scholarly journals Buite die grense van die bekende

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Nell

Outside the confines of the known: Cross-cultural experiences among a random sample of ministers in the Dutch Reformed ChurchThis article looks at one of the questions posed in the Church Mirror questionnaire to a number of pastors of the Dutch Reformed Church. The question is: Tell us about the best experience you have had in your congregation where believers met across cultural boundaries or did something together? The sample forms part of a ministerial panel conducted every three years among ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church with the aim of finding out what pastors think and do about a number of current church activities. The choice to focus on this question comes against the backdrop of contemporary discourses related to the missional nature of church life and the challenge of multi-culturalism in faith communities. The study is qualitative in nature and falls within the interpretive paradigm as part of phenomenology. The data shows an interesting number of activities identified by the ministers related to multiculturalism and also provides some directions for missional development in the future.

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Fourie Rossouw

This article dealt with racial diversity in homogenous white Afrikaans faith communities such as the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC). This study was partially an account of the researcher’s own discontent with being a minister in the DRC against the backdrop of his own journey of finding a racially integrated identity in a post-apartheid South Africa. It focused on the question of how a church like the DRC can play an intentional role in the formation of racially inclusive communities. The study brought together shifts in missional theology, personal reflections from DRC ministers and contemporary studies on whiteness. The researcher looked towards a missional imaginary as a field map for racial diversity in the church. This was mirrored against contemporary studies on white identity in a post-apartheid South Africa. From this conversation the researcher argued for a creative discovery of hybrid identities within white faith communities. Missional exercises such as listening to the stories of strangers, cross cultural pilgrimages and eating together in strange places can assist congregations on this journey.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 176
Author(s):  
Retief Müller

During the first few decades of the 20th century, the Nkhoma mission of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa became involved in an ecumenical venture that was initiated by the Church of Scotland’s Blantyre mission, and the Free Church of Scotland’s Livingstonia mission in central Africa. Geographically sandwiched between these two Scots missions in Nyasaland (presently Malawi) was Nkhoma in the central region of the country. During a period of history when the DRC in South Africa had begun to regressively disengage from ecumenical entanglements in order to focus on its developing discourse of Afrikaner Christian nationalism, this venture in ecumenism by one of its foreign missions was a remarkable anomaly. Yet, as this article illustrates, the ecumenical project as finalized at a conference in 1924 was characterized by controversy and nearly became derailed as a result of the intransigence of white DRC missionaries on the subject of eating together with black colleagues at a communal table. Negotiations proceeded and somehow ended in church unity despite the DRC’s missionaries’ objection to communal eating. After the merger of the synods of Blantyre, Nkhoma and Livingstonia into the unified CCAP, distinct regional differences remained, long after the colonial missionaries departed. In terms of its theological predisposition, especially on the hierarchy of social relations, the Nkhoma synod remains much more conservative than both of its neighboring synods in the CCAP to the south and north. Race is no longer a matter of division. More recently, it has been gender, and especially the issue of women’s ordination to ministry, which has been affirmed by both Blantyre and Livingstonia, but resisted by the Nkhoma synod. Back in South Africa, these events similarly had an impact on church history and theological debate, but in a completely different direction. As the theology of Afrikaner Christian nationalism and eventually apartheid came into positions of power in the 1940s, the DRC’s Nkhoma mission in Malawi found itself in a position of vulnerability and suspicion. The very fact of its participation in an ecumenical project involving ‘liberal’ Scots in the formation of an indigenous black church was an intolerable digression from the normative separatism that was the hallmark of the DRC under apartheid. Hence, this article focuses on the variegated entanglements of Reformed Church history, mission history, theology and politics in two different 20th-century African contexts, Malawi and South Africa.


2002 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 615-620
Author(s):  
N. R. Mandela

In October 2002 the editor of Die Kerkbode, official newspaper of the Dutch Reformed Church (N G Kerk) paid a visit to ex-president Nelson Mandela. He talked about his life, leadership, as well as the challenges to the churches in our day. His gracious remarks on the role of the Dutch Reformed Church is of special significance, in view of the fact that during many years the church not only supported the policy of Apartheid, but provided a theological argument for doing so. During the 1990s the church, on a number of occasions, confessed guilt in this regard. Dr Frits Gaum, editor, provided a transcript of the interview to Verbum et Ecclesia for this special edition on leadership.


2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Jonck ◽  
P. Verster

A social-psychological perspective on the attitude of members in the Mangaung area towards church unification within the Dutch Reformed family of churches: a cross-cultural investigation Until recently, only one investigation had been conducted into church members’ attitudes towards church unification. This was done from a theological instead of a social-psychological point of view. The term “attitude” may be defined as the expression of inner feelings that reflect whether the person concerned has a favourable or unfavourable predisposition towards a certain object. Church unification entails the process of uniting separate church denominations within the Dutch Reformed Church family. The aims of this study were achieved by gathering data from respondents of six Dutch Reformed congregations (N=104; 46, 6%), as well as six Uniting Reformed congregations (N=47; 21, 1%). The remainder of the respondents came from five Dutch Reformed Church in Africa congregations (N=72; 32, 3%). A biographical questionnaire was used, as well as the Attitude towards Church Unification Scale. The influence of different variables such as language, gender, age, marital status and church activities on the attitudes of church members was investigated. It was concluded on the basis of statistical analysis that members of all the different denominations of the Dutch Reformed Churches had a positive attitude towards church unification. It was found that language was the variable that had the greatest influence on the attitude of church members.


