acknowledgement of the impact of Christianity on Europe’s history. Serious efforts should be made at laying a foundation for comprehension of well-being in Africa that goes beyond imitation and a search for short-term benefits.
This presentation examines the principle widely known in educational circles, that one should know one’s students, interculturally between the West and Africa. Because a teacher is a translator of knowledge who seeks to aid the learning of his students, I call this ‘translating into the known’. To impart education while not knowing your students, I consider to be ‘translation into the unknown’. African people’s use of English, and Western people’s desperate efforts to undergird waning secular presuppositions, forces both to communicate into the unknown. A case study is used to illustrate the problems that result. This case study considers the contrast between the sacred and the holy in relation to biomedical practice, with respect to healing. This topic is chosen because of its pivotal importance to human thriving. Pragmatic reasons underlying preferences for communication into the unknown are shown to be at the root of much intercultural confusion. Stemming the confusion requires overt acknowledgement of the impact of Christianity on Europe’s history. Serious efforts should be made at laying a foundation for comprehension of well-being in Africa that goes beyond imitation and a search for short-term benefits.
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Routine functioning in one’s own society, is as easy as walking across a lawn, this article suggests. Thriving in an unfamiliar community being more difficult, is compared to the experience of walking across rough ground with tufts of... more
Routine functioning in one’s own society, is as easy as walking across a lawn, this article suggests. Thriving in an unfamiliar community being more difficult, is compared to the experience of walking across rough ground with tufts of grass, hidden bogs, boulders, holes, and so on. Unfamiliar cultural and relational expectations require constant care over where one puts ones feet. That many people of African origin struggle to adjust to Western ways of life is evidenced by the efforts needed to counter racism in the West. Those people living in the West as-if they are in Africa, stumble over rocks and inadvertently put their feet into holes. I ask; why do Westerners these days quickly expect to thrive when in Africa? Some will teach there with no more than days of prior local exposure. They walk as if on a lawn, when on rough ground. Those who aren’t helped by this way of working are locals who don’t say anything, as there is money coming. So then, when Africans walk on rough ground as if on a lawn (behave in the West as if in Africa), they suffer, but for anti-racism. When a Westerner walks on rough ground in Africa as if on a lawn, it is again Africans who suffer, but for foreign donations.
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Daktari Jim Harries alianza kueleza juu ya maisha yake na huduma yake. Alieleza sababu nyingi za kupendelea matumizi ya lugha za Kiafrika. Ingawa aliwahutubia wanafunzi wa Kenya, matamshi yake yalikuwa tafakari juu ya utendaji wake wa... more
Daktari Jim Harries alianza kueleza juu ya maisha yake na huduma yake. Alieleza sababu nyingi za kupendelea matumizi ya lugha za Kiafrika. Ingawa aliwahutubia wanafunzi wa Kenya, matamshi yake yalikuwa tafakari juu ya utendaji wake wa muda mrefu wa kanuni za utume wenye usikivu katika nchi za Zambia, Tanzania na Kenya.
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Video. Dakika 50.
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Winjo wach misango e yo maber monyalo konyowa fwenyo tiend Muma.
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Early missionaries had little choice but to learn indigenous languages in order to engage closely with people. This enabled them to quickly learn an enormous amount about local ways of life. Initially, because they did not know what... more
Early missionaries had little choice but to learn indigenous languages in order to engage closely with people. This enabled them to quickly learn an enormous amount about local ways of life. Initially, because they did not know what aspects of their life might be considered ‘wrong’, local people were very open to sharing honestly about themselves. As time went by they hid more and more: such as their extra-wives, fear of witches, and even the fact that they were imitating. As a result, as time went by, it became more and more difficult for outsiders to understand local people. Especially when locals started talking to visitors in their own language of English, more and more of local reality was concealed. This is how outsiders to Africa, Westerners, have become more and more ignorant about Africa.
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Challenging Bible Translators to take advantage of Vulnerable Mission.
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Conference held in UK, 12th to 15th September 2021.
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In this recorded lecture, Jim Harries shares how he goes about doing, or more accurately being a part of and an encouragement to, evangelism and discipleship, in western Kenya.
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How vulnerable mission, relating to people using their own languages and resources, contributes to the enabling of appropriate mission engagement with the majority world.
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DiAngelo's analysis of 'white fragility' has drawn enormous global attention. Ironically, she cannot explain the origins of this fragility. This video, together with Jim's review of DiAngelo's book, explains this: White fragility is a... more
DiAngelo's analysis of 'white fragility' has drawn enormous global attention. Ironically, she cannot explain the origins of this fragility. This video, together with Jim's review of DiAngelo's book, explains this: White fragility is a response to the implicit undermining by Blacks of an unspoken and invisible theology, that is not formally recognized, yet underlies Western secular values.
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Issues related to Language, Culture, Anti-racism and Western Domination of African Peoples and African Countries.
This was a lecture designed for presentation at a North American seminary, until covid-19 put paid to 'live' travel.
This was a lecture designed for presentation at a North American seminary, until covid-19 put paid to 'live' travel.
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Rooting this presentation in a short story of an actual church visit by the author is an acknowledgement of the local contextual yet unseen (by the reader) dependency of the points it makes. Interpretation being mine, rooted in my own... more
Rooting this presentation in a short story of an actual church visit by the author is an acknowledgement of the local contextual yet unseen (by the reader) dependency of the points it makes. Interpretation being mine, rooted in my own history and experience, is different from how an indigenous person might have described things. African communication with the West invariably reflects financial and other dependencies. Interpretation of communication by African people requires comparison with how the same events are reported by Westerners. Attribution of healing is a case in point. Practice of vulnerable mission (use local languages and resources), implemented with determined conviction, is proposed as a highly legitimate means for a Westerner to acquire eyes and ears in African context. Not self-glorifying generosity is advocated. African people's talking from unfamiliar presuppositions and contexts, in many ways precludes Westerners from communicating sense in the light of indigenous realities: Although indeed the love of God is universal, how his love is understood is not.
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This book presents insights into anti-racism in the West, derived from long-term Christian missionary work in Africa. It is important to enable African people to express themselves freely using their own languages. This book asks whether... more
This book presents insights into anti-racism in the West, derived from long-term Christian missionary work in Africa. It is important to enable African people to express themselves freely using their own languages. This book asks whether this insight is relevant in the West itself.
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This book points to an in-your-face but often overlooked context from which to view anti-racism in the West, that of Africa itself. Is anti-racism in the interests of Africa? No, suggests Jim, a response he expounds on in this interview.
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Ujumbe wa Jim Harries imerekodiwa hapa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaeTiSCaq6o Daktari Jim Harries hapa hutetea utumiza wa lugha za Kiafrika, hasa Kiswahili, katika elimu na kazi za kanisa. Jim anaishi Kenya, hutembelea Tanzania mara... more
Ujumbe wa Jim Harries imerekodiwa hapa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaeTiSCaq6o Daktari Jim Harries hapa hutetea utumiza wa lugha za Kiafrika, hasa Kiswahili, katika elimu na kazi za kanisa. Jim anaishi Kenya, hutembelea Tanzania mara kwa mara. Ameitumie Kiswahili tangu 1995.
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Video lecture to be discussed.
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All-in-all it seems that much of Africa, is seriously foxed by covid-19. Many of my African friends are telling me “Jim. Covid is not there!” They realise that fear of covid-19, like fear of a curse, is itself potentially very damaging,... more
All-in-all it seems that much of Africa, is seriously foxed by covid-19. Many of my African friends are telling me “Jim. Covid is not there!” They realise that fear of covid-19, like fear of a curse, is itself potentially very damaging, it may itself kill. Add to this: If my shaking someone’s hand can make them sick, as frequently re-iterated by today’s anti-covid-19 experts, then if someone gets sick, someone who shook their hand becomes the suspected witch. The prospect of friendliness shown by being close to someone being re-interpreted as attempted murder is horrific, to say the least. Already going to church, an activity that was revolutionising the prior constant terror of witchcraft that people were living under before the Gospel came, is under suspicion by no less an authority than government itself, backed by foreign experts.
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This article discusses communication difficulties between the West and Africa. Mis-communication is shown all too often to make a mockery of good intentions, turning the West into a kind of laughing stock. Yet the West, by accepting and... more
This article discusses communication difficulties between the West and Africa. Mis-communication is shown all too often to make a mockery of good intentions, turning the West into a kind of laughing stock. Yet the West, by accepting and subsidizing the use of its languages and development projects, including health related ones throughout the African continent, and through a long tradition of benevolence, has implicitly taken on a responsibility for the continent which it should not shirk but must much more carefully consider.
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Today’s dominant Western powers want to force us into a historical amnesia, to convince us that the global population is ‘secular’ just below the surface, so should simply be able to understand and apply directives on how to handle corona... more
Today’s dominant Western powers want to force us into a historical amnesia, to convince us that the global population is ‘secular’ just below the surface, so should simply be able to understand and apply directives on how to handle corona coming from the West. This is a continuation of the widely-applied model of communication with Africa – the West leads and Africa should imitate. It is to ignore centuries of impact that the Gospel had on the West, it is to ignore that Africa never experienced the Renaissance, Reformation, or Enlightenment. It is to ignore the distorting effect of culture and translation on communication. It is to ignore that the West itself is struggling to know how to respond to corona. To think that donations to Africa will simply solve this problem is a pipe-dream. The misled belief that secularism is and should be foundational to human living has hegemonized an ignorance of global-affairs that has been around for a long time, but that is now particularly potentially damaging. It is God who is one, not secularism. Understanding required today necessitates Westerners using indigenous languages and resources in their interactions with African communities.
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This is a special edition with a focus on covid-19.
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This reflexive short piece, written by a 30-years missionary in East Africa, considers the evidently irresolvable incommensurability between Western scientific worldviews (secularism), and African approaches to life. The author’s... more
This reflexive short piece, written by a 30-years missionary in East Africa, considers the evidently irresolvable incommensurability between Western scientific worldviews (secularism), and African approaches to life. The author’s realizing that ‘science’ is a poor foundation for sense-making in Africa endeavors to fill-out the crisis he lives with in his mind, through reference to key life experiences. He relates his findings to ways in which scientifically-based advice in the current covid-19 pandemic finds little fit in Africa, where life is rooted in other-than-science. Strategies for countering disease that simply ignore the basis on which people are living leave deep tensions, and can have an overall negative-impact, especially when donor funds urge doing what makes little or no sense locally. Practical recommendations are made on the way-forward.
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I want to look at 10 areas of enormous theological significance pertaining to today’s coronavirus pandemic. I suggest that many differences between Black and White people are not ‘racial’ at all, but better understood as cultural. Hence... more
I want to look at 10 areas of enormous theological significance pertaining to today’s coronavirus pandemic. I suggest that many differences between Black and White people are not ‘racial’ at all, but better understood as cultural. Hence African belief in God does not arise from ‘inferior’ genetic origins, so does not have to be cordoned-off through fear of accusation of racism.
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The failure to date to apply the wisdom to intercultural communication between the West and Africa, underlies the tensions and contradictions we are experiencing in considering ways to tackle covid-19 on the continent today. Much humility... more
The failure to date to apply the wisdom to intercultural communication between the West and Africa, underlies the tensions and contradictions we are experiencing in considering ways to tackle covid-19 on the continent today. Much humility is currently required by both sides to try to come to grips with sheer difficulties in producing open communication channels. Although the changes here advocated to global communication are profound, their immediate implementation is essential in order to address today’s communication issues. These include issues such as whether social-distancing is relevant to Africa, whether covid-19 tests are reliable (as doubted by the President of Tanzania, Magafuli), and ways in which Covid-Organics should be used as a treatment for covid-19. Efforts towards achieving the above communication model, Figure 2, should be made urgently.
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Foundational concepts that underlie Western thinking, like economy, efficiency, truth, optimization, are absent in Africa. African people approach tasks, like transporting concrete, running economies, and tackling disease pandemics,... more
Foundational concepts that underlie Western thinking, like economy, efficiency, truth, optimization, are absent in Africa. African people approach tasks, like transporting concrete, running economies, and tackling disease pandemics, differently than do Westerners. Their approach reflects a determination NOT to go back to those horror filled days of witch hunts. Holding witchcraft at bay is tenuous – fending it off is a continual and active process. This is where often-booming African churches are engaging. The West’s ignoring God’s singular role in battling witchcraft in Africa, similarly drawn on in the West in so-called ‘private realms,’ is in rampant covid-19 times too dangerous, serious and blinkered an omission to condone.
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Reading the barometer of events related to coronavirus as they have unfolded here in East Africa, living in African community, has at times wanted to make my head to explode! The two logics being applied to the coronavirus outbreak, the... more
Reading the barometer of events related to coronavirus as they have unfolded here in East Africa, living in African community, has at times wanted to make my head to explode! The two logics being applied to the coronavirus outbreak, the technical scientific one I am receiving from much of the media and especially Europe and the USA, is worlds apart from indigenous people’s interpretations. The former, from the West[3] is highly scientized. In tackling COVID-19, science has called the shots. People have responded by compromising their freedom. In East Africa, people struggle to believe that a mere virus can cause such a massive problem. They desire to resolve the situation through prayer. They trust that the problem will soon go away. They hold various theories like that coronavirus infection is cured by drinking a lot of tea, or that release of the virus was a means to give China global domination over the USA.
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Keeping Hope Alive in the Time of Covid-19. By Stan Chu Ilo BBC Reports on Coronavirus in Africa Reflection: My Dilemma in East Africa Related to Covid-19 Personal reflections by Jim Harries on life in Africa during the pandemic. Dying... more
Keeping Hope Alive in the Time of Covid-19. By Stan Chu Ilo
BBC Reports on Coronavirus in Africa
Reflection: My Dilemma in East Africa Related to Covid-19 Personal reflections by Jim Harries on life in Africa during the pandemic.
Dying of hunger or falling ill: Africa's dilemma facing the coronavirus Some thoughts presented in the Kenya media.
India coronavirus: The 'mystery' of low Covid-19 death rates why are covid-19 death rates so low in India?
Non-Covid Virus Content
Orthoproxy: Ethical Storytelling in Cross-cultural Engagement - by M. Andrew Gale
WEA launching free online journal by Bruce Barron
Reflection: Covid-19: an analysis from an East African Perspective.
BELOW ARE NOT PEER-REVIEWED SHORT-ARTICLES BY JIM HARRIES
Covid-19. Three Old Men Sat on a Bench discussing the insistence that greedy ghosts be fed bounteous portions of fresh beef
Why Scientists shouldn’t be leading the way out of the Coronavirus crisis: 10 reasons from Africa.
Covid-19 and revenge on the dead / dependence on the dead in Africa today.
The Covid-19 pandemic with respect to Africa, in historical-economic perspective
A Snapshot of Life in Africa in Covid-19 Times
BBC Reports on Coronavirus in Africa
Reflection: My Dilemma in East Africa Related to Covid-19 Personal reflections by Jim Harries on life in Africa during the pandemic.
Dying of hunger or falling ill: Africa's dilemma facing the coronavirus Some thoughts presented in the Kenya media.
India coronavirus: The 'mystery' of low Covid-19 death rates why are covid-19 death rates so low in India?
Non-Covid Virus Content
Orthoproxy: Ethical Storytelling in Cross-cultural Engagement - by M. Andrew Gale
WEA launching free online journal by Bruce Barron
Reflection: Covid-19: an analysis from an East African Perspective.
BELOW ARE NOT PEER-REVIEWED SHORT-ARTICLES BY JIM HARRIES
Covid-19. Three Old Men Sat on a Bench discussing the insistence that greedy ghosts be fed bounteous portions of fresh beef
Why Scientists shouldn’t be leading the way out of the Coronavirus crisis: 10 reasons from Africa.
Covid-19 and revenge on the dead / dependence on the dead in Africa today.
The Covid-19 pandemic with respect to Africa, in historical-economic perspective
A Snapshot of Life in Africa in Covid-19 Times
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Some every-day experiences that illustrate responses to corona virus from Africa ...
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The economic model that I presuppose in this article is not a materialist one. That is, I take ways in which the provision of capital defined the difference between pre-1650 and post-1650 levels of economic prosperity in Europe as... more
The economic model that I presuppose in this article is not a materialist one. That is, I take ways in which the provision of capital defined the difference between pre-1650 and post-1650 levels of economic prosperity in Europe as secondary. (To date, much ‘aid’ to Africa presupposes this to be primary.) Instead, I take the original power-house of economic-growth to arise from other changes in human understanding. For example, as arising from the demotion of envy, that has otherwise in history deterred individuals (or individual-groups) from innovating in ways that raise their own economic level above that of their colleagues. (Envy can be demoted in this way when whole communities become passionately devoted to serving God.) Such ‘demotion’ of envy in turn enabled accumulation of capital. So then, demotion of envy is primary, and accumulation of capital is secondary.
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In terms of it being yet another example of the West telling Africa what to do, little that is happening with the COVID-19 crisis is original. Africa, in practice, has had to discount a lot of “good-sense” coming from the West. The... more
In terms of it being yet another example of the West telling Africa what to do, little that is happening with the COVID-19 crisis is original. Africa, in practice, has had to discount a lot of “good-sense” coming from the West. The sharpness of today’s COVID-19 concern is heightened by its life and death nature, and its sheer magnitude. But the way it is unfolding in Africa I should say is typical: serious advice sincerely given, that neither makes sense nor “works” in the African context.
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The solution to the strong tendency to seek to do away with what is bad to resolve an issue, is found in the teachings of the church. The absence of that ‘solution’ is likely to lead to a return to the violence-of-revenge of pre-colonial... more
The solution to the strong tendency to seek to do away with what is bad to resolve an issue, is found in the teachings of the church. The absence of that ‘solution’ is likely to lead to a return to the violence-of-revenge of pre-colonial times. It will also cut an essential part of the means towards Africa being able to design its own positive.
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There ought to be at least three men on the platform advocating strategies for tackling coronavirus. One, perhaps, a scientist. Two, a man with a big heart who is close to God. Thirdly, a politician.
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I do wonder what impact today’s putting life on hold for the sake of countering coronavirus will have? This strategy, of tackling a disease most likely to harm the old by preventing the young from functioning (lock-down and social... more
I do wonder what impact today’s putting life on hold for the sake of countering coronavirus will have? This strategy, of tackling a disease most likely to harm the old by preventing the young from functioning (lock-down and social distancing measures), is hardly indigenous. If the old man above is right, it will not stop fear of the dead. Muzzling the Church in the midst of this crisis, I fear will be allowing those who prefer to obey the dead a head-start they had not anticipated. Coronavirus, just because it is a scientifically-visible issue that is affecting even the West, has acquired status of ‘global disaster’. Our arguably much more damaging everyday ‘disaster’, fear of the dead, is ignored.
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Alliance for Vulnerable Mission Bulletin dedicated to Coronavirus outbreak / COVID-19: Majority World / African Contexts
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When COVID-19 came along, the only thing that could pull people back from perceived ‘slavery’, was drawing on unreflected-upon ancient traditions. Except, that is, those who have taken the Gospel to heart, who are ready to understand... more
When COVID-19 came along, the only thing that could pull people back from perceived ‘slavery’, was drawing on unreflected-upon ancient traditions. Except, that is, those who have taken the Gospel to heart, who are ready to understand what they are being told as Christians, based on the Bible, that is transforming their traditions. Either way; re-interpretation of directives arising from the intent not to be enslaved, may be cancelling their intended scientific efficacy. Less directing may be better.
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Why am I writing this? Partly, simply to explain a context in Africa that the West doesn’t seem to be getting. Partly, to justify why I am, in terms of contemporary wisdom in the West, on a course of suicidal folly. Partly, to try to... more
Why am I writing this? Partly, simply to explain a context in Africa that the West doesn’t seem to be getting. Partly, to justify why I am, in terms of contemporary wisdom in the West, on a course of suicidal folly. Partly, to try to ‘knock sense into’ my colleagues in Europe and America who are being fed massive delicious daily helpings of self-justification from the media for ‘distancing’ policies adopted by governments apparently led by science.
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The current mourning period instigated by covid-19, a utopian movement aimed at ending death, is of seismic implications for the future of humanity. The ‘secular’ dream of eternal life on earth is shattered as old and ailing folks kept... more
The current mourning period instigated by covid-19, a utopian movement aimed at ending death, is of seismic implications for the future of humanity. The ‘secular’ dream of eternal life on earth is shattered as old and ailing folks kept alive through use of modern medicine succumb daily. The horror of death has stamped its footprint prominently in places it was being determinedly ignored. Compulsory mourning continues globally, with ever wider spread and ever greater restrictions.
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Some aspects of the current managing and reporting of the global-wide coronavirus crisis are a cause for concern. I highlight a few of them here.
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As of now, the language of any formal discourse in Africa is the same language that is used for formal discourse in the USA, UK, World Bank, United Nations, and Uncle Tom Cobley and all. What chance then for Africa of ever being able to... more
As of now, the language of any formal discourse in Africa is the same language that is used for formal discourse in the USA, UK, World Bank, United Nations, and Uncle Tom Cobley and all. What chance then for Africa of ever being able to define categories in ways that make sense to itself? How can discourse in Africa ever even begin to be true to itself with all these powerful people constantly ‘advising them’ on the basis of what they take to be inappropriate uses of their language?
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I consider that the following should be borne in mind by people concerned with designing appropriate Africa-policy regarding the current covid-19 outbreak.
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Africa having a lower life-expectancy than Europe / America should have us ask why all African governments aren’t desperate for Westerners to live in their countries? They are not. Tanzania, and many other African countries have... more
Africa having a lower life-expectancy than Europe / America should have us ask why all African governments aren’t desperate for Westerners to live in their countries? They are not. Tanzania, and many other African countries have stringent visa rules. They want tourist money, but they don’t want Westerners coming to settle. Why? My suggestion: Westerners are least likely to value and adjust to indigenous ways of life. They consider themselves superior, take converting others to their ‘secularism’ as their major purpose, to which they dedicate endless hours and much funding.
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What are the implications of having children rove-around? I suspect disastrous for ‘well-made-plans’ designed to prevent covid-19 spread.
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East Africans do not know what ‘anti-racism’ is. What anti-racism brings them comes from beyond their world. Those promoting ‘anti-racism’ have not been Africans in Africa, but in the West. Africans in the West have stood to benefit... more
East Africans do not know what ‘anti-racism’ is. What anti-racism brings them comes from beyond their world. Those promoting ‘anti-racism’ have not been Africans in Africa, but in the West. Africans in the West have stood to benefit financially: anti-racism has, by ensuring income equalities within Western countries, enriched many Blacks living within them. It has not brought the same benefits for Blacks living in ‘their own’ African countries.
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African people’s discourse often makes much mention of God. African people seem to expect God to solve their problems. Sometimes that seems fatalistic – instead of acting to solve a problem; they do nothing but rely on him …
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The contrast could not be greater. Paul said, "Let no one boast in men" (1 Cor 3:21), because it is only "God who causes the growth" (1 Cor 3:7). But today's ministry is often platform-centered and program-bound. Jesus sent out the... more
The contrast could not be greater. Paul said, "Let no one boast in men" (1 Cor 3:21), because it is only "God who causes the growth" (1 Cor 3:7). But today's ministry is often platform-centered and program-bound. Jesus sent out the disciples "like sheep among wolves," but today this "weak" approach is replaced with powerful techniques emphasizing attraction. The result is that ministry/mission thought and praxis are subverted in a way that makes the ordinary individual believer wonder if and how they are to be involved in God's wonderful work. For Jesus, ministry was close and personal. He ate with friends, helped the hurting, and spoke the truth in love to any who would listen. Jesus embodied proclamation and ministry by depending on people (local resources), by being approachable and comprehensible (local tongues), and by spiritual gifts (the power of God). As weak and vulnerable as Jesus finds us, so does he desire to use us. Explore in this book the thought and practice of ministry and mission from the God-ordained and God-honoring perspective of vulnerable weakness.
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Evaluation of English language knowledge without consideration of pragmatic use lures ‘the poor' to Western academia. Thus, not addressing their own issues, this results in an unhelpful brain drain and magnet. Wholistic evaluation would,... more
Evaluation of English language knowledge without consideration of pragmatic use lures ‘the poor' to Western academia. Thus, not addressing their own issues, this results in an unhelpful brain drain and magnet. Wholistic evaluation would, by undoing this lure, enable educational focus on indigenous concerns in Africa. The secularisation-project, that demotes other people's ways of life into ‘world religions' status, and ignores impacts of Christianity on world history, is subjected to critical scrutiny.
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Chapter 1: Introduction. This chapter points to ways in which African people’s innate avenues of thinking are increasingly considered taboo—so ignored—and allowed to fester rather than to develop, grow, and blossom. Chapter 2: I was... more
Chapter 1: Introduction. This chapter points to ways in which African people’s innate avenues of thinking are increasingly considered taboo—so ignored—and allowed to fester rather than to develop, grow, and blossom.
Chapter 2: I was struck by the contents of a sermon in 2010 at a church in Kenya. It was presented in the Luo language and translated into Swahili. The categories being employed by the speaker were, in terms of Western language(s), especially English, incongruous. This is despite their apparently tallying with four very ordinary English words; money, hope, fear, and love. Correct comprehension of what was being said required me to draw on learning I had achieved impressionistically, i.e., insights I had picked up “subjectively” through sharing life with Luo people over an extended period. I could not easily quantify or even outline these insights, that certainly had no objective origins.
Chapter 3. This short chapter imagines Africans as dairy farmers and Westerners as sheep farmers. Contrasting two different husbandry practices clarifies differences that may be less clear-cut between cultures. Thus the folly of the use of one language across cultural difference, i.e., use of Western languages in Africa, is exposed.
Chapter 4. The notion that literacy might be of other than religious / esoteric value (being a product of Protestantism) raises questions regarding its contemporary spread, and the extent to which literacy may still be considered inherently religious / esoteric. This chapter proposes profound implications arising from consideration of this, arguably, contextual difference between Western and non-Western Englishes.
Chapter 5. Many scholars producing academic writing on Africa quickly learn to beware the “sin of generalizing”—which is essentially to assume that diverse African peoples have things in common, that are not found in the West. Such prohibition of so-called “generalization” is used to maintain an apparent universal direct relevance of Western scholarship in Africa.
Chapter 6. This chapter contains a fuller articulation of a greater number of arguments that seek to qualify today’s prohibition of generalization. It thus renders both African communality, cultural facets of people’s lives that are similar across Africa, and the work of the gospel, visible.
Chapter 7. A general invisibility of translation has, in recent decades, popularized the incorrect assumption that profound bodies of interconnected knowledge that affect the whole of life, can simply be transferred wholesale from one language to another. Because information is always domesticated into its target language and culture, a process that requires a very profound knowledge of that target, translation from unknown to known, must always be prioritized over that from known to unknown. The impact of this vitally important principle being these days largely ignored is potentially catastrophic!
Chapter 8. Human satisfaction is often supplemented by the suffering, failure, or even death of others. This is metonymically represented by the shedding of blood. The rejection by modern thinking of “traditional” logic—that sees shedding blood as healing—has transformed African solutions to coronavirus into fake news. This chapter explores implications of this kind of transformation.
Chapter 9. Conventional Western and modern ways of considering and evaluating Africa are faulty. This chapter points to the nature of such faultiness, such as the expectation that use of English can be adequate and helpful for delineating indigenous African categories. The chapter draws on work of the late French scholar René Girard as the basis for a proposal regarding how to make sense of what is unconventional.
Chapter 10. Drawing heavily on insights from René Girard, “aggression” in African worship (shouting, screaming, noise in general, aggressive dancing, and so on) is connected to a desire for cleansing by imitating the lynching of a witch. When correctly focused as a reenactment of Christ’s death on the cross, this kind of activity should be understood as being a means of bringing healing / cleansing.
Chapter 11. This chapter explores theology as an alternative to rainmaking as foundation for leadership in Africa. Some peculiarities of African styles of worship appear to arise from rainmaking traditions, to which adherence to the Bible should be a marked improvement.
Chapter 12. While Bible translations are these days prolifically being produced, production of associated study texts in indigenous languages has to date proven stubbornly difficult. This chapter articulates such difficulty—and how to overcome it—with reference to Study Bible production.
Chapter 13. This chapter suggests that largely unrecognized sleight of hand has contributed to, if not formed, today’s logic in the West, that has many accepting the bogus straw-man category of “religion.” Once defined and accepted, “religion” can be considered no more than a primitive relic, and condemned! Associated historical naivety is denying people a knowledge of Christ!
Chapter 14. An impassioned plea is made for the reader of this chapter to cease being hoodwinked and misled by contemporary secular society, when it is evident that all that humans do is “religious,” including the roots of secularism itself.
Chapter 15. That African people might believe that God can protect them from the coronavirus might seem incredible in the West, but is very normal in parts of the continent. This coronavirus case study, written in 2020, considers numerous important ways in which policy makers must take African people’s belief in God seriously.
Chapter 16. Was pre-colonial Africa peaceful, healthy, and prosperous? Today’s problems in Africa are often blamed on colonialism, modernity, and even Christianity. Pre-colonial Africa, though, was not free from fujo (a Swahili term meaning destructive mayhem). This chapter draws heavily on the work of the late Tanzanian novelist Euphrase Kezilahabi, interpreted through a lens of long-term close living and exposure to East African people.
Chapter 17. Compulsory church attendance was once widespread in Europe. This historical requirement makes up part of the history of the contemporary West. Contemporary deploring and mockery of the notion that perhaps “religion” should be enforced at government level may or may not be appropriate in today’s West, but mocking the role of government in “religion” may not be helpful for some in the non-West. Such disparaging of government involvement can be considered “evil” if it results in a wanton depreciation of something that carries many important benefits to human society.
Chapter 18. The West is adamant that racism is wrong. It rarely considers, however, the foundations on which its opposition to racism is built. One such foundation I here critique, is secularism. That is, the assumption of normality to which racism is considered antagonistic, is secular. The power of the West is such as to spread this assumption globally: African people must be treated as if they are secular, wherever they are! This conceals the religiosity of African people, in the interests of not being racist.
Chapter 19. Digging a little into the nature of some indigenous African categories of thought related to the English concept of emotion, reveals ways of identifying what Africans mean by “poverty.” Comprehensions of African terms frequently used to translate English terms like that of poverty may seem, from a secular vantage point, to be out of this world! Amongst other things, exploration of implicit indigenous African categories of thought and understanding reveal English comprehensions of African ways of life, and the concomitant prescriptions for action, to be compromised by their own illogicality.
Chapter 20. “Vulnerable” approaches to majority world people, as defined in this text, permit an otherwise largely unmatched deep level of cultural comprehension. This chapter considers the implications of such an approach’s revealing that world religions, considered by many to have some kind of objective existence, are reifications of the meeting of non-Western ways of life and Christianity. The implications of this nature of world religions are explored in this chapter.
Chapter 21. How one uses language is key to on-the-ground ministry. Asking questions for which no answers are available or admissible reveals one’s ignorance. Language can reflect truth, or it can build truth. The availability of funding can create its own truths. Telling the truth about Africans can be interpreted as theft if the truth would result in a potential donor not supporting a project. Telling the truth to Africans about how people live in the West can generate envy. Some truths are plainly untranslatable.
Chapter 22. Well-connected Western missionaries carrying out ministry drawing on access they have to outside resources, and their mastery of the globalized language of English, build on what is not locally available. All too often this, unhelpfully, forces them to minister through saying, “do what I say,” rather than “do what I do.”
Chapter 23. While “guilt” may be an unpleasant feeling, this chapter points to ways in which it is much more desirable than are either fear or shame. The chapter explains, in relation to evident characteristics of many contemporary African communities, how Christianity is appreciated for moving people from fear of ancestral revenge, and from fear of shame, to guilt, for which they can be forgiven.
Chapter 24. It may not be helpful for talking to jump ahead of action. Verbally declaring something to be the case, before it actually is the case, may deter those who are preoccupied into making it the case from their endeavor. So use of Western languages that presuppose open altruism can delay adoption of open altruism by African people.
Chapter 25. This chapter is a study of the amazing love of God in intercultural context.
Chapter 2: I was struck by the contents of a sermon in 2010 at a church in Kenya. It was presented in the Luo language and translated into Swahili. The categories being employed by the speaker were, in terms of Western language(s), especially English, incongruous. This is despite their apparently tallying with four very ordinary English words; money, hope, fear, and love. Correct comprehension of what was being said required me to draw on learning I had achieved impressionistically, i.e., insights I had picked up “subjectively” through sharing life with Luo people over an extended period. I could not easily quantify or even outline these insights, that certainly had no objective origins.
Chapter 3. This short chapter imagines Africans as dairy farmers and Westerners as sheep farmers. Contrasting two different husbandry practices clarifies differences that may be less clear-cut between cultures. Thus the folly of the use of one language across cultural difference, i.e., use of Western languages in Africa, is exposed.
Chapter 4. The notion that literacy might be of other than religious / esoteric value (being a product of Protestantism) raises questions regarding its contemporary spread, and the extent to which literacy may still be considered inherently religious / esoteric. This chapter proposes profound implications arising from consideration of this, arguably, contextual difference between Western and non-Western Englishes.
Chapter 5. Many scholars producing academic writing on Africa quickly learn to beware the “sin of generalizing”—which is essentially to assume that diverse African peoples have things in common, that are not found in the West. Such prohibition of so-called “generalization” is used to maintain an apparent universal direct relevance of Western scholarship in Africa.
Chapter 6. This chapter contains a fuller articulation of a greater number of arguments that seek to qualify today’s prohibition of generalization. It thus renders both African communality, cultural facets of people’s lives that are similar across Africa, and the work of the gospel, visible.
Chapter 7. A general invisibility of translation has, in recent decades, popularized the incorrect assumption that profound bodies of interconnected knowledge that affect the whole of life, can simply be transferred wholesale from one language to another. Because information is always domesticated into its target language and culture, a process that requires a very profound knowledge of that target, translation from unknown to known, must always be prioritized over that from known to unknown. The impact of this vitally important principle being these days largely ignored is potentially catastrophic!
Chapter 8. Human satisfaction is often supplemented by the suffering, failure, or even death of others. This is metonymically represented by the shedding of blood. The rejection by modern thinking of “traditional” logic—that sees shedding blood as healing—has transformed African solutions to coronavirus into fake news. This chapter explores implications of this kind of transformation.
Chapter 9. Conventional Western and modern ways of considering and evaluating Africa are faulty. This chapter points to the nature of such faultiness, such as the expectation that use of English can be adequate and helpful for delineating indigenous African categories. The chapter draws on work of the late French scholar René Girard as the basis for a proposal regarding how to make sense of what is unconventional.
Chapter 10. Drawing heavily on insights from René Girard, “aggression” in African worship (shouting, screaming, noise in general, aggressive dancing, and so on) is connected to a desire for cleansing by imitating the lynching of a witch. When correctly focused as a reenactment of Christ’s death on the cross, this kind of activity should be understood as being a means of bringing healing / cleansing.
Chapter 11. This chapter explores theology as an alternative to rainmaking as foundation for leadership in Africa. Some peculiarities of African styles of worship appear to arise from rainmaking traditions, to which adherence to the Bible should be a marked improvement.
Chapter 12. While Bible translations are these days prolifically being produced, production of associated study texts in indigenous languages has to date proven stubbornly difficult. This chapter articulates such difficulty—and how to overcome it—with reference to Study Bible production.
Chapter 13. This chapter suggests that largely unrecognized sleight of hand has contributed to, if not formed, today’s logic in the West, that has many accepting the bogus straw-man category of “religion.” Once defined and accepted, “religion” can be considered no more than a primitive relic, and condemned! Associated historical naivety is denying people a knowledge of Christ!
Chapter 14. An impassioned plea is made for the reader of this chapter to cease being hoodwinked and misled by contemporary secular society, when it is evident that all that humans do is “religious,” including the roots of secularism itself.
Chapter 15. That African people might believe that God can protect them from the coronavirus might seem incredible in the West, but is very normal in parts of the continent. This coronavirus case study, written in 2020, considers numerous important ways in which policy makers must take African people’s belief in God seriously.
Chapter 16. Was pre-colonial Africa peaceful, healthy, and prosperous? Today’s problems in Africa are often blamed on colonialism, modernity, and even Christianity. Pre-colonial Africa, though, was not free from fujo (a Swahili term meaning destructive mayhem). This chapter draws heavily on the work of the late Tanzanian novelist Euphrase Kezilahabi, interpreted through a lens of long-term close living and exposure to East African people.
Chapter 17. Compulsory church attendance was once widespread in Europe. This historical requirement makes up part of the history of the contemporary West. Contemporary deploring and mockery of the notion that perhaps “religion” should be enforced at government level may or may not be appropriate in today’s West, but mocking the role of government in “religion” may not be helpful for some in the non-West. Such disparaging of government involvement can be considered “evil” if it results in a wanton depreciation of something that carries many important benefits to human society.