Author(s):  
H. G. Van der Westhuizen

Christian national education in the new South Africa The Dutch Reformed Church of Africa (Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika), as a People’s Church, according to Scripture takes an intense interest in the education of the nation’s youth. According to educational principles, the best school is one in own cultural milieu. The negative reports on multicultural education received from various countries are disquieting for the Church. Consequently, it is necessary to contemplate different options for maintaining Christian national education in a new era.


2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Kruger ◽  
Johan M. Van der Merwe

The Dutch Reformed Church (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk) is in transition because of the influences of the more recent South African epochs of democratisation, Africanisation and globalisation. The histories of these epochs extend over more than 20 years and have had a significant influence on the church. The Dutch Reformed (DR) Church changed institutionally because its place and influence within society changed considerably as a result of political and social transformation since 1994. The ongoing process of Africanisation that accompanies these transformations brings certain reactions to the bosom of the church via the experiences of its members. Most are Afrikaners being more inclined to westernised social frames of reference. Ironically, these people are more susceptible to the effects of globalisation, especially secularisation, which transposes the religious set-up of the DR Church into an open and individuated system. These developments pose major challenges to the DR Church in the sense that it has to reconsider how it approaches society, what it can contribute to the ecumenical church, why it is necessary to reflect on its denominational identity and what its academic, theological endeavours in these regards entail.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article has an interdisciplinary scope because the multiplicity of the present-day calls for interdisciplinary academic reflection. For the purpose of this article, Church Historiography helps to systemise recent ecclesiastical developments within the DR Church. To clarify the influences of these developments on the DR Church, sociological premises are incorporated to describe them within a broader social context. References to the conducted empirical study serve to explain respondents’ (members of the DR Church) social and religious constructs regarding these ecclesiastical and sociological phenomena.


Author(s):  
Pieter Johannes Strauss

Abstract: The Church Order of 1962 of the Dutch Reformed Church: connected to the rest of life with a feeling for the whole of creation? The Church Order of 1962 was the first church order accepted by the new General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church. Apart from the fact that it tried to be an order according to Holy Scripture and the Three Formulas of Unity as reformed confessions of faith, it contains articles based on norms revealed outside the contact and cooperation of the church with the rest of life. Norms revealed out of the pattern of God’s creation in which aspects created with an own character together with other such aspects, form an integrated whole. An aspect will lead a human act and use the core of other aspects to form norms for the act mentioned. The Church Order of 1962 is investigated from article 1 till 70. The question in the title is answered in the affirmative. This Church order is connected to the rest of life and contains articles to confirm this. Opsomming: Die eerste kerkorde van die nuwe Algemene Sinode van die Ned Geref Kerk in 1962 poog om Bybels en belydenismatig te wees. Daarom bou dit op konstantes of beginsels wat op die Woord van God en die belydenisskrifte van die Ned Geref Kerk gebaseer is. Hiernaas weerspieël dit norme soos blootgelê deur die samehang van die kerk met die res van die lewe of geskape werklikheid. ‘n Werklikheid waarin daar ‘n verskeidenheid oorspronklike aspekte is wat met mekaar saamhang. ‘n Lewe waarin elke menslike handeling deur ‘n aspek gelei word en die kern van ander aspekte in diens neem as norme vir optrede. Die Kerkorde van 1962 word van artikel 1 tot 70 vir sulke norme of samehange ondersoek. Die vraag in die titel word bevestigend beantwoord. Die Ned Geref Kerk leef in samehang en voeling met die res van die lewe.


2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lieze Meiring

Discussions with members of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) and the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA) in Ohrigstad illustrate the possibilities of ubuntu-language in overcoming racism and prejudice. After proposing a number of meanings and values related to ubuntu, this research explores the role of ubuntu-language � and at times the lack thereof � in the concrete relationship between these two faith communities as an expression of recent South African history. Ubuntu-language seems to offer unique outcomes in this relationship in strengthening identity, unleashing vitality, celebrating diversity, awakening solidarity, revealing humanity, bolstering individualism and enhancing Christianity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Boitumelo Ben Senokoane

This article explores the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA), argues it as an “impossible community” and deliberates its existence as an “impossible possibility.” The argument stems from the arrival of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) as a faith, and eventually, a community called a church. The article contends that under normal circumstances, URCSA should not be in existence, yet it has survived for 25 years. The reasons for this survival shall be explored and argued. The Reformed doctrine, church history, and the composition of the church are employed to prove why I speak of an impossible community or an impossible possibility. The reasons provided shall form the basis of why we should celebrate the existence and sustenance of URCSA as an impossible community.


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