Chapter 18. The West is adamant that racism is wrong. It rarely considers, however, the foundations on which its opposition to racism is built. One such foundation I here critique, is secularism. That is, the assumption of normality to which racism is considered antagonistic, is secular. The power of the West is such as to spread this assumption globally: African people must be treated as if they are secular, wherever they are! This conceals the religiosity of African people, in the interests of not being racist.
Chapter 19. Digging a little into the nature of some indigenous African categories of thought related to the English concept of emotion, reveals ways of identifying what Africans mean by “poverty.” Comprehensions of African terms frequently used to translate English terms like that of poverty may seem, from a secular vantage point, to be out of this world! Amongst other things, exploration of implicit indigenous African categories of thought and understanding reveal English comprehensions of African ways of life, and the concomitant prescriptions for action, to be compromised by their own illogicality.
Chapter 20. “Vulnerable” approaches to majority world people, as defined in this text, permit an otherwise largely unmatched deep level of cultural comprehension. This chapter considers the implications of such an approach’s revealing that world religions, considered by many to have some kind of objective existence, are reifications of the meeting of non-Western ways of life and Christianity. The implications of this nature of world religions are explored in this chapter.
Chapter 21. How one uses language is key to on-the-ground ministry. Asking questions for which no answers are available or admissible reveals one’s ignorance. Language can reflect truth, or it can build truth. The availability of funding can create its own truths. Telling the truth about Africans can be interpreted as theft if the truth would result in a potential donor not supporting a project. Telling the truth to Africans about how people live in the West can generate envy. Some truths are plainly untranslatable.
Chapter 22. Well-connected Western missionaries carrying out ministry drawing on access they have to outside resources, and their mastery of the globalized language of English, build on what is not locally available. All too often this, unhelpfully, forces them to minister through saying, “do what I say,” rather than “do what I do.”
Chapter 23. While “guilt” may be an unpleasant feeling, this chapter points to ways in which it is much more desirable than are either fear or shame. The chapter explains, in relation to evident characteristics of many contemporary African communities, how Christianity is appreciated for moving people from fear of ancestral revenge, and from fear of shame, to guilt, for which they can be forgiven.
Chapter 24. It may not be helpful for talking to jump ahead of action. Verbally declaring something to be the case, before it actually is the case, may deter those who are preoccupied into making it the case from their endeavor. So use of Western languages that presuppose open altruism can delay adoption of open altruism by African people.
Chapter 25. This chapter is a study of the amazing love of God in intercultural context.
Research Interests:
Difficulties in measuring ‘what is good’ for holistic humans in complex societies interspersed with diverse ‘religious beliefs’ have forced secular scholars to devise reductionist indicators that lead to the belief that well-being comes... more
Difficulties in measuring ‘what is good’ for holistic humans in complex societies interspersed with diverse ‘religious beliefs’ have forced secular scholars to devise reductionist indicators that lead to the belief that well-being comes from money. The sway held by this belief has distorted Western academia into a relative neglect of the role of subjects (human or divine) in meeting needs. Three alternative goals for international development here considered are Human Rights, Islam and Christianity. The three are compared primarily in terms of flexibility in interpretation. The key goal for international development is found to be – for people to be brought to a knowledge of God.
Research Interests:
(FULL PDF NOT INCLUDED IN DOWNLOAD.) I suggest that for Westerners to insist on integrity—“following your moral or ethical convictions and doing the right thing in all circumstances, even if no one is watching you … [being] … true to... more
(FULL PDF NOT INCLUDED IN DOWNLOAD.) I suggest that for Westerners to insist on integrity—“following your moral or ethical convictions and doing the right thing in all circumstances, even if no one is watching you … [being] … true to yourself and … [doing] nothing that demeans or dishonors you” —in their relationships in Africa, is to endeavor to dominate people from a position of understanding that is foreign. Insisting on the practice of one’s concept of integrity being a universal value or measure can be a cultural imposition.
Research Interests:
The global impact, and especially that on Africa, of contemporary practice of anti-racism in the West and America, is rarely considered. This book fills that void. The author is interviewed about the book here:... more
The global impact, and especially that on Africa, of contemporary practice of anti-racism in the West and America, is rarely considered. This book fills that void.
The author is interviewed about the book here: https://youtu.be/mCJazxisaWk
Another interview with the author: https://youtu.be/6ZNWZys3ZsE and https://youtu.be/mCJazxisaWk
Available on amazon.co.uk here: https://tinyurl.com/r44b73n
Available in the USA here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1913181642
Available over kindle internationally.
Available from publisher: https://www.faithbuilders.org.uk/product/how-western-anti-racism-harms-africa-and-how-we-can-do-better/
An academic review: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14769948.2022.2039857
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/8RGPESHYFDPHVV58T4JJ/full?target=10.1080/14769948.2022.2039857 (50 free copies available)
Another academic review: http://ojs.globalmissiology.org/index.php/english/article/view/2775/6878
Basic information:
This book addresses a highly sensitive topic. The book has a simple goal: to demonstrate how anti-racism in the West, perhaps unintentionally, is undermining the cultures and the development of sub-Saharan African peoples, especially by concealing the work of and need for the Gospel.
Western secularists like to think that secularism is universal, and that there are a number of religions. This text advances the position that there is one God who gave us the Gospel, who is universal, and that there are different ways of life, including that of secularism.
What the West rarely seems to consider is the effect that today’s anti-racism has as a result of making it taboo to assume people to be not-secular. It thus renders non-Western understandings of people’s lives illegal or illegitimate and delegitimizes non-Western people’s understandings of themselves. For African people, to be honest about yourself can mean being racist in Western eyes.
Undermining other people’s efforts (especially in Africa) at working out their own future, by classifying their own view of themselves as racist, is a way of constantly stalling whatever plans Africans make for themselves. This leaves everyone dependent on Western charity.
Drawing heavily on my personal experience as a British native living in East Africa for over thirty years, I propose a response to this threat to non-Western sensibilities, as far as the West is concerned, from the perspective of “vulnerable mission.” That is, I propose that some Western individuals should engage in close, long-term identification with African peoples, mediated through African languages, and that they resist the tendency to seek to purchase power over Africa by means of outside funds or influence. This kind of exposure by Westerners to non-Western cultures, I believe, will in due course reveal the folly of some types of contemporary anti-racism.
The author is interviewed about the book here: https://youtu.be/mCJazxisaWk
Another interview with the author: https://youtu.be/6ZNWZys3ZsE and https://youtu.be/mCJazxisaWk
Available on amazon.co.uk here: https://tinyurl.com/r44b73n
Available in the USA here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1913181642
Available over kindle internationally.
Available from publisher: https://www.faithbuilders.org.uk/product/how-western-anti-racism-harms-africa-and-how-we-can-do-better/
An academic review: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14769948.2022.2039857
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/8RGPESHYFDPHVV58T4JJ/full?target=10.1080/14769948.2022.2039857 (50 free copies available)
Another academic review: http://ojs.globalmissiology.org/index.php/english/article/view/2775/6878
Basic information:
This book addresses a highly sensitive topic. The book has a simple goal: to demonstrate how anti-racism in the West, perhaps unintentionally, is undermining the cultures and the development of sub-Saharan African peoples, especially by concealing the work of and need for the Gospel.
Western secularists like to think that secularism is universal, and that there are a number of religions. This text advances the position that there is one God who gave us the Gospel, who is universal, and that there are different ways of life, including that of secularism.
What the West rarely seems to consider is the effect that today’s anti-racism has as a result of making it taboo to assume people to be not-secular. It thus renders non-Western understandings of people’s lives illegal or illegitimate and delegitimizes non-Western people’s understandings of themselves. For African people, to be honest about yourself can mean being racist in Western eyes.
Undermining other people’s efforts (especially in Africa) at working out their own future, by classifying their own view of themselves as racist, is a way of constantly stalling whatever plans Africans make for themselves. This leaves everyone dependent on Western charity.
Drawing heavily on my personal experience as a British native living in East Africa for over thirty years, I propose a response to this threat to non-Western sensibilities, as far as the West is concerned, from the perspective of “vulnerable mission.” That is, I propose that some Western individuals should engage in close, long-term identification with African peoples, mediated through African languages, and that they resist the tendency to seek to purchase power over Africa by means of outside funds or influence. This kind of exposure by Westerners to non-Western cultures, I believe, will in due course reveal the folly of some types of contemporary anti-racism.
Research Interests: Religion, History, African Studies, Anthropology, Education, and 13 moreDevelopment Studies, Race and Racism, Africa, Liberalism, Critical Race Theory, Missiology and Mission Theology, Culture, Secularisms and Secularities, Racial and ethnic discrimination, Racial discrimination, Black Studies, Xenophobia, and Xenophobia and Racism
Yaliyomo ni kazi za Jim Harries alizoandikwa tangu mwaka wa 2006 mpaka 2019. Maandishi yake yanaangalia sana utumizi wa lugha kwa huduma ya Ukristo kwa bara la Afrika. Anataja mada mengine pia; utume, mafunzo ya Bi-blia, utamaduni wa... more
Yaliyomo ni kazi za Jim Harries alizoandikwa tangu mwaka wa 2006 mpaka 2019. Maandishi yake yanaangalia sana utumizi wa lugha kwa huduma ya Ukristo kwa bara la Afrika. Anataja mada mengine pia; utume, mafunzo ya Bi-blia, utamaduni wa Kiafrika, maendeleo, uchawi, nk. Alipendelea ayaweke ma-andishi yake pamoja ndani ya kitabu kimoja. Jim anatumaini maandishi yake yatakuwa himizo kwa wenyeji wa Afrika ya Mashariki kuandika maono ambayo wamepewa na Bwana, na yale waliojifunza kulingana na huduma yao.. Jim hajaoa, lakini watoto yatima wanaishi pamoja naye kwa nyumba anayokodesha kijijini. Jim alipata shahada ya PhD Uingereza mwaka wa 2007. Hiki ni kitabu chake cha kumi kuchapishwa. Maandishi yake mengi yanahusika na jinsi inafaa kufanya kazi ya Bwana kwa bara la Afrika. Jim anafanya huduma yake akiwa chini ya Kanisa Orthodox la Koptiki. Kutoka Uingereza anatumwa na Kanisa la Baptisti.
Research Interests: African Studies, Africa, East Africa, Swahili, Kenya, and 6 moreTanzania, African theology, Kiswahili, Theologia, Isimu, and Neno la Mungu
When a young lady travels from the UK to Africa to find love with a single missionary, she finds more than she bargained for! The missionary is already in love – with Africa! What can she do? A touching romantic fiction which serves to... more
When a young lady travels from the UK to Africa to find love with a single missionary, she finds more than she bargained for! The missionary is already in love – with Africa! What can she do? A touching romantic fiction which serves to introduce the reader to Africa, and to God’s work among the peoples of that continent.
Research Interests:
This book bursts like a breath of fresh air into the reader's mind. What it promises, it gives - a fascinating insight into life in an African village as seen and interpreted by a Christian man. We are privileged to be given a penetrating... more
This book bursts like a breath of fresh air into the reader's mind. What it promises, it gives - a fascinating insight into life in an African village as seen and interpreted by a Christian man. We are privileged to be given a penetrating glimpse of life for this man over just three days - three days packed with work, domestic life and family problems, and church services, including funerals (ever-present in Africa). I commend this book to anyone teaching or studying missiology, but also to anyone interested in mission work.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Can a white man thrive living in an African village? What problems are caused by the generosity of western people in Africa? Does Western wisdom work in Africa? Philo commits himself life-long to serve the poor. His adventure takes him to... more
Can a white man thrive living in an African village? What problems are caused by the generosity of western people in Africa? Does Western wisdom work in Africa? Philo commits himself life-long to serve the poor. His adventure takes him to Zambia where he rapidly learns new things. Some fellow missionaries are not impressed with the change in direction that Philo makes. He makes a new start in Holima, a fictional African country. “I did not realize that it was so easy to be so stupid,” Philo’s friend concedes. Philo is adopted by an African tribe. He in turn adopts and rears their orphans. Philo is determined to serve God in the churches he finds in Africa. Many have a very African style. Can Philo convince western people that a vulnerable approach is the best way to reach Africa? This is an account, based on a true story, of God’s powerful acts shown through human weakness.
Book Review of African Heartbeat: A Novel
March 9, 2018
Beth Snodderly
This book review was originally published in the William Carey International Development Journal. One of the key themes in the book being reviewed, dependency, has been a frequent theme in the journal Ralph Winter founded and edited, Mission Frontiers. Glenn Schwartz was a frequent contributor on that theme and one of his earlier articles, “How Missionary Attitudes Can Create Dependency,” has a lot in common with some of the themes this novel illustrates.
In his novel, African Heartbeat and a Vulnerable Fool, WCIU adjunct faculty member Jim Harries gives the Western reader an opportunity to vicariously experience an immersion in African cultures with all the confusing realities. It is based on true stories and events, and takes place in the fictional African country of Holima.
Presenting “novel” concepts in fictional form is a good way to get past peoples’ initial resistance to some of the “vulnerable mission” thinking Jim Harries has been trying for years to get across to Western mission agencies and workers. The descriptions of the people and surroundings are compelling. Through interesting dialog and circumstances we learn about the dilemma of a white missionary, Philo, wondering if he should do things the African way along with the humble acknowledgment that he doesn’t know the answers. Many interesting adventures illustrate the African way of life in contrast to the missionaries’ comfortable, more luxurious lives.
Compelling stories enable readers to discover for themselves numerous cultural misunderstandings. Among the difficult issues raised in the narrative are the problems with the use of English instead of African languages, style of punishment, sustainability of capitalism in Africa, African vs. Western leadership of institutions, sense of time, foreign money and gifts, different ways of reasoning, understanding of land, work ethic, the reasons for poverty, what is poverty, Western assumptions that do not fit the cultural context, witchcraft, exorcism of demons, “what is truth?”, dependency, outside resources, the possibility of development, and problems caused by Western generosity,
This book would be a good resource for prospective cross-cultural workers to help them be aware of what they are “going to meet up with” (p. 165). Order information for the book, published in the UK, is located here.
Book Review of African Heartbeat: A Novel
March 9, 2018
Beth Snodderly
This book review was originally published in the William Carey International Development Journal. One of the key themes in the book being reviewed, dependency, has been a frequent theme in the journal Ralph Winter founded and edited, Mission Frontiers. Glenn Schwartz was a frequent contributor on that theme and one of his earlier articles, “How Missionary Attitudes Can Create Dependency,” has a lot in common with some of the themes this novel illustrates.
In his novel, African Heartbeat and a Vulnerable Fool, WCIU adjunct faculty member Jim Harries gives the Western reader an opportunity to vicariously experience an immersion in African cultures with all the confusing realities. It is based on true stories and events, and takes place in the fictional African country of Holima.
Presenting “novel” concepts in fictional form is a good way to get past peoples’ initial resistance to some of the “vulnerable mission” thinking Jim Harries has been trying for years to get across to Western mission agencies and workers. The descriptions of the people and surroundings are compelling. Through interesting dialog and circumstances we learn about the dilemma of a white missionary, Philo, wondering if he should do things the African way along with the humble acknowledgment that he doesn’t know the answers. Many interesting adventures illustrate the African way of life in contrast to the missionaries’ comfortable, more luxurious lives.
Compelling stories enable readers to discover for themselves numerous cultural misunderstandings. Among the difficult issues raised in the narrative are the problems with the use of English instead of African languages, style of punishment, sustainability of capitalism in Africa, African vs. Western leadership of institutions, sense of time, foreign money and gifts, different ways of reasoning, understanding of land, work ethic, the reasons for poverty, what is poverty, Western assumptions that do not fit the cultural context, witchcraft, exorcism of demons, “what is truth?”, dependency, outside resources, the possibility of development, and problems caused by Western generosity,
This book would be a good resource for prospective cross-cultural workers to help them be aware of what they are “going to meet up with” (p. 165). Order information for the book, published in the UK, is located here.
Research Interests:
What if the whole “God delusion” approach is a neo-colonial imposition at the linguistic and philosophical level? Could it lead to unmitigated disasters in intercultural communication and development work? This paradigm-challenging book... more
What if the whole “God delusion” approach is a neo-colonial imposition at the linguistic and philosophical level? Could it lead to unmitigated disasters in intercultural communication and development work? This paradigm-challenging book points to the necessity, in light of contemporary impasse in intercultural understanding, of God’s involvement in the encounter between the West and the majority world, especially Africa. Failure to account for God, the cradle of imagination operative in human hearts and minds, has resulted in a black hole that deeply troubles intercultural engagement between the West and others. While drawing on his personal long-term field experience in Africa, the author cites contemporary scholarly western literature on philosophy, anthropology, “religion,” and beyond. Ironically the West, which values dualism, instead of seeking to share it with majority world people, wrongly presupposes its universality. A proactive compliance to the countering of “racism,” and to the demotion of impacts of human imagination to understanding, contribute to this. Effective education must be from known to unknown, this text emphasizes. Enabling African people to build understanding on their own epistemological foundations might be more important than exporting of pre-packaged languages and educational systems from the West.
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The natural world alone provides an insufficient foundation for life. African people , as others, look elsewhere for guidance. The secularism implicitly taught in educational systems throughout the African continent frequently fails to... more
The natural world alone provides an insufficient foundation for life. African people , as others, look elsewhere for guidance. The secularism implicitly taught in educational systems throughout the African continent frequently fails to engage with weaknesses in today's status quo. Here-uncovered Christian roots of secularism can provide a means to interact with African and majority world realities. It is time for dominant western scholars to stop ignoring activity in the divine realm. This book starts by delving deeply into indigenous African Christian expression. Through discussion on the English category religion, it throws light on pressing issues in the contemporary world.
Research Interests: Religion, Christianity, Gender Studies, Anthropology, Education, and 13 moreDevelopment Studies, Theology, Postcolonial Studies, Sustainable Development, Africa, Missiology and Mission Theology, Secularization, Evangelicalism, Evangelism, African Indigenous Churches, Secularism, African Christianity, and Vulnerable Mission
Given that dominant models of intervention into the majority world have been found wanting (Africa certainly being a case in point), there is certainly a need for champions. This raises the question of how one is to find these “champions”... more
Given that dominant models of intervention into the majority world have been found wanting (Africa certainly being a case in point), there is certainly a need for champions. This raises the question of how one is to find these “champions” who can follow alternative “vulnerable” means of intervention. I believe it is biblical teaching and the power of God’s Spirit that produces true “champions.” The deep influence of Christian teaching in the West over many centuries has continued to influence our secular era. As a result, even many Western people who no longer confess Christ have been so profoundly affected by this kind of ethic as to be able also to appreciate the role of champions. The closer people are to their Christian roots, the more likely they will be able to express this kind of behaviour. The church can, through the production of champions, begin to counter the problems that still plague the people in the developing world who are disenfranchised and dependent.
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I take the helpful side of the secularism that has arisen from an “incarnation of the sacred” into the material (physical) world, in turn enabling an escape from superstition, to be dualism. Hence I take dualism as being an essentially... more
I take the helpful side of the secularism that has arisen from an “incarnation of the sacred” into the material (physical) world, in turn enabling an escape from superstition, to be dualism. Hence I take dualism as being an essentially desirable quality, liberating people from having to find a spiritual cause for every material effect. Secularism could be praised for its help in this liberation. Dualism is that aspect of western society that has enabled the discovery of nature and of science. I take dualism as having arisen from Christianity, and to some extent Judaism before it. Aspects and degrees of dualism have certainly also emerged from other religions, but in its more extreme modern forms it is Christian in origin. I take dualism as inherently good because it articulates aspects of the truth of God and can maintain both a proper distance and a proper connection between the material and the spiritual. By contrast, African monism has too little distance and secularism has too little connection. I take secularism as being a deceptive over-application of dualism. I take the impact of Christianity that moves positivists and African monists towards dualism to be a good impact. I take this impact to be inherent in the gospel, and a part of the plan of God regarding the gospel.
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Many contemporary scholars pass over the fact that sacrifice was once universal with little consideration. “Why on earth did those people used to ritually slaughter animals, or even other people?” seems to be as far as they go. Prior... more
Many contemporary scholars pass over the fact that sacrifice was once universal with little consideration. “Why on earth did those people used to ritually slaughter animals, or even other people?” seems to be as far as they go. Prior eons’ common habit of lining up cattle for ritual slaughter, and often people the same, no longer makes any sense, so we think they must have been stupid, and want to forget about it.
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people trafficking; migration and mission; money and power; the value of serving long-term; the Prosperity Gospel.
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critique of integral mission; the danger of westerners as benefactors; the value of true generosity; working in indigenous languages; westerners bearing gifts.
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... the #MeToo movement; Universal Basic Incomes; the impact of western aid on indigenous understandings of marriage.
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Ilikuwa baada ya miaka mingi … Wengine wameshasahau ndoto ile ya Mfalme, na maneno yake, na maisha ya Saulo. Lakini, pale Babuloni, walibaki wengine ambao hawakusahau. Hawa ndio walizidi kutafuta jinsi Mungu atatekeleza mpango wake wa... more
Ilikuwa baada ya miaka mingi … Wengine wameshasahau ndoto ile ya Mfalme, na maneno yake, na maisha ya Saulo. Lakini, pale Babuloni, walibaki wengine ambao hawakusahau. Hawa ndio walizidi kutafuta jinsi Mungu atatekeleza mpango wake wa kuharibu wafalme wakubwa duniani ili habari njema yake ya upendo itawale duniani. Hawa walikuwa wanaendelea na shuguli zao za uganga, wakitarajia siku moja watapewa ufunuo upya ili waachane na shuguli hizo. Ilifika wakati ambapo Mungu akawatumia ishara. Akawaambia waende penye asili ya Wayadui ili wagundue mambo ya Mungu. Wakaenda Yerusalemu. Baada ya kuuliza uliza, wakaelekezwa Bethlehemu. Walipofika walimwona mtoto, alitokea siyo kulingana na kazi za binadamu, lakini kufuatia kazi za Roho wa Mungu. Wakamsujudia. Wakampa zawadi waliyobeba, wa dhahabu, uvumba na manemane. Tangu siku hiyo, wakaachana na uganga wao wenye udanganyifu wakijiunga na kazi za kuitangaza injili ya Bwana Yesu.
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We urge some missionaries to practice their ministry using the languages and resources of the people they are reaching. This will honour the indigenous. It is a Christ-like starting point for sharing the Gospel in contextualized ways.... more
We urge some missionaries to practice their ministry using the languages and resources of the people they are reaching. This will honour the indigenous. It is a Christ-like starting point for sharing the Gospel in contextualized ways.
This will be a three-day residential conference. It will be held in September 2021 in the English country house at the attractive rural location of the UK’s premier missionary training college, near Ware in Hertfordshire.
This will be a three-day residential conference. It will be held in September 2021 in the English country house at the attractive rural location of the UK’s premier missionary training college, near Ware in Hertfordshire.
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Should the majority world be the target of patronage from rich missionaries? Outside Christian workers who build on foreign presuppositions in work amongst indigenous communities can, especially when foreign funded and using outside... more
Should the majority world be the target of patronage from rich missionaries?
Outside Christian workers who build on foreign presuppositions in work amongst indigenous communities can, especially when foreign funded and using outside languages, be interpreted as riding roughshod over indigenous sensibilities. True empowerment of local people requires getting alongside them. This necessitates vulnerability to their position and context. Such vulnerability can best be achieved if one shares the Gospel using indigenous languages utilising local resources.
Outside Christian workers who build on foreign presuppositions in work amongst indigenous communities can, especially when foreign funded and using outside languages, be interpreted as riding roughshod over indigenous sensibilities. True empowerment of local people requires getting alongside them. This necessitates vulnerability to their position and context. Such vulnerability can best be achieved if one shares the Gospel using indigenous languages utilising local resources.
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Outside Christian workers who build on foreign presuppositions in work amongst indigenous communities can, especially when foreign funded and using outside languages, be interpreted as riding roughshod over indigenous sensibilities. True... more
Outside Christian workers who build on foreign presuppositions in work amongst indigenous communities can, especially when foreign funded and using outside languages, be interpreted as riding roughshod over indigenous sensibilities. True empowerment of local people requires getting alongside them. This necessitates vulnerability to their position and context. Such vulnerability can best be achieved if one shares the Gospel using indigenous languages utilising local resources.
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Conference notice - vulnerable mission conference, to be held at All Nations Christian College, UK, May/June 2018.
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From the 8th to the 11th November, 2017, the American branch of the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission held a consultation at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA, USA. The host for the event was the Stanway Institute for Mission... more
From the 8th to the 11th November, 2017, the American branch of the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission held a consultation at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA, USA. The host for the event was the Stanway Institute for Mission and Evangelism, which is under the direction of the Rev. Dr. John A. Macdonald. Presenters were Dr. Jim Harries, and Dr. Stan Nussbaum, founders of the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission, Jean Johnson, Fred Lewis, Carol Lewis, Gena Thomas, and Peter Sholl, Director of MOCLAM, the Moore College in Latin America theological training program. The focus of the consultation was: “Moving Beyond Post-Colonial Dependency: Developing Sustainability through Vulnerability.”
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Opening story: 'How to be mistaken for God in an African supermarket.' An agriculturalist called to services in the majority world commits for lifetime service. Africa is not what he expected. The agriculturalist becomes a bible teacher.... more
Opening story: 'How to be mistaken for God in an African supermarket.' An agriculturalist called to services in the majority world commits for lifetime service. Africa is not what he expected. The agriculturalist becomes a bible teacher. Mission senders do not want their people to be vulnerable. What to do: you've been called by God, but authorities don't agree? The honourable option is to carry on, not in defiance, but in weakness. From a position of vulnerability on the field, amazing things begin to be evident. What is called anti-racism in the West, is flattening the truth in Africa! Visiting scholars and missionaries who use English, with money to give, might get the wrong end of the stick. Contemporary systems of sending Western missionaries are epistemologically faulty. If the system is set up to deny the truth of Christ, then there's a problem with the system.
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Somo hili litaiangalia pengo inayobaki ambayo wengi hawaijali, kati ya Kiingereza na Kiswahili. Pengo hii ni muhimu sana kuangaliwa, kwa ajili ya mambo mengi Tanzania siku hizi yanayoangaliwa kupitia Kiingereza, hali ambayo haizangatii... more
Somo hili litaiangalia pengo inayobaki ambayo wengi hawaijali, kati ya Kiingereza na Kiswahili. Pengo hii ni muhimu sana kuangaliwa, kwa ajili ya mambo mengi Tanzania siku hizi yanayoangaliwa kupitia Kiingereza, hali ambayo haizangatii utofauti unaokuwa kati ya lugha na utamaduni wa Kiingereza na wa Kiswahili.
Sana sana Kenya, tuna makanisa yaliyoanzishwa bara hii ya Afrika, ambayo hayawategemee Wazungu kwa mali au maarifa. Uhusiano na makanisa hayo yanaweza kutusaidia kufahamu jinsi ya kuujenga msingi usiokuwa na utegemeo/tegemezi wa nje na usiofaa kwa kanisa la Afrika.
Wamisionari wazungu wengine wanahitaji kuhimizwe wafanye huduma zao kupitia lugha na utamaduni wa wale wenyeji ambao wanajaribu kuwafikia na injili.
Lengo la mwalimu pia ni kwamba ajifunze kutoka kwa wanafunzi kulingana na uzoefu wa muda mrefu walio nao wengi wao.
Sana sana Kenya, tuna makanisa yaliyoanzishwa bara hii ya Afrika, ambayo hayawategemee Wazungu kwa mali au maarifa. Uhusiano na makanisa hayo yanaweza kutusaidia kufahamu jinsi ya kuujenga msingi usiokuwa na utegemeo/tegemezi wa nje na usiofaa kwa kanisa la Afrika.
Wamisionari wazungu wengine wanahitaji kuhimizwe wafanye huduma zao kupitia lugha na utamaduni wa wale wenyeji ambao wanajaribu kuwafikia na injili.
Lengo la mwalimu pia ni kwamba ajifunze kutoka kwa wanafunzi kulingana na uzoefu wa muda mrefu walio nao wengi wao.
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This book explains why language policy in the once-colonised world seems to be haywire: language theories on which policy was built prior to and into the 20 th century have subsequently been found to have been "absurd notions, prejudices,... more
This book explains why language policy in the once-colonised world seems to be haywire: language theories on which policy was built prior to and into the 20 th century have subsequently been found to have been "absurd notions, prejudices, mirages, and fictions" (155). Errington explores European people's understanding of language, missionary and secular, beginning in the 9 th century, to time of writing. He finds myriad ways in which declared comprehension of language, that often included absurd ideas, was used to colonialist's (and secularist's, for example in supporting Darwin's theory of evolution (71)) advantage.
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Why are anthropologists blindly following Descartes? If this article is a correct representation of anthropologists’ faith in the man-made dualistic distinction between natural and supernatural, real and unreal, mind and matter, and... more
Why are anthropologists blindly following Descartes?
If this article is a correct representation of anthropologists’ faith in the man-made dualistic distinction between natural and supernatural, real and unreal, mind and matter, and other elements of Cartesian thinking, then we should be very alert to ways in which anthropological work can mislead.
If this article is a correct representation of anthropologists’ faith in the man-made dualistic distinction between natural and supernatural, real and unreal, mind and matter, and other elements of Cartesian thinking, then we should be very alert to ways in which anthropological work can mislead.
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Evens perceives instrumental rationality, that is the dualistic rationality, understanding, and theory-making that underlies modern thought, to be a subset of ‘total understanding’, which is mythic understanding. (Because the instrumental... more
Evens perceives instrumental rationality, that is the dualistic rationality, understanding, and theory-making that underlies modern thought, to be a subset of ‘total understanding’, which is mythic understanding. (Because the instrumental arises from the mythical, it is in this basic sense also mythical.) Moderns habitually avoid being open-minded in order to conceal their dependence on the mythical. They prefer to consider dualism rather than the mythical to be the means of access to reality and the perception of truth (23). Considering the ground of Western thinking to be other than dualism (objectivity, and so on) threatens to undermine the integrity of Western thought (11). Western thought is closed to, i.e., cannot tolerate (315), its own foundations (408). Anthropology itself despite being rooted in modernity, must following the above, have an ontology, be metaphysical, and build on the mystical. For Evens, the mythical both incorporates, and is basic to, the rational. The mythical, that appears monist from a perspective of the rational, is better understood as being nondualistic than as being monist. The thinking of pre-modern people, like the Dinka of Sudan, does not divide reality into natural versus supernatural (335-347).
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Sigenus compares use made of the term impuciko (simply speaking, civilisation) and related terms, by native speakers of isiXhosa, between the period around the start of the 20th Century, and that of the beginning of the 21st Century. She... more
Sigenus compares use made of the term impuciko (simply speaking, civilisation) and related terms, by native speakers of isiXhosa, between the period around the start of the 20th Century, and that of the beginning of the 21st Century. She draws conclusions that favour African over and against European languages for use in African societies today.
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The particular value I see in this book is in its description of the nature of envy in early Christian communities. This provides assurance that the envy these days widespread in Africa is not a racial feature, but simply natural to... more
The particular value I see in this book is in its description of the nature of envy in early Christian communities. This provides assurance that the envy these days widespread in Africa is not a racial feature, but simply natural to mankind without Christ. The book telling us how such envy was tackled gives us clues regarding how Africa might overcome its addiction to envy and witchcraft.
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This innovative, qualitative ethnographic research considers how whites do things when seeking to achieve meaningful reconciliation within a mixed-race congregation. Grohmann immersed himself in a multi-cultural church in Cape Town, South... more
This innovative, qualitative ethnographic research considers how whites do things when seeking to achieve meaningful reconciliation within a mixed-race congregation. Grohmann immersed himself in a multi-cultural church in Cape Town, South Africa. He investigated three questions: (1) to what extent white people were aware of their continuing socio-economic and ‘languacultural’ privilege and dominance; (2) how white people imagined the idea of reconciliation, given their understanding of inter-cultural power relationships; and (3) what reconciliation in this context looked like at a practical level for white people.
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This review of Brown's book takes a perspective of Christian Mission to the majority World, especially Africa. The author of this review has spent nearly 30 years, while serving in Africa, encouraging other missionaries to be vulnerable.... more
This review of Brown's book takes a perspective of Christian Mission to the majority World, especially Africa. The author of this review has spent nearly 30 years, while serving in Africa, encouraging other missionaries to be vulnerable. Hence his fascination with Brown’s observations on vulnerability.
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The apparent ability of quantified research to present truth objectively, is seductive, Merry tells us. She focuses on indicators, these days used by international bodies, especially the UN, to hold peoples accountable to prescriptions... more
The apparent ability of quantified research to present truth objectively, is seductive, Merry tells us. She focuses on indicators, these days used by international bodies, especially the UN, to hold peoples accountable to prescriptions that they have formally signed up to.
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Other reviews of this book: https://sun.academia.edu/MarcusGrohmann/Book-Reviews Dr. Jim Harries lives out his faith in Christ among a people he dearly loves, serving humbly and wholly. His deep respect for African ways and his... more
Other reviews of this book: https://sun.academia.edu/MarcusGrohmann/Book-Reviews
Dr. Jim Harries lives out his faith in Christ among a people he dearly loves, serving humbly and wholly. His deep respect for African ways and his commitment to the African church community resonate in his writings. This particular work can be easily misunderstood, as it addresses controversial intercultural issues pertaining to race and racism, using contemporary terms which are defined and understood differently by persons with opposing views on the subject. The title may, in itself, be off-putting, but begs for serious engagement. Harries is neither a provocateur nor zealot. However, he speaks boldly and honestly against what he considers an insidious and harmful ideology.
Dr. Jim Harries lives out his faith in Christ among a people he dearly loves, serving humbly and wholly. His deep respect for African ways and his commitment to the African church community resonate in his writings. This particular work can be easily misunderstood, as it addresses controversial intercultural issues pertaining to race and racism, using contemporary terms which are defined and understood differently by persons with opposing views on the subject. The title may, in itself, be off-putting, but begs for serious engagement. Harries is neither a provocateur nor zealot. However, he speaks boldly and honestly against what he considers an insidious and harmful ideology.
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Rhodes is an American missionary working in north Africa. His task – is to endeavour to persuade people to receive good news, who are very stuck on ‘bad news’! (At least, that’s one way for me, and I do not understand much about Islam, to... more
Rhodes is an American missionary working in north Africa. His task – is to endeavour to persuade people to receive good news, who are very stuck on ‘bad news’! (At least, that’s one way for me, and I do not understand much about Islam, to put it.) Many see this, convincing people that there is good news, to be a pretty important role in today’s world, where many people are discouraged.
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Review and interpretation of: Deumert, Ana & Storch, Anne & Shepherd, Nick, (eds.) 2020, Colonial and Decolonial Linguistics: Knowledges and Epistemes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Although what contributors have written is diverse... more
Review and interpretation of:
Deumert, Ana & Storch, Anne & Shepherd, Nick, (eds.) 2020, Colonial and Decolonial Linguistics: Knowledges and Epistemes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Although what contributors have written is diverse in its own way, they all run up against, and respond to, the same blind spot. Knowledge of the 'missing blind spot' enables, according to this reviewer, a simple response to most of the issues raised, and unveiling of the mystery that both puzzles contributors, and provides their 'ammunition'.
Deumert, Ana & Storch, Anne & Shepherd, Nick, (eds.) 2020, Colonial and Decolonial Linguistics: Knowledges and Epistemes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Although what contributors have written is diverse in its own way, they all run up against, and respond to, the same blind spot. Knowledge of the 'missing blind spot' enables, according to this reviewer, a simple response to most of the issues raised, and unveiling of the mystery that both puzzles contributors, and provides their 'ammunition'.
Research Interests: History, Anthropology, Africa, Colonialism, Linguistics, and 3 moreLanguage Choice, Book Review, and Mission
A review and brief commentary on: Reynolds, Thomas E., 2008, Vulnerable Communion: a theology of disability and hospitality. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press. "This is why Reynolds can consider the ‘cult of normalcy’ to be a “moral... more
A review and brief commentary on: Reynolds, Thomas E., 2008, Vulnerable Communion: a theology of disability and hospitality. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press.
"This is why Reynolds can consider the ‘cult of normalcy’ to be a “moral evil.” By prompting us to flee from our vulnerabilities (such as the ability to not only ‘suffer the other’, but also to truly love them), encouraging us to purchase recognition, the cult of normalcy seeks to deprive us of the very relationships, including relationship with God, that are the stuff of life, of true value, genuine welcome, faithfulness to one another, commitment in the face of adversity and so on; even of life to eternity."
"This is why Reynolds can consider the ‘cult of normalcy’ to be a “moral evil.” By prompting us to flee from our vulnerabilities (such as the ability to not only ‘suffer the other’, but also to truly love them), encouraging us to purchase recognition, the cult of normalcy seeks to deprive us of the very relationships, including relationship with God, that are the stuff of life, of true value, genuine welcome, faithfulness to one another, commitment in the face of adversity and so on; even of life to eternity."
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Reynold ist der erste Autor, auf den ich gestoßen bin, der einen sehr ähnlichen Ansatz verfolgt wie ich in meinem, kürzlich erschienenen Buch How Western Anti-Racism Harms Africa and How we can do Better darstellte. In dieser Rezension... more
Reynold ist der erste Autor, auf den ich gestoßen bin, der einen sehr ähnlichen Ansatz verfolgt wie ich in meinem, kürzlich erschienenen Buch How Western Anti-Racism Harms Africa and How we can do Better darstellte. In dieser Rezension möchte ich einige der Parallelen zwischen seinem und meinem Denken durchleuchten.
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Healthy engagement with the majority world requires bringing things that are in contemporary times considered non-existent, back into existence. This review of chapter 6 of: Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, 2016, Epistemologies of the... more
Healthy engagement with the majority world requires bringing things that are in contemporary times considered non-existent, back into existence.
This review of chapter 6 of: Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, 2016, Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. London: Routledge and Francis Group engages this process.
This review of chapter 6 of: Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, 2016, Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. London: Routledge and Francis Group engages this process.
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Schirrmacher (a prominent Islamic scholar and wife of the WEA's Secretary General) carefully defines the nature of the democracy to which she refers. The Arab Spring did not lead to democracy as the West knows it, she tells us. Prominent... more
Schirrmacher (a prominent Islamic scholar and wife of the WEA's Secretary General) carefully defines the nature of the democracy to which she refers. The Arab Spring did not lead to democracy as the West knows it, she tells us. Prominent Muslim theologians are not in favour of human rights as known by the West, or as promoted by today's recognized global bodies, although many Muslims in these
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This is my second review of this book. This review was published.
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If religion isn’t disappearing (as many scholars once anticipated would happen), then surely, because it shapes scholars, any ‘ethic of the scholar’ should permit religion in the university. So argues Wolterstorff in this short book.
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Contemporary opposition to Christianity in Europe is illogical. Liberals scapegoat Christians for their own purposes. Anti-clericalism is massive. Europe is left with nothing but positivism. Although seemingly in favour of some... more
Contemporary opposition to Christianity in Europe is illogical. Liberals scapegoat Christians for their own purposes. Anti-clericalism is massive. Europe is left with nothing but positivism. Although seemingly in favour of some rationalisation of the Gospel, Pera considers belief in God to be necessary for effective morality. Today’s multiculturalism is, according to Pera, groundless. We need not be concerned about Christianity’s becoming in an unhealthy way ‘fundamentalist’, because of its own deeply rooted profoundly implicit teachings on love. Contemporary liberalism is endeavouring to fulfil two opposing requirements, of justice and of freedom. This effort is turning states into being controlling and totalitarian (p49). Meanwhile, contemporary democracy is put at risk through a rising trend of key morally-related decisions being made by non-elected bodies, such as the legislature.
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Review of: Simonse, Simon, Kings of Disaster: Dualism, Centralism and the Scapegoat King in Southeastern Sudan. This review of Simonse’s book is designed for a missiological readership. The book could also be of great value to people... more
Review of: Simonse, Simon, Kings of Disaster: Dualism, Centralism and the Scapegoat King in Southeastern Sudan.
This review of Simonse’s book is designed for a missiological readership. The book could also be of great value to people concerned with the Southern Sudanese context. It throws much light on indigenous ethnicities and their internal and external relationships, extending back over two centuries. It is a worthy ground-up advocacy for the ongoing relevance of Girardian thinking.
This review of Simonse’s book is designed for a missiological readership. The book could also be of great value to people concerned with the Southern Sudanese context. It throws much light on indigenous ethnicities and their internal and external relationships, extending back over two centuries. It is a worthy ground-up advocacy for the ongoing relevance of Girardian thinking.
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The cover of Tom Holland’s book, Dominion: the making of the Western mind, makes no mention of Christianity. This reflects his core thesis: The Gospel that transformed the world for the better, has to many become an embarrassment. Holland... more
The cover of Tom Holland’s book, Dominion: the making of the Western mind, makes no mention of Christianity. This reflects his core thesis: The Gospel that transformed the world for the better, has to many become an embarrassment. Holland pursues truth in a way that would be accepted by secular people. He writes from a perspective of a sceptic rather than as a believer in the Gospel. An accomplished historian, he wondered what transformed the brutality of the Roman and other empires in antiquity, of which he had learned in prior research, into the contemporary Western world that is concerned for the poor and for outcasts.
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Kendi’s insights are authenticated by his himself having been a ‘victim’ of the kinds of racism he endeavours to oppose. His reflexive style, his readiness to repent and start again, his wide knowledge from wide reading, render this an... more
Kendi’s insights are authenticated by his himself having been a ‘victim’ of the kinds of racism he endeavours to oppose. His reflexive style, his readiness to repent and start again, his wide knowledge from wide reading, render this an invaluable book. His declaring some contingent theories as if they are ‘truths’, and his ignoring of or gross omission of the myriad ways in which his core issues are Biblical, detract from this text. Kendi’s thinking being largely confined to a context where Blacks are in the minority, denies him insights he might gain from more genuine ‘Black spaces’ than he is used to in America. He could find such in Africa itself. Many in Africa covet the kinds of access to Whites that American Blacks can take for granted, or disparage. (That is not to say that African people want to adopt ‘White culture’!) I thank Kendi for his honesty and openness; he’s the kind of person I would like to meet. Has he told us how to be an antiracist? Depends whether you want to wear a straitjacket.
Video recording of this review here: https://youtu.be/41HHD533ko4
Video recording of this review here: https://youtu.be/41HHD533ko4
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The author of this book, one soon discovers, is no impassionate researcher. Thigpen sheds tears during her interviews. She stands up emotionally for people who, as a result of not being able to read, identify themselves as shamed,... more
The author of this book, one soon discovers, is no impassionate researcher. Thigpen sheds tears during her interviews. She stands up emotionally for people who, as a result of not being able to read, identify themselves as shamed, degraded, left behind, ignorant, or poor. Her actions demonstrate her implicit advocacy: we should shed tears with the poor, for the poor. For her, getting connection with people is more important than other missiological methods, like good ways of telling stories. Connection trumps other missiological methodologies.
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What Diangelo is describing as white fragility, is a scenario that arises when an outsider unashamedly simply and apparently effectively questions or undermines one’s foundational beliefs. Whites’ understanding of history tells them that... more
What Diangelo is describing as white fragility, is a scenario that arises when an outsider unashamedly simply and apparently effectively questions or undermines one’s foundational beliefs. Whites’ understanding of history tells them that their grasp of science and objectivity, that is related to their having been the ones to initiate industry, democracy and civilisation, means that they are superior. In effect, secular whites have usurped the role of God. Thus, what Diangelo describes is none other than responses by whites to blasphemy by those who question their 'ascendancy'. Secular whites do not realise that this is what is happening. (Neither do Christian Whites, whose Christianity has appropriated many aspects of secular society.) The obvious solution, is to put God back in charge.
Audio visual summary of this review here: https://youtu.be/PquLg8PYYCc
Audio visual summary of this review here: https://youtu.be/PquLg8PYYCc
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Endless anomalies are thrown up by QP (quantum physics). These include “spooky action” (158), instantaneous creations of new worlds (237), and cats that are neither dead nor alive (2). These plague contemporary QP. In order to make sense... more
Endless anomalies are thrown up by QP (quantum physics). These include “spooky action” (158), instantaneous creations of new worlds (237), and cats that are neither dead nor alive (2). These plague contemporary QP. In order to make sense of QP, many find that faith in the miraculous is required. Miracles found in physics’ research end up “masquerading as ... ‘law[s] of nature’ (68).” Ironically; while some ‘scientifically minded’ people today consider ‘religion’ illegitimate because of its dependence on the miraculous; physics, the queen of sciences, produces miracles galore! Bayesianism’s pointing to the role of human agents in explorations of QP as the stuff of ‘miracle’ solves these dilemmas, so rescuing ‘reality.’ That is to say: unlike other scientists exploring QP, Von Baeyer is not suggesting that ‘miracles happen’. He says instead that people who will never be able to grasp ultimate reality are left with gaps in knowledge that seem to require ‘filling’ by things that sound so incredible as to be considered ‘miraculous’. In other words; that which produces appearance of the miraculous is the involvement of people in experiments.
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Girard outlines how the bible explains ways in which violence arises from people’s selfish desire. Then he outlines how the enigma involved is made visible by the Bible. It goes on to show how Jesus, by giving his life in the place of... more
Girard outlines how the bible explains ways in which violence arises from people’s selfish desire. Then he outlines how the enigma involved is made visible by the Bible. It goes on to show how Jesus, by giving his life in the place of sacrificed victims, has enabled an overcoming of the fearful belief that other people are our number one enemies. Instead, Jesus’ resurrection promises us a rising from the dead. I recommend this book.
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Many assume Hinduism to be the ‘religion’ of Indian people. Careful research reveals that ‘Hinduism,’ as we now know it, was not there before colonialists reached India. Because it was colonialists who turned Indian people’s way of life... more
Many assume Hinduism to be the ‘religion’ of Indian people. Careful research reveals that ‘Hinduism,’ as we now know it, was not there before colonialists reached India. Because it was colonialists who turned Indian people’s way of life into “a scripture-based religion akin to Abrahamic religions,” Hinduism is a product of the impact of colonialism on India. So then, Hinduism, as it is now known, as officially the ‘religion’ of India, was made by British colonialists. They ‘made it’ by applying wisdom they acquired from their Semitic background (i.e. their Christian faith) to what they found in India. British Christians (i.e. the colonialists) interpreted the unfamiliar (what they found in India) with what to them was familiar (the Church back home), building on the Bible.
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Kroesbergen, Hermen, 2019, The Language of Faith in Southern Africa: spirit world, power, community, holism. HTS Religion and Society Series. Volume 6. Cape Town: AOSIS (Pty) Ltd. (This book is available for free pdf download here:... more
Kroesbergen, Hermen, 2019, The Language of Faith in Southern Africa: spirit world, power, community, holism. HTS Religion and Society Series. Volume 6. Cape Town: AOSIS (Pty) Ltd. (This book is available for free pdf download here: https://books.aosis.co.za/index.php/ob/catalog/book/117 )
Kroesbergen does a wonderful job of upsetting sacred cows in Western belief. These include that spirits ‘exist’ in ephemeral bodies, that Africans are community oriented (as the West understands ‘community’), that holism and Ubuntu are entirely wonderful, that African people are neither materialistic nor individualistic. Thus Wittgensteinian insights throw helpful light on many aspects of the West’s understanding of Africa.
Kroesbergen does a wonderful job of upsetting sacred cows in Western belief. These include that spirits ‘exist’ in ephemeral bodies, that Africans are community oriented (as the West understands ‘community’), that holism and Ubuntu are entirely wonderful, that African people are neither materialistic nor individualistic. Thus Wittgensteinian insights throw helpful light on many aspects of the West’s understanding of Africa.
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Members of the Fuller Seminary rightly perceived that by holding this conference they were embarking on a sensitive endeavour. Race can be seen from many different angles. My own approach to the concerns raised is as a white missionary... more
Members of the Fuller Seminary rightly perceived that by holding this conference they were embarking on a sensitive endeavour. Race can be seen from many different angles. My own approach to the concerns raised is as a white missionary from the UK working in Africa. My reflections on what I have seen and heard of the conference below are, for obvious reasons, selective, arising from some thoughts that came to mind when reading or listening to the papers.
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In much of this book, Rene Girard is interviewed by Maria Stella Barberi, as a means of follow up on the most controversial issues stirred by him over the years. My review of this book consists of a listing of what are to me the main... more
In much of this book, Rene Girard is interviewed by Maria Stella Barberi, as a means of follow up on the most controversial issues stirred by him over the years. My review of this book consists of a listing of what are to me the main mind-blowing challenging key points that I note Girard as making, alongside the approximate page on which they are discussed.
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A hint by a friend enabled me to discover an author who takes all the above seriously. Frenchman René Girard set out to discover what all ‘religions’ had in common. Instead of discovering an ‘essence’ of religion, he found that something... more
A hint by a friend enabled me to discover an author who takes all the above seriously. Frenchman René Girard set out to discover what all ‘religions’ had in common. Instead of discovering an ‘essence’ of religion, he found that something called religion was always to do with remedying violence. Typically, myths confirm people’s suspicion that there are evil people who are after them. Thus they justify the chasing or even killing of one to save the others. The only contrary example to the above that Girard found, was the Bible. In the Bible, he found, victims (who people want to chase or kill) are declared innocent! Joseph is a good example: his brothers want to kill him, instead they sell him, but because God is with him, the victim prospers.
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I found myself nodding in approval as I read this book. Smith has a sufficient understanding of the intricacies of options in research methodology to titillate the experts. I found myself thinking that her level of understanding was... more
I found myself nodding in approval as I read this book. Smith has a sufficient understanding of the intricacies of options in research methodology to titillate the experts. I found myself thinking that her level of understanding was impressive for an indigenous Maori. My joy was dampened when I realised that underlying her text is really a clear message: ‘you Western researchers aren’t helping us. Get out of the way, and let us indigenous people research ourselves’. My heart sank. I would love for there to be more intimate involvement of Western people with indigenous minorities and majorities. Smith tells us repeatedly that indigenous people are tired of being abused by Western people in the name of ‘research’. Westerners should read this book. It declares a failure of the West.
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My critiques of Ybarrola’s work arise mostly from ways in which his analysis overly confines itself to the US context, and ignores the wider world, e.g. the impact on Blacks outside of the US of what happens in the US. I have four very... more
My critiques of Ybarrola’s work arise mostly from ways in which his analysis overly confines itself to the US context, and ignores the wider world, e.g. the impact on Blacks outside of the US of what happens in the US. I have four very specific critiques of Ybarrola’s article ...
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I look at this book as being a step forward; from seeing religion as a part of development, to perceiving deep ways in which so-called modern development has arisen and seeks to arise again, from commitment to Jesus. The book puts aside a... more
I look at this book as being a step forward; from seeing religion as a part of development, to perceiving deep ways in which so-called modern development has arisen and seeks to arise again, from commitment to Jesus. The book puts aside a still all too popular bias in favour of the secular, making ‘religion’ into a kind of taboo. It points instead to an imminent breaking of nonspiritual hegemony in favour of a global paradigm in which God’s activity amongst his people is recognised.
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Many majority world churches, Jean tells us, do not want to become truly 'indigenous', if that would threaten their financial income. 'Poor' pastors only respond to foreigners who offer money; it seems they are happy to be controlled, if... more
Many majority world churches, Jean tells us, do not want to become truly 'indigenous', if that would threaten their financial income. 'Poor' pastors only respond to foreigners who offer money; it seems they are happy to be controlled, if it pays! Those are just two of many challenging insights that Jean brings in this workbook. Her recommendations are very relevant to and very needed by people engaged in inter-cultural mission from the West. This being a 'workbook', reviews of it should really be on 'how well it worked'. Not being in the West where I have access to a group to 'test it out on', I would nevertheless still like to recommend it ...
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Karen Shaw carries out an extensive survey, including many interviews, of a variety of people living in Lebanon, where she has herself resided for almost 30 years. Herself knowing Arabic, the latter is presumed to be her language of... more
Karen Shaw carries out an extensive survey, including many interviews, of a variety of people living in Lebanon, where she has herself resided for almost 30 years. Herself knowing Arabic, the latter is presumed to be her language of engagement, from which she translates into English, seeking to be accurate to the speakers’ intention. Her aim is to contribute a “theology of money and lifestyle” which will assist ex-pat workers from the West engage more effectively in the Middle East. She very effectively reports, typically by citing interviewees word-for-word (through translation), a profound feeling of having met with and listened closely to people talking from a very non-Western part of the world.
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Authors of this book have embarked on an impossible, but nevertheless important task. Impossible, I suggest, because one cannot effectively evaluate African thinking using English. Important, because the issue they address is critical and... more
Authors of this book have embarked on an impossible, but nevertheless important task. Impossible, I suggest, because one cannot effectively evaluate African thinking using English. Important, because the issue they address is critical and topical. The book is an outcome of debates that occurred at Justo Mwale Theological University in Lusaka, Zambia, in 2012.
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I have found reading this compendium of chapters a fascinating exercise. Sometimes I have been more amazed by what has not been said than what has been said. Nevertheless, it is refreshing to find people grappling with these linguistic... more
I have found reading this compendium of chapters a fascinating exercise. Sometimes I have been more amazed by what has not been said than what has been said. Nevertheless, it is refreshing to find people grappling with these linguistic issues. This review follows the authors of chapters in order. The first paragraph in every case summarises some of the author’s points. The second paragraph includes reflective comments by the author of this review. (The final two chapters of the book are not included in this review.)
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Cultural linguistics, a new discipline of which Sharifian identifies himself as a key originator, discovers new problems and solutions. It focuses on cultural conceptualisations. That is; on the fact that words are conceptualised... more
Cultural linguistics, a new discipline of which Sharifian identifies himself as a key originator, discovers new problems and solutions. It focuses on cultural conceptualisations. That is; on the fact that words are conceptualised differently according to the cultural use made of them by their community. Cognition here considered is not ‘between the ears’, but also of a community. Language is looked at as containing schemas, categories, and metaphors, all of which are culturally grounded.
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In the 19th Century and before, Christianity was assumed by Westerners to be the universal religion that underlay Europe’s universalist aspirations. By the 20th Century, that Christian universalism had been replaced by a list of 11 or so... more
In the 19th Century and before, Christianity was assumed by Westerners to be the universal religion that underlay Europe’s universalist aspirations. By the 20th Century, that Christian universalism had been replaced by a list of 11 or so ‘world religions’. By the 20th Century, it appears, Europeans had got off their high hobby horse, and were acknowledging that ‘their’ Christian religion was only one of many religions. What happened to all that historical universalistic fervour, Masuzawa asks in her book?
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Book Review of: Larsen, Knut Edvard & Jørgensen, Knud, (eds) 2014, Power and Partnership. Oxford: Regnum Books International.
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Book Review
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Book review of: Green, Edward C., and Ruark, Allison Herling, 2011, AIDS Behaviour and Culture: understanding evidence based prevention.Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
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Book review of: Mangalwadi, Vishal, 2011, The Book that made your World: how the bible created the soul of western civilisation. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson.
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I seem to have ‘stumbled across’ a unique model for understanding language. Can someone please help me to better grasp its pedigree?
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These days, the world comes to Europe, but Europeans no longer go to the world (except as tourists). The West, where the world comes to, lives in denial, yet has deeply and profoundly been formed by their, and their ancestors’, Christian... more
These days, the world comes to Europe, but Europeans no longer go to the world (except as tourists). The West, where the world comes to, lives in denial, yet has deeply and profoundly been formed by their, and their ancestors’, Christian faith. So, people coming to Europe, are coming to meet the Jesus who is being denied. That is the Jesus who, in a state of not denying him, Europeans should be sharing with the world. If the need to do that were sufficiently evident, a raison d'être would no longer be lacking for the church in Europe. Necessity would revive the Church.
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So, in short, the thesis I am proposing, for discussion, is that Jesus’ miracles were (are) a means to encourage people to believe that the good is unlimited, and that by these means they can escape the entanglements of envy and... more
So, in short, the thesis I am proposing, for discussion, is that Jesus’ miracles were (are) a means to encourage people to believe that the good is unlimited, and that by these means they can escape the entanglements of envy and inter-human violence that results from it, so as to accept the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom in which God rules and love, not envy, is the way forward. Then, a prosperity-oriented faith in Christ is a necessary precondition for socio-economic development of people of the Majority World.
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One reason at least, for Whites’ reluctance to relativise their own thinking, is ways in which it is integrally aligned with economic understanding. From Adam Smith on, White people’s thinking and behaviour has (apparently ever... more
One reason at least, for Whites’ reluctance to relativise their own thinking, is ways in which it is integrally aligned with economic understanding. From Adam Smith on, White people’s thinking and behaviour has (apparently ever increasingly) been guided by their perception of the physical and economic world around them. They find this absolutely justifiable, as its fruits are demonstrated by numerous evidences of material thriving and economic, scientific, technical and social ‘advance’. To go back to basing one’s thinking on prompts from one’s heart, as evidently people of African origin are inclined to do, to them is suicidal.
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I asked the students at a small pastoral and theological training institute deep in Tanzania, 1 which of all their classes they like the most. They answered 'psychology'. I was a little shocked-'is psychology theology at all, really?'... more
I asked the students at a small pastoral and theological training institute deep in Tanzania, 1 which of all their classes they like the most. They answered 'psychology'. I was a little shocked-'is psychology theology at all, really?' Some Westerners may be glad or impressed, that African pastoral students are sufficiently liberated to appreciate the value of psychology over and above that of studying the Bible. In the contemporary world the West calls the shots, it calls them to be secular, psychology is considered secular, God is considered 'out of date', so here's another victory for modernity! Or is it?
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That the need for a certain kind of inter-human love might be integrally necessary for indigenously powered development of Africa, is rarely considered. This is probably because the existence of inter-human love is widely presupposed. To... more
That the need for a certain kind of inter-human love might be integrally necessary for indigenously powered development of Africa, is rarely considered. This is probably because the existence of inter-human love is widely presupposed. To not assume that African people love one another as do Westerners, likely as it is that this is the case, could be racist. It probably is ‘wrong’ for Europeans to claim that they love one another more than do others – it sounds proud.
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As prelude to our examination of AI systems that can generate coherent meaningful text, we need to consider whether more Western domination of the majority world is appropriate, or not. Without long deep exposure to the MW (Majority... more
As prelude to our examination of AI systems that can generate coherent meaningful text, we need to consider whether more Western domination of the majority world is appropriate, or not. Without long deep exposure to the MW (Majority World), someone from the ‘West’ might not realise the enormous extent to which what goes on in the MW is guided by a Western wisdom that indigenous people who haven’t been immersed in Western contexts over a considerable period of time often do not get at any depth. Advances in communication and related technologies are already enabling distant MW countries formal functions to be almost entirely based on Western reason, with an interface linking that with the indigenous being characterised by corruption. At least, if a living breathing Western person comes to say, Africa, one has some hope they may realise what is going on and how provincial contemporary Western thinking actually is. Yet processes guided by text generating AI may be almost totally blind to African contexts and simply presupposing what is not there in Africa. (I.e., equivalent to this, they may be blind, in global terms, to the peculiarity of what they presuppose.)
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The process of advocating for BT by vulnerable means by those in local contexts will itself be a contribution towards evangelism and discipleship, that will be entirely appropriate for local congregational engagement. For example, in... more
The process of advocating for BT by vulnerable means by those in local contexts will itself be a contribution towards evangelism and discipleship, that will be entirely appropriate for local congregational engagement. For example, in African contexts I am familiar with, important questions over the prioritizing resources for BT as against subsidy of local rituals, political contests, funerals and funerary rites, and so on, will very likely prove vital to the further growth and development of indigenous Christianity.
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There seems to be a profound irony going on … People in the West understand themselves as being ready to LISTEN to others from around the world. They make major efforts at listening to them, through the media, through academia, by making... more
There seems to be a profound irony going on … People in the West understand themselves as being ready to LISTEN to others from around the world. They make major efforts at listening to them, through the media, through academia, by making friends with neighbours who come from foreign countries, and so on. Then, in order to show compassion and love to those concerned, they act on what they learn as a result of their listening. How foreigners are subsequently treated is justified according to the outcomes of the above-described 'listening' processes. This all sounds marvellous.
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Today’s massively funded and hegemonically popular drive for inter-racial economic equality gives license to dualistic Western capitalist people to dominate everyone else. This should be condemned for what it is; profoundly Godless, and... more
Today’s massively funded and hegemonically popular drive for inter-racial economic equality gives license to dualistic Western capitalist people to dominate everyone else. This should be condemned for what it is; profoundly Godless, and destructive towards the poor.
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Many contemporary Western people fail to see relevance in historical preference for monotheism over belief in gods, over sacrifices and sacrificial rituals, and in the prohibition of idols. This short piece endeavors to provide pertinent... more
Many contemporary Western people fail to see relevance in historical preference for monotheism over belief in gods, over sacrifices and sacrificial rituals, and in the prohibition of idols. This short piece endeavors to provide pertinent explanations that can make sense in post-Enlightenment times.
I’d be interested in comments on what I see as ‘work in progress’ trying to unravel an important puzzle!
I’d be interested in comments on what I see as ‘work in progress’ trying to unravel an important puzzle!
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Today’s declaring racism to be illegal, at government level and beyond, constitutes an official damning of socially and economically ‘successful’ people (and peoples) everywhere. Once noted by supposed sufferers of racial prejudice, such... more
Today’s declaring racism to be illegal, at government level and beyond, constitutes an official damning of socially and economically ‘successful’ people (and peoples) everywhere. Once noted by supposed sufferers of racial prejudice, such formally approved condemnation, turns economic equations for them massively in favour of begging and a search for handouts. Engaging in innovation, initiative, thinking for oneself, and self-help from own-understanding, become folly by comparison to the potential size of gain that can arise from agitating for one’s ‘rights.’ ‘Global-minorities’ are thus rendered sub-human in relation to a super-West. The alternative, encouraging people to show mercy and grace to the disadvantaged, certainly has its risks: Perhaps people will not show grace? The main reason this is not preferred today is because it would imply the need to encourage people to show grace, the primary role of faith in Christ, so would upset secular hegemonies.
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Many Western Christians and scholars on Africa are puzzled by the ‘prosperity Gospel’ ; how come African Christians are so convinced that their prayer to God will make them healthy and wealthy? This and climate change advocacy, I suggest,... more
Many Western Christians and scholars on Africa are puzzled by the ‘prosperity Gospel’ ; how come African Christians are so convinced that their prayer to God will make them healthy and wealthy? This and climate change advocacy, I suggest, are related. (Climate-change advocates also want to be healthy and wealthy, needing more conferences, bigger university departments, larger salaries, better PR., etc.)
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My pointing to the universality of belief in gods (spirits) (I consider the terms gods and spirits to be synonyms) constitutes an effort at aiding intercultural understanding between Africa, whose people are often taken to 'believe in... more
My pointing to the universality of belief in gods (spirits) (I consider the terms gods and spirits to be synonyms) constitutes an effort at aiding intercultural understanding between Africa, whose people are often taken to 'believe in gods (spirits)', and Westerners who are taken as not so believing.
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Use of a non-indigenous language for formal purposes in Africa results in the presence of a double standard. One standard, often considered traditional, that is upheld through correct understanding and use of indigenous languages. Use of... more
Use of a non-indigenous language for formal purposes in Africa results in the presence of a double standard. One standard, often considered traditional, that is upheld through correct understanding and use of indigenous languages. Use of a non-indigenous European language for formal purposes implies that there is another standard that should also be upheld. The resulting duplicity is a never-ending problem.
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It can be helpful, for Westerners, to consider ancestral spirits to be a pre-literacy version of books. Many Westerners read a lot. Others receive information from people who have read a lot. Not-Western cultures also need guidance on how... more
It can be helpful, for Westerners, to consider ancestral spirits to be a pre-literacy version of books. Many Westerners read a lot. Others receive information from people who have read a lot. Not-Western cultures also need guidance on how to understand and resolve issues. Most do not have such a literary tradition. The default alternative is recourse to the dead (gods ). Accessing the dead is a key concern. Older people are closer to them. The dead clearly cannot speak in simple and direct ways. In some translations into English, the dead come to be known as ‘spirits.’ This has nothing to do with being ‘supernatural.’
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I was quite shocked to read this sentence by Naomi Jacobs, a disabled, autistic social researcher: “Christianity is not well-equipped to deal with the paradox that has created particular liminality for disabled people in its midst.” I... more
I was quite shocked to read this sentence by Naomi Jacobs, a disabled, autistic social researcher: “Christianity is not well-equipped to deal with the paradox that has created particular liminality for disabled people in its midst.” I decided to investigate this alleged ill-equipping further.
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My interest in proposing a new way of assessing knowledge of English arises from a problem that I perceive to be very prevalent in today’s globalizing world. My concern is with English learning and use in Africa, and by extension in other... more
My interest in proposing a new way of assessing knowledge of English arises from a problem that I perceive to be very prevalent in today’s globalizing world. My concern is with English learning and use in Africa, and by extension in other outer-circle parts of the world. (I here refer primarily to Africa.) In many parts of Africa, foreign-subsidy of English learning and use in education and other sectors has rendered English the de-facto language for formal purposes. This de-facto role has not arisen from any inherent locally-recognised indigenous suitability of English. Rather, the end of the colonial era bequeathed Africa with a set of European languages. (I will concentrate only on English.) Africa had no choice in this selection. Fit for purpose may be far from ideal.
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Anthropology is: “The scientific study of the origin, the behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural development of humans.” Such definition constituting a string of post-enlightenment terms ultimately make the clearest sense to... more
Anthropology is: “The scientific study of the origin, the behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural development of humans.” Such definition constituting a string of post-enlightenment terms ultimately make the clearest sense to Western moderns. What if instead anthropology were to (my proposed definition) ‘produce audio-texts that contributed to the provision of helpful self-understandings by non-Western people?’ An anthropologist would devise a presentation that must be genuinely valued by indigenous people as contribution towards improvement of their being? Interest must not depend on the anthropologist’s ongoing presence, money, or a non-indigenous language. Having demonstrated the above, an anthropologist formal European language write-up will be on how they closed the gap with the people concerned so as to produce that text (written or oral).
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The first of my issues, is that anthropology is extractive, yet that anthropological reports subsequently direct ‘indigenous’ research. Secondly, perhaps my main problem with anthropology, arises from its orientation to pleasing... more
The first of my issues, is that anthropology is extractive, yet that anthropological reports subsequently direct ‘indigenous’ research.
Secondly, perhaps my main problem with anthropology, arises from its orientation to pleasing secularists (acquiring mainstream anthropological credibility seems to require rendering of any ‘religious’ commitment overtly subservient to secularism’s hegemony).
Secondly, perhaps my main problem with anthropology, arises from its orientation to pleasing secularists (acquiring mainstream anthropological credibility seems to require rendering of any ‘religious’ commitment overtly subservient to secularism’s hegemony).
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The ‘gods’ are, by Christians in Western countries, often identified as being anything that distracts from one’s worship of the one true God. (Your TV, money, sport, car, whatever it is.) I question that interpretation. Instead, I... more
The ‘gods’ are, by Christians in Western countries, often identified as being anything that distracts from one’s worship of the one true God. (Your TV, money, sport, car, whatever it is.) I question that interpretation. Instead, I suggest, to fail to worship one God, is to worship gods, which in turn is to contribute to the maiming, abuse and killing of children.
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"These people are so different from us," I thought after working for a while as a missionary in Zambia. Zambians did not like admitting to being different. Lucrative jobs were got by taking over from whites. To get on, one had to... more
"These people are so different from us," I thought after working for a while as a missionary in Zambia. Zambians did not like admitting to being different. Lucrative jobs were got by taking over from whites. To get on, one had to emphasize sameness, not difference, with Westerners. I found my fellow missionaries also preferred to see Zambian people as the same as them, but needing education. That made life simple; the solution is education. If the people's culture is fundamentally different, what might the solution be?
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Churches and so-called 'religious gatherings' seem to have been labelled from early 2020, as being mega-spreaders of covid-19. Any actions by any governments that discourage the churches is, at least in the long term, likely to result... more
Churches and so-called 'religious gatherings' seem to have been labelled from early 2020, as being mega-spreaders of covid-19.
Any actions by any governments that discourage the churches is, at least in the long term, likely to result in raised and not reduced levels of mortality. People should not be discouraged from continuing to live-out their Christianity through the covid-19 crisis.
Any actions by any governments that discourage the churches is, at least in the long term, likely to result in raised and not reduced levels of mortality. People should not be discouraged from continuing to live-out their Christianity through the covid-19 crisis.
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A description of what is foreign from a base that is Western of necessity presupposes knowledge of what is indigenous to the West. That is to say, that what is foreign is necessarily described in relation to what is familiar. As a result... more
A description of what is foreign from a base that is Western of necessity presupposes knowledge of what is indigenous to the West. That is to say, that what is foreign is necessarily described in relation to what is familiar. As a result a description of what is foreign will not make sense, or will make different or less sense, to a person who is not indigenous to the West, including the foreigner. It follows that for a foreign person to make themselves understood by the West in a way that the West is used to understanding what is foreign requires them to ‘know’ about the West. The description of themselves that is designed for approval in the West will be foundationally very different from that which someone would give to their own people according to the way they themselves are or perceive themselves to be.
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https://www.plough.com/en/topics/community/service/vulnerable-mission-in-action The Alliance for Vulnerable Mission promotes mission outreach by those who are vulnerable, to people who are vulnerable. It believes that some missionaries... more
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/community/service/vulnerable-mission-in-action
The Alliance for Vulnerable Mission promotes mission outreach by those who are vulnerable, to people who are vulnerable. It believes that some missionaries to the majority world should live and work vulnerably, humbly, from a position where they can listen. Listening and understanding requires use of the local language and dialects, as locals use them. It also means not contributing outside finances, which puts others in the position of having to talk for money. Instead, vulnerable missionaries work with local resources arising from family investment and home businesses, to contribute to the flourishing of locally rooted communities.
The Alliance for Vulnerable Mission promotes mission outreach by those who are vulnerable, to people who are vulnerable. It believes that some missionaries to the majority world should live and work vulnerably, humbly, from a position where they can listen. Listening and understanding requires use of the local language and dialects, as locals use them. It also means not contributing outside finances, which puts others in the position of having to talk for money. Instead, vulnerable missionaries work with local resources arising from family investment and home businesses, to contribute to the flourishing of locally rooted communities.
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Western secularism retains much of the profitable content brought historically by the Gospel. Access to secular-thinking however, remaining obtuse to many outside of the West, means that such understanding is to them a mysterious quality... more
Western secularism retains much of the profitable content brought historically by the Gospel. Access to secular-thinking however, remaining obtuse to many outside of the West, means that such understanding is to them a mysterious quality accessible only to a small minority. The benefits of secularism originate in religion (Christianity), so, to keep the West honest, should be made more widely available using religious clothing.
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I do not claim that this short piece identifies all the problems of racism, or of atheism, but I present it as an enigma. It is work in progress seeking comment … Once an observer begins to watch the particles going through the... more
I do not claim that this short piece identifies all the problems of racism, or of atheism, but I present it as an enigma. It is work in progress seeking comment …
Once an observer begins to watch the particles going through the openings, the picture changes dramatically: if a particle can be seen going through one opening, then it's clear it didn't go through another. In other words, when under observation, electrons are being "forced" to behave like particles and not like waves. Thus the mere act of observation affects the experimental findings. 2
Once an observer begins to watch the particles going through the openings, the picture changes dramatically: if a particle can be seen going through one opening, then it's clear it didn't go through another. In other words, when under observation, electrons are being "forced" to behave like particles and not like waves. Thus the mere act of observation affects the experimental findings. 2
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In theory, to quote the famous adage, Westerners help Africa to ‘learn to fish’. In practice, they almost invariably recruit African people to help them in their own fishing exploits. This is not to disparage many valiant efforts that... more
In theory, to quote the famous adage, Westerners help Africa to ‘learn to fish’. In practice, they almost invariably recruit African people to help them in their own fishing exploits. This is not to disparage many valiant efforts that have been and are being made. It is to say, unfortunately, that much across the board, many valiant efforts are misguided.
Comments from April-May 2021 discussion on the paper, are included.
Comments from April-May 2021 discussion on the paper, are included.
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The above-described evil of religion generates millions of depressed suicidal lives, in place of God-glorifying joyous hopeful people. It is opening floodgates to horrors of pagan ways-of-living based on revenge, deifying hatred, and... more
The above-described evil of religion generates millions of depressed suicidal lives, in place of God-glorifying joyous hopeful people. It is opening floodgates to horrors of pagan ways-of-living based on revenge, deifying hatred, and enabling global domination by one (Western) people too selfish to share the secret of how they got to where they are.
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Western communities are battling to bring their visions of the egalitarian global secular nature of people to fulfillment. Drawing on biblical notions of universal human equality,[1] their refusing to allow any conclusions that might... more
Western communities are battling to bring their visions of the egalitarian global secular nature of people to fulfillment. Drawing on biblical notions of universal human equality,[1] their refusing to allow any conclusions that might suggest “racism” or the “inferiority” of non-Western people (according to their secular evaluations of “competence” [Harries 2020, 9]) has given them a self-imposed blindness to what is going on around them.
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Is “keep religion out,” academia’s rallying call? Religion being hard to define is telling in itself. Yet, ‘keeping it out’ sidelines the ways of life of billions. From my experience with rejected articles, I have learned that for... more
Is “keep religion out,” academia’s rallying call? Religion being hard to define is telling in itself. Yet, ‘keeping it out’ sidelines the ways of life of billions. From my experience with rejected articles, I have learned that for scholarly disciplines to thrive requires their maintaining boundaries that exclude challenges to their core secular paradigms.
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The impact on Africa of anti-racism in the West, is rarely considered. I suggest that the impact is major, albeit concealed and overlooked. Anti-racism in Western countries may be preventing African countries from developing. I also... more
The impact on Africa of anti-racism in the West, is rarely considered. I suggest that the impact is major, albeit concealed and overlooked. Anti-racism in Western countries may be preventing African countries from developing. I also suggest, that anti-racism is anti-Gospel.
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Knowing Jesus died for you,
is the effective way of not requiring,
other people to die for you.
is the effective way of not requiring,
other people to die for you.
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Contemporary African communities can be helped in at least two ways: One, being given resources that compensate for their lack, for example food in times of drought. This mitigates the need for killing to solve problems. This is like... more
Contemporary African communities can be helped in at least two ways:
One, being given resources that compensate for their lack, for example food in times of drought. This mitigates the need for killing to solve problems. This is like giving someone a fish.
Two, like teaching to fish, is advocating the understanding that convinces people that ‘killing is not the answer’. This latter is advocacy of the Gospel of Jesus, as fulfillment of Biblical witness.
One, being given resources that compensate for their lack, for example food in times of drought. This mitigates the need for killing to solve problems. This is like giving someone a fish.
Two, like teaching to fish, is advocating the understanding that convinces people that ‘killing is not the answer’. This latter is advocacy of the Gospel of Jesus, as fulfillment of Biblical witness.
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Book-length version of this article is here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Anti-Racism-Harms-Africa-Better-ebook/dp/B09M4D1MLW Racism is the practice of denying that people of certain origins are or can be truly secular. Anti-racism... more
Book-length version of this article is here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Anti-Racism-Harms-Africa-Better-ebook/dp/B09M4D1MLW
Racism is the practice of denying that people of certain origins are or can be truly secular. Anti-racism is the belief that all homo sapiens are inherently secular. At one time only church and crown disputed the view that non-Western 'races' were less than human. 1 Thankfully, others fell in line with this during the 20 th Century. It was in due course required that all people be considered equal. Then Western people took the most valuable thing they knew at the time, a quality that they had decided was the universal defining feature of human kind, secularism, and ascribed it to everyone, world over. From thereon, it became strictly taboo to suggest that someone of a non-Western race could not, or even has not, 2 achieved the virtues of secularism. This is still very much the reigning paradigm. The bone of contention, what makes people to be what they are, is often perceived as being genetic. 3 This is easily seen when one looks at the things that can have one accused of racism. To be racist is considered to be to believe that genetics affects intelligence, and that such genetics are racially correlated. Then, that intelligence is measurable by one's secular performance. That the standard model, assumed to be the 'secular ideal', is the White Westerner, is illustrated here: Suggesting that … African people cannot learn to speak English properly = racist. American people cannot speak good Swahili = not racist. African people are not capable of mathematics = racist. American people are not capable of witchcraft = not racist. African people are not capable of monogamy = racist. American men cannot manage more than one wife at one time = not racist. African women don't know how to properly cook European food = racist. European women don't know how to properly cook African food = not racist. African men don't know how to love their wives = racist. White men don't know how to love their wives = not racist. Kenyan people have a lower average IQ than 1 Losurdo, Domenico, 2011. Liberalism: a counter history. London: Verso. Translated by Gregory Elliot, 34. 2 Suggesting that non-Western people are 'junior' and have not yet acquired the benefits of rational secular thinking, no doubt itself smacks of racism. 3 The reluctance with which Westerners give up on the idea that what we 'all are' is an outcome of genetics, to me illustrates one of the difficulties with today's prominence of science, that can have a vice-grip on peoples' minds.
Racism is the practice of denying that people of certain origins are or can be truly secular. Anti-racism is the belief that all homo sapiens are inherently secular. At one time only church and crown disputed the view that non-Western 'races' were less than human. 1 Thankfully, others fell in line with this during the 20 th Century. It was in due course required that all people be considered equal. Then Western people took the most valuable thing they knew at the time, a quality that they had decided was the universal defining feature of human kind, secularism, and ascribed it to everyone, world over. From thereon, it became strictly taboo to suggest that someone of a non-Western race could not, or even has not, 2 achieved the virtues of secularism. This is still very much the reigning paradigm. The bone of contention, what makes people to be what they are, is often perceived as being genetic. 3 This is easily seen when one looks at the things that can have one accused of racism. To be racist is considered to be to believe that genetics affects intelligence, and that such genetics are racially correlated. Then, that intelligence is measurable by one's secular performance. That the standard model, assumed to be the 'secular ideal', is the White Westerner, is illustrated here: Suggesting that … African people cannot learn to speak English properly = racist. American people cannot speak good Swahili = not racist. African people are not capable of mathematics = racist. American people are not capable of witchcraft = not racist. African people are not capable of monogamy = racist. American men cannot manage more than one wife at one time = not racist. African women don't know how to properly cook European food = racist. European women don't know how to properly cook African food = not racist. African men don't know how to love their wives = racist. White men don't know how to love their wives = not racist. Kenyan people have a lower average IQ than 1 Losurdo, Domenico, 2011. Liberalism: a counter history. London: Verso. Translated by Gregory Elliot, 34. 2 Suggesting that non-Western people are 'junior' and have not yet acquired the benefits of rational secular thinking, no doubt itself smacks of racism. 3 The reluctance with which Westerners give up on the idea that what we 'all are' is an outcome of genetics, to me illustrates one of the difficulties with today's prominence of science, that can have a vice-grip on peoples' minds.
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Contemporary African communities can be helped in at least two ways: One, being given resources that compensate for their lack, for example food in times of drought. This mitigates the need for killing to solve problems. This is like... more
Contemporary African communities can be helped in at least two ways:
One, being given resources that compensate for their lack, for example food in times of drought. This mitigates the need for killing to solve problems. This is like giving someone a fish.
Two, like teaching to fish, is advocating the understanding that convinces people that ‘killing is not the answer’. This latter is advocacy of the Gospel of Jesus, as fulfillment of Biblical witness.
One, being given resources that compensate for their lack, for example food in times of drought. This mitigates the need for killing to solve problems. This is like giving someone a fish.
Two, like teaching to fish, is advocating the understanding that convinces people that ‘killing is not the answer’. This latter is advocacy of the Gospel of Jesus, as fulfillment of Biblical witness.
Research Interests:
The contemporary system of anti-racism that insists that all are secular, effectively conceals much that is going on in Africa and other parts of the majority world from view. This prevents people from addressing their own issues,... more
The contemporary system of anti-racism that insists that all are secular, effectively conceals much that is going on in Africa and other parts of the majority world from view. This prevents people from addressing their own issues, problems and concerns – even should they be pressing and critical. The contemporary practice of anti-racism squeezes human populations further and further into a corner. Reactions to the concealed nature of its mechanisms can be explosive, such as the race riots in 2020 arising following the death of George Floyd. The mechanisms of contemporary anti-racism result in so-called white fragility, and severe limitations to dialogue. Such mechanisms need to be brought to the light of the Gospel.
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Increasingly, wherever black people find themselves, they are strangers. Increasingly, as the West and its means encroach in more and more corners of the world, that applies even in original African homelands. Modernisation of Africa,... more
Increasingly, wherever black people find themselves, they are strangers. Increasingly, as the West and its means encroach in more and more corners of the world, that applies even in original African homelands. Modernisation of Africa, combined with use of European languages, can render the black man a stranger in his own country, even if surrounded by his own people, even in the total physical absence of foreigners! Thus is the hegemonic spread of Western power.
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If the discipline of psychology was built on the graves of others, as suggested above, one must wonder, what of other recent disciplines or practices? The whole set of social sciences that today form the bulwark of the arts in Western... more
If the discipline of psychology was built on the graves of others, as suggested above, one must wonder, what of other recent disciplines or practices? The whole set of social sciences that today form the bulwark of the arts in Western universities came together in the same era of the disparaging of the primitive ‘other’. Presumably, then, for the sake of inter-racial unity, we await transformation of psychology, and of social science as a whole.
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Does the whole world have to involuntarily be under the thumb of white secular control?
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- The ‘West’ of course is that part of the world that comes under the remit of the Western Church. Originally, that was the Roman Church, now it is the Roman Church and all Protestant Churches, and how they have functioned in ‘Western... more
- The ‘West’ of course is that part of the world that comes under the remit of the Western Church. Originally, that was the Roman Church, now it is the Roman Church and all Protestant Churches, and how they have functioned in ‘Western homelands’, i.e. Western Europe (and its settled colonies, like the USA and Australia).
- The fate of ‘the West’ is widely considered to have been carefully documented in council minutes, declarations and creeds leading up to and beyond the split between the East and the West. Why are these creeds not the constant focus of attention in today’s globalizing universities, in order to have any hope of being effective in spreading ‘the West?’
- The fate of ‘the West’ is widely considered to have been carefully documented in council minutes, declarations and creeds leading up to and beyond the split between the East and the West. Why are these creeds not the constant focus of attention in today’s globalizing universities, in order to have any hope of being effective in spreading ‘the West?’
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The above illustration of the non-functionality of translation indicates the importance of the use of indigenous languages in engaging indigenous people: Western languages such as English should be used so as to thrive in Western... more
The above illustration of the non-functionality of translation indicates the importance of the use of indigenous languages in engaging indigenous people: Western languages such as English should be used so as to thrive in Western cultures. African languages should be used so as to thrive in African cultures. Even fluent use of a foreign language does not necessarily demonstrate the ability to function independently (i.e. without possibly unknown dependence on what one does not understand) in a foreign context.
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Research from the West into Africa backed by weighty funds these days often operates through translation and use of research assistants. This results in misleading unhelpful research outcomes. Instead of encouraging locals to do their own... more
Research from the West into Africa backed by weighty funds these days often operates through translation and use of research assistants. This results in misleading unhelpful research outcomes. Instead of encouraging locals to do their own useful research, it encourages them to imitate foreigners.
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An important first-step to deal with racism is for the West to be honest about its history, and to stop pretending that secularism is either universal, or obvious, or that it just appears out of the blue.
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Few seem these days to question that Islam is a 'religion'. I guess my listener may well be puzzled even by why I should say that it might not be! I can almost hear you thinking 'Of course it is. What else should it be?' That indicates a... more
Few seem these days to question that Islam is a 'religion'. I guess my listener may well be puzzled even by why I should say that it might not be! I can almost hear you thinking 'Of course it is. What else should it be?' That indicates a closed-view.
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Ni tafsiri ya: Girard, René, 2001, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening, (Translated by James G. Williams) Maryknoll: Orbis. Kutafsiri kunaendelea. Mtafsiri anatafuta msaada na wenye uwezo wa Kiswahili ili aboreshe tafsiri hii. Anayetaka... more
Ni tafsiri ya: Girard, René, 2001, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening, (Translated by James G. Williams) Maryknoll: Orbis. Kutafsiri kunaendelea. Mtafsiri anatafuta msaada na wenye uwezo wa Kiswahili ili aboreshe tafsiri hii.
Anayetaka nimtumie tafsiri mzima, aniandikia hapa: jim@vulnerablemission.org
Anayetaka nimtumie tafsiri mzima, aniandikia hapa: jim@vulnerablemission.org
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The ‘change agent’
Is Education a time-bomb?
Holding Out
Phenomenal
You’ve denied me a wife!
The Gap
Is Education a time-bomb?
Holding Out
Phenomenal
You’ve denied me a wife!
The Gap
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Ilikuwa baada ya miaka mingi … Wengine wameshasahau ndoto ile ya Mfalme, na maneno yake, na maisha ya Saulo. Lakini, pale Babuloni, walibaki wengine ambao hawakusahau. Hawa ndio walizidi kutafuta jinsi Mungu atatekeleza mpango wake wa... more
Ilikuwa baada ya miaka mingi … Wengine wameshasahau ndoto ile ya Mfalme, na maneno yake, na maisha ya Saulo. Lakini, pale Babuloni, walibaki wengine ambao hawakusahau. Hawa ndio walizidi kutafuta jinsi Mungu atatekeleza mpango wake wa kuharibu wafalme wakubwa duniani ili habari njema yake ya upendo itawale duniani. Hawa walikuwa wanaendelea na shuguli zao za uganga, wakitarajia siku moja watapewa ufunuo upya ili waachane na shuguli hizo. Ilifika wakati ambapo Mungu akawatumia ishara. Akawaambia waende penye asili ya Wayadui ili wagundue mambo ya Mungu. Wakaenda Yerusalemu. Baada ya kuuliza uliza, wakaelekezwa Bethlehemu. Walipofika walimwona mtoto, alitokea siyo kulingana na kazi za binadamu, lakini kufuatia kazi za Roho wa Mungu. Wakamsujudia. Wakampa zawadi waliyobeba, wa dhahabu, uvumba na manemane. Tangu siku hiyo, wakaachana na uganga wao wenye udanganyifu wakijiunga na kazi za kuitangaza injili ya Bwana Yesu.
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Maandishi haya yanaleta jibu kwa wanaopinga huduma ya mitume yenye usikivu. Ni ukweli, aina huduma nyingine sio rahisi kufanya na hali ya juu ya usikivu. Usikivu unaotajwa hapa unakuwa ya kuwepo au kutokuwepo, ya kukuwa na usikivu, au... more
Maandishi haya yanaleta jibu kwa wanaopinga huduma ya mitume yenye usikivu. Ni ukweli, aina huduma nyingine sio rahisi kufanya na hali ya juu ya usikivu. Usikivu unaotajwa hapa unakuwa ya kuwepo au kutokuwepo, ya kukuwa na usikivu, au kutokuwa na usikivu: Huduma ya mmisionari wa kawaida wa siku hizi haiwezi ongezewa usikivu sana pasipo huduma yenyewe kubadilika sana. Inatakikana wengine, hata wakiwa wachache, sisemi ni lazima wawe wote, wafanye huduma ya usikivu. Usikivu unamwezesha mtume kuhepa hali ya kuwa chombo cha dola. Unahitajika kurekebisha makosa yaliyofanywa awali. Unaleta hali inayomlazimisha mtume kujenga msingi wake wa huduma juu ya imani na siyo juu ya mali. Uhimizo wa huduma yenye usikivu kweli ni changamoto ngumu. Huduma yenye usikivu ni kinyume cha mbinu za pesa kutawala ambao wengi wamezoea. Huduma aina hiyo inajaribu kuwanyang’anya wenye mali nguvu ya kutawala mioyo ya watu. Ni mbinu za kuhepa mitego inayowaangusha mitume, ya kuwafanya watu wamtegemea mtumishi wa Mungu badala ya Mungu mwenyewe. Kusematu ‘nyenyekeeni’ haitoshi, usikivu unahitajika.
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To be submitted to Faith and Thought as a response to helpful comments on my recent article entitled:
Cognitive ‘Science’ is Theology; ‘scientists’ renege on heliocentrism.
Cognitive ‘Science’ is Theology; ‘scientists’ renege on heliocentrism.
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Flexibility on the side of the West in its approach to the other could extend recognition of and even legitimacy to something that is non-western. Given that the non-West is typically much less economically oriented than is the West, such... more
Flexibility on the side of the West in its approach to the other could extend recognition of and even legitimacy to something that is non-western. Given that the non-West is typically much less economically oriented than is the West, such legitimisation would seem to require an end to anti-racism, and other efforts at forcing economic uniformity. It should also require an undermining of the pretentious, deceptively self-proclaimed a-historical position, known as (Western) secularism.
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The main body of this article has been omitted. Please write to jimoharries@gmail.com for the full article, if you are ready to review it as a means to prepare it for publication. Note Being a short summary, this article is invariably... more
The main body of this article has been omitted. Please write to jimoharries@gmail.com for the full article, if you are ready to review it as a means to prepare it for publication. Note Being a short summary, this article is invariably simplified, yet points towards issues of critical importance. Abstract Cognitive science (CS) is a fast-growing new discipline. CS's philosophy identifies it with theology. Perceived without interference from cartesian dualism, CS debunks what opposes religion. It substantiates Christian ontology. CS of religion has often failed to recognise that CS is itself religion. CS, that undermines misleading truth, compliments Christian theology. CS has revealed that, because theology is not based on literal interpretations, criticism of its literal expression can miss the point. We needn't ask whether God is real, we need to know who God is. Insights arising from CS can help facilitate healthy relationship between the West and the majority world.
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Promoters of development in sub-Saharan Africa at times consider African people to believe in magic. Magic is in the West thought to happen through intervention of a supernatural agent. It is doing what is impossible. Such magical belief... more
Promoters of development in sub-Saharan Africa at times consider African people to believe in magic. Magic is in the West thought to happen through intervention of a supernatural agent. It is doing what is impossible. Such magical belief is considered to be a problem when it comes to prospects for sustainable economic development. Socio-economic development, after all, is something that happens if it is rationally and not magically designed and implemented. This blog asks, whether Western development experts are the ones believing in ‘magic’?
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Sustainable development, and progress that is not built on unhealthy types of dependency, requires the use of indigenous languages for formal governance and education. This has here been shown taking East Africa as a case study.
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A re-examination of human society finds theology to be necessarily at centre stage, and morality necessarily religious. Pre-literate means of guiding morality by calling on gods and spirits have been superseded by records of revelation in... more
A re-examination of human society finds theology to be necessarily at centre stage, and morality necessarily religious. Pre-literate means of guiding morality by calling on gods and spirits have been superseded by records of revelation in texts like that of the Old Testament. Recourse to divine revelation is shown as being a contemporary as well as an historical necessity. This is realised by primal societies in Africa and elsewhere. Confusion between Islam and Christianity under one category of religion may be tying hands of governments and 'secular' scholarship.
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Someone who translates from known to unknown is a person who takes a text from their same / familiar community and translates into an ‘other’ community. They know a lot about the source text, but they are less au fait with the world of... more
Someone who translates from known to unknown is a person who takes a text from their same / familiar community and translates into an ‘other’ community. They know a lot about the source text, but they are less au fait with the world of the target text. My reader will note that the translated text will, when used by people in that community, be education from unknown. This is what renders it illegitimate. In order for a text to reach students as being known, therefore, it follows that translation must be from unknown to known. This means that the legitimate translator translates into and not out of the arena of their familiarity.
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Do Christian doctrines have cultural-linguistic roots? Theologians might brick-wall such suggestions. Powerful influential wealthy Western theologians can afford to do that. Majority world theologians may well give lip service in... more
Do Christian doctrines have cultural-linguistic roots? Theologians might brick-wall such suggestions. Powerful influential wealthy Western theologians can afford to do that. Majority world theologians may well give lip service in agreement with them. In reality, at least in Africa, actual doctrines are often very different to the ones held theoretically by them in English. Can these be legitimised by cultural-linguistic considerations? Perhaps those who consider that doctrines being culturally-linguistically relevant would be undermining of God, may be under-estimating him? In other words: are Western Christian efforts at denying the cultural linguistic foundations of church doctrines an example of the imposition of an illegitimate dualistic distinction between ‘world’ and God/spirit?
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"Many people are carrying some kind of pain in their hearts" I explained to the gathered pastors, using Swahili. I was the mid-morning speaker, after breakfast on 16th April, at this Pastors gathering in Kisumu city. The Kenyan pastors... more
"Many people are carrying some kind of pain in their hearts" I explained to the gathered pastors, using Swahili. I was the mid-morning speaker, after breakfast on 16th April, at this Pastors gathering in Kisumu city. The Kenyan pastors were attentive. They obviously recognised that phenomenon. "Sometimes such pain arises if someone gossips about us" I added. Now I seemed to be on very familiar territory. Gossip, including unfounded gossip was clearly an issue and a concern. "There are three ways to respond" I said. "These are: defend yourself, fight back (attack whoever is the apparent source of the gossip), or run away. Unfortunately, none of these three are necessarily very helpful" I added.
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None of us like to be put into positions in which our skills no longer function. We don't like to go outside of our comfort zones, as they say. What about being taken outside of our competence zones?
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There are certain things in African Christianity that Westerners seem to deplore. They are perversions of bottom line bare minimums set by the West. Generally, Westerners find them unacceptable. What should one do, more specifically what... more
There are certain things in African Christianity that Westerners seem to deplore. They are perversions of bottom line bare minimums set by the West. Generally, Westerners find them unacceptable. What should one do, more specifically what should I do, if one of these perceived unacceptable perversions of truth is so central to African Christian belief that the thought that it might ought not to be there would in Africa be considered abominable?
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Some years ago now when I was in Zambia, fellow missionaries used to admire Zambian people's simple lifestyle. One or two of my Zambian colleagues were not too happy with the notion that missionaries found them to be 'simple'.
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How to relate 'vulnerably' with African Christian churches on an ongoing basis.
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We in Europe have problems. People in Africa have problems. Europeans take their problems with them when they travel to Africa. Africans end up having to deal with them. Africans bring their problems with them when they come to Europe.... more
We in Europe have problems. People in Africa have problems. Europeans take their problems with them when they travel to Africa. Africans end up having to deal with them. Africans bring their problems with them when they come to Europe. Europeans refuse to deal with them. Instead, point blank, they deny that they exist. This denial is implemented under a cover of assumed European superiority called countering racism.
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What if the whole “God delusion” approach is a neo-colonial imposition at the linguistic and philosophical level? Could it lead to unmitigated disasters in intercultural communication and development work? This paradigm-challenging book... more
What if the whole “God delusion” approach is a neo-colonial imposition at the linguistic and philosophical level? Could it lead to unmitigated disasters in intercultural communication and development work? This paradigm-challenging book points to the necessity, in light of contemporary impasse in intercultural understanding, of God’s involvement in the encounter between the West and the majority world, especially Africa. Failure to account for God, the cradle of imagination operative in human hearts and minds, has resulted in a black hole that deeply troubles intercultural engagement between the West and others. While drawing on his personal long-term field experience in Africa, the author cites contemporary scholarly western literature on philosophy, anthropology, “religion,” and beyond. Ironically the West, which values dualism, instead of seeking to share it with majority world people, wrongly presupposes its universality. A proactive compliance to the countering of “racism,” and to the demotion of impacts of human imagination to understanding, contribute to this. Effective education must be from known to unknown, this text emphasizes. Enabling African people to build understanding on their own epistemological foundations might be more important than exporting of pre-packaged languages and educational systems from the West.
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A very peculiar thin happened. The way to overcome what by then appeared to be overzealous proclamation of European superiority was not for Europeans to concede their weaknesses, but it was for them to presuppose instead that actually... more
A very peculiar thin happened. The way to overcome what by then appeared to be overzealous proclamation of European superiority was not for Europeans to concede their weaknesses, but it was for them to presuppose instead that actually others were equally ‘superior’ to them. Europeans began a determined process of reading their ‘superior’ way of life into almost everyone else’s culture. That is, they began to refuse point blank, as a matter of principle, that other people, non-Europeans, could be anything but (effectively) European / Protestant in their aptitudes and capabilities. Such were the historical origins of that contemporary ongoing, in the face if necessary of all evidence, determination to assume that everyone the world over should, can, and does behave like a good western Protestant, which is the foundation for countering racist discrimination. In effect, for the West that now wants to see Christianity as just one of a list of religious options, i.e. that wants to prove to all that any religions can produce the same ‘good’ as can Christianity, evidence in favour of any racism is an unwanted indirect proclamation that Jesus is Lord.
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It is strange to find world religions invariably described in very western ways, even if the life of their adherents is supposedly far from Western. Close examination reveals that the content of ‘religion’ that is nowadays assumed to be... more
It is strange to find world religions invariably described in very western ways, even if the life of their adherents is supposedly far from Western. Close examination reveals that the content of ‘religion’ that is nowadays assumed to be universal is western Protestant Christianity. So called ‘world religions’ are reifications generated by imprudent globalised applications of Christian theology. The false assumption that religion is already universal has been extremely misleading. It interferes with people’s efforts to acquire Christian belief. Hegemonic use of western languages in global communication systems combined with economic domination, contribute to the West’s ignorance of the wider world, resulting in its complacent assumption of the existence of a kind of equality of world religions. Amongst the implications of the undermining of the assumption of the universal presence of ‘religion’ includes negation of the contemporary project of global secularisation.
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European’s prosperity is built on the basis of a distinction between religion and secularism. It’s efforts at ‘development intervention’ have mistakenly presupposed the same to hold in the rest of the world. Contemporary promotion of... more
European’s prosperity is built on the basis of a distinction between religion and secularism. It’s efforts at ‘development intervention’ have mistakenly presupposed the same to hold in the rest of the world. Contemporary promotion of development that ignores depths of human being and understanding, especially in the Muslim world and Africa, limits options for self-advancement without residential access to Western nations.
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The impact (sense) of text translated into a different worldview must be transformed to engage its new cultural context. An understanding of why and how this happens is vital for the globalising church to get away from a uni-central model... more
The impact (sense) of text translated into a different worldview must be transformed to engage its new cultural context. An understanding of why and how this happens is vital for the globalising church to get away from a uni-central model of theological truth rooted in economic dependency on the hegemony of Western English. This article portrays inter-cultural translation in vivid ways using Scriptural example to show how some current models of translation depend for their success on either direct divine revelation or magic. This article advocates Christian discipleship at depth through inter-cultural missionary engagement rooted in local languages and resources.
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There may be a place for translation from known to unknown. But in our contemporary world I suggest that translation from unknown to known is desperately needed.
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Have you ever thought what it would be like in the ‘West’ if instead of ‘God’ we started to say ‘luck’? Christians would say ‘Praise Luck’, Christ would be called the ‘son of Luck’, we would be told that ‘Luck is love’ and that we should... more
Have you ever thought what it would be like in the ‘West’ if instead of ‘God’ we started to say ‘luck’? Christians would say ‘Praise Luck’, Christ would be called the ‘son of Luck’, we would be told that ‘Luck is love’ and that we should ‘have faith in Luck’. This sounds very confusing. Could it be that something like this happens if the ‘wrong’ name is chosen to translate ‘God’ in translated Scriptures in the majority world? (Because ‘luck’ seems to be a singularly Western concept, I use the term ‘fortune’ below.) … In the discussion below, this question leads to the suggestion that Atheists believe in God.
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The impact or sense of text translated into a different worldview must be transformed to engage its new cultural context. An understanding of why and how this happens is vital for the globalising church to get away from a uni-central... more
The impact or sense of text translated into a different worldview must be transformed to engage its new cultural context. An understanding of why and how this happens is vital for the globalising church to get away from a uni-central model of theological truth rooted in economic dependency on the hegemony of Western English. This article portrays inter-cultural translation in vivid ways using Scriptural example to show how some current models of translation depend for their success on either direct divine revelation or magic. This article advocates Christian discipleship at depth through inter-cultural missionary engagement rooted in local languages and resources.
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This short article has given a largely autobiographical account of how I came upon the vulnerable mission principles in the early 90s, how my own experience in Kenya has (to me) confirmed those principles, and how the AVM has to date... more
This short article has given a largely autobiographical account of how I came upon the vulnerable mission principles in the early 90s, how my own experience in Kenya has (to me) confirmed those principles, and how the AVM has to date attempted to promote them.
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“I can’t work with that person because they can’t be trusted.” We have probably heard these kinds of words before. See Acts 13:13 and then 15:36-40. A lack of trust challenged the relationship between Paul and Barnabas. Barnabas... more
“I can’t work with that person because they can’t be trusted.” We have probably heard these kinds of words before. See Acts 13:13 and then 15:36-40. A lack of trust challenged the relationship between Paul and Barnabas. Barnabas travelled with Mark. Paul refused to. Presumably he had lost ‘trust’ in Mark. What does it look like to continue in a relationship after trust has been ‘broken’? Perhaps this is vulnerability?
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Donor funding may not be the only or best means of compassionate outside intervention by the West into Africa. Donor activity can, by problematising inter-human relationship, pre-empt alternative avenues to progress. Developmental... more
Donor funding may not be the only or best means of compassionate outside intervention by the West into Africa. Donor activity can, by problematising inter-human relationship, pre-empt alternative avenues to progress. Developmental progress may require exactly the kinds of understanding and activity that donor activity makes difficult. Recent challenges to traditional analytic western philosophy provide a basis for release from prohibitive restrictions that have in contemporary times been assumed necessary to guide missionary and development work. If human thinking is rooted in metaphors arising from embodied experience, then this opens doors of understanding to ways in which Christian / Biblical teaching is central to the initiation and propagation of sustainable transformative indigenously rooted socio-economic development.
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The West's offers of aid to Africa inflict endless dilemmas, conflicts and unhealthy dependencies. Sending resources cross-culturally implies non-comprehension by the donor of the context of and therefore of the most appropriate means of... more
The West's offers of aid to Africa inflict endless dilemmas, conflicts and unhealthy dependencies. Sending resources cross-culturally implies non-comprehension by the donor of the context of and therefore of the most appropriate means of use of the resources concerned. The need for accountability at the same time demands understanding. This sets up a dynamic that can be very destructive to human relationship. Uses of languages local to their contexts could help to alleviate the above dilemmas. The wide-spread of English interferes with such sensibility(s). The above combination of scenarios typically rends contextualisation in mission and development impossible. It can easily push foreign workers into a hole of irresolvable conflicts.
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Over-zealous imitations of Paul’s ‘on the move’ missionary model contribute to short-term mission and thus failure to engage seriously with people’s deep values, identities and worldviews. A detailed reconsideration of terms and... more
Over-zealous imitations of Paul’s ‘on the move’ missionary model contribute to short-term mission and thus failure to engage seriously with people’s deep values, identities and worldviews. A detailed reconsideration of terms and translation practices identifies a sense in which a missionary in Africa must of necessity be identified as a ‘witch’. Buying one’s way out of that identity has resulted in widespread ‘prosperity gospel’. A look at intercultural translation issues from a perspective of long term grassroots missionary engagement points to a key importance of the practice of vulnerable mission, use of local languages and resources in ministry.
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Monthly Bulletins going back to 2009 available here for free, or have them sent to you over email every month. https://missiology.org.uk/journal_alliance-for-vulnerable-mission-01.php To receive for free, write to... more
Monthly Bulletins going back to 2009 available here for free, or have them sent to you over email every month.
https://missiology.org.uk/journal_alliance-for-vulnerable-mission-01.php
To receive for free, write to jim@vulnerablemission.org
https://missiology.org.uk/journal_alliance-for-vulnerable-mission-01.php
To receive for free, write to jim@vulnerablemission.org
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Je, inafaa mtu anayeeleza watu wa nchi za Ulaya juu ya Afrika awe Mwafrika, au awe mtu kutoka Ulaya? Je, inafaa mtu atakayeeleza watu wa nchi za Afrika juu ya nchi za Ulaya awe Mwafrika, au mtu kutoka Ulaya?
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Mjadala unaofuata unajaribu kueleza umuhimu wa utumizi wa lugha ya wenyeji kwa usomi. Wanao jadili ni Stefano mwalimu wa shule ya Biblia, na Andrea kijana ambaye anataka kumtumikia Mungu maishani mwake, na sasa anatafuta elimu.
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Mjadala unaofuata unajaribu kueleza misingi ya hayo maneno. Wanao jadili ni Yohana, ambaye ni Mwafrika, na anaongea na Petro, ambaye ni Mzungu kutoka Ulaya.
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Waamuzi 11.
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Viongozi walistuka walipogundua jinsi Yesu aliegemea sana panda ya wenye dhambi. Yesus anawaeleza sababu yake ya kufanya hivyo.
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Mke amtii mumewe kama Mume amtii Yesu, vile Yesu humpenda kanisa, mume ampende mkewe. Upendo ndani ya nyumba zetu umshuhudia Mungu aliyetupenda sisi wenye dhambi.
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Mara kwa mara Biblia hutuonyesha mapendeleo ya Mungu kwa kuegemea kwa wanaodharauliwa ... Yesu anasimama pamoja na wanaodharauliwa. Na sisi je?
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Kuwafanyia watu wamtamani Yesu kwa ajili ya Ishara na siyo kushibatu ilikuwa vigumu. Unakubali kula mwili wa Yesu na kunywa damu yake?
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Hata tunapofikiri tunasimama wima maishani mwetu, ni rahisi hisia zetu zitughafilisha na kutuangusha. Utazishinda hisia zisizozofaa Yesu akiwepo.
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Manabii wasiopendeza. Hotuba ya ya Mahubiri ya Jim Harries 30.10.18 kwa hospitali ya Koptiki, Maseno, Kenya. Tunapenda kuwasikia mahubiri wanaotubariki, lakini pengine Mungu analo neno kutufunza ambalo hata likiwa magumu, linakuwa pia... more
Manabii wasiopendeza. Hotuba ya ya Mahubiri ya Jim Harries 30.10.18 kwa hospitali ya Koptiki, Maseno, Kenya. Tunapenda kuwasikia mahubiri wanaotubariki, lakini pengine Mungu analo neno kutufunza ambalo hata likiwa magumu, linakuwa pia jema kulisikiliza kwa makini.
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Poka oyawo wengene. Piny nolil. Ne en odiewuor. Koko moro nochiewe e nindo. Nochiko ite. Nowinjo kwikwi mar min gi Aluor. Nenore wuon gi nogoye. Aluor nindo pok otere. Wuon gi, Ochwadi, osenindo. Poka nowinjo ka notwaro. Poka nonindo e... more
Poka oyawo wengene. Piny nolil. Ne en odiewuor. Koko moro nochiewe e nindo. Nochiko ite. Nowinjo kwikwi mar min gi Aluor. Nenore wuon gi nogoye. Aluor nindo pok otere. Wuon gi, Ochwadi, osenindo. Poka nowinjo ka notwaro. Poka nonindo e kom man kar budho mar odno. Nyamin gi Atug nonindo bath odno. “Samoro en bende oneno?” Poka noparo. “Atug?” noluonge mos. Atug to noling thi.
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Nitie kue kit ariyo. Mokwongo, kue mobedie ka jasigwa, kata ng'ato modwaro hinyowa oriemb kata otho. Kue mar ariyo, en kue ma kende mar Kristo, moyudore kuom ng'ato moseyie ni Yesu notho ni richowa. Kue mar ariyo wanyalo yudo kuom Kristo... more
Nitie kue kit ariyo. Mokwongo, kue mobedie ka jasigwa, kata ng'ato modwaro hinyowa oriemb kata otho. Kue mar ariyo, en kue ma kende mar Kristo, moyudore kuom ng'ato moseyie ni Yesu notho ni richowa. Kue mar ariyo wanyalo yudo kuom Kristo ka jasigwa ngima angima.
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Ji dwaro luwe Yesu mondo giyieng’. Mago ok kit jopuonjore ma Yesu odwaro bedie go … Wacham ringre Yesu, ma en kuon ma ngima.
Research Interests: Kenya, Dholuo, Injil, Nyanza, Wach Nyasaye, and 4 morepuonjruok wach Nyasaye, Siaya, Muma Maler, and Tiegruok e muma
Jotelo nobwok ka ne gifwenyo kaka Yesu hero bedo modich gi jomaricho. Yesu noelonigi gimomiyo …
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Yalo wach Nyasaye e Gem, Siaya, 7.11.18. Wach ni puonjo kaka ich wang ema chando ji, nyaka gimi Yesu thuolo e chunjegi mondo mirima okwe.
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To register, go here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/vulnerable-mission-english-and-dollars-powering-ministry-good-idea-tickets-123638354647
To see promotional video, go here: https://youtu.be/jDfPqCCg46o
To see promotional video, go here: https://youtu.be/jDfPqCCg46o
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AUDIO FILES Conference: Missionaries: aliens, providers, or fellow travellers? (UK. 8th to 11th December 2019) Should the majority world be the target of patronage from rich missionaries? Outside Christian workers who build on foreign... more
AUDIO FILES
Conference: Missionaries: aliens, providers, or fellow travellers?
(UK. 8th to 11th December 2019)
Should the majority world be the target of patronage from rich missionaries?
Outside Christian workers who build on foreign presuppositions in work amongst indigenous communities can, especially when foreign funded and using outside languages, be interpreted as riding roughshod over indigenous sensibilities. True empowerment of local people requires getting alongside them. This necessitates vulnerability to their position and context. Such vulnerability can best be achieved if one shares the Gospel using indigenous languages utilising local resources.
Conference: Missionaries: aliens, providers, or fellow travellers?
(UK. 8th to 11th December 2019)
Should the majority world be the target of patronage from rich missionaries?
Outside Christian workers who build on foreign presuppositions in work amongst indigenous communities can, especially when foreign funded and using outside languages, be interpreted as riding roughshod over indigenous sensibilities. True empowerment of local people requires getting alongside them. This necessitates vulnerability to their position and context. Such vulnerability can best be achieved if one shares the Gospel using indigenous languages utilising local resources.
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Coronavirus is accelerating the rate at which Western theological colleges and seminaries are going on-line. Once on line, people can join our courses from anywhere. Already, much theological education in Africa from the West is of... more
Coronavirus is accelerating the rate at which Western theological colleges and seminaries are going on-line. Once on line, people can join our courses from anywhere. Already, much theological education in Africa from the West is of questionable contextual relevance. Now is the time to adjust what we are teaching and how.
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It is my pleasure to present the reports written below by KIST students following visits to AIC (African Indigenous Churches) in December 2007 and 2008.