Towards a hermeneutics of sustainability in Africa: Engaging indigenous knowledge in dialogue with Christianity

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kivatsi J. Kavusa
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Ecological Sustainability ◽  
Biblical Exegesis ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
African People ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
African Churches ◽  
Traditional Societies

Today there are a number of ecological hermeneutics, such as the Exeter project (UK), the Earth Bible project (Australia), the anti-ecological readings and the eco-feminist readings. Whilst these trends provide Christianity with valuable ecological insights, they tend to be more global than specific. The Exeter project claims even to search for the ‘universal’ eco-meaning of the scriptures. Thus, every community should learn from them and try to develop its ecological hermeneutical framework, which can sustainably address its contextual issues. This article explores whether elements of traditional Africa can be transformed into a valuable hermeneutical framework of ecological sustainability for Christianity in Africa. African traditional societies were built upon a threefold worldview, namely (1) the sacredness of all life (moral or spiritual dimension of nature), (2) the pre-eminence of the community over individual interests and (3) the cosmological dimension of the chieftaincy (governance). In the process of the Christianisation of Africa, this framework by which African people make sense of the world became so impaired that the Africans ceased to understand their world through their own cultural systems. With a proper re-configuration in dialogue with a sound biblical green theology, this triad can be turned into an effective hermeneutical vehicle of African churches’ engagement for a sustainable life in Africa.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article explores whether elements of traditional Africa can be transformed into a valuable hermeneutical framework of ecological sustainability for Christianity in Africa. It draws on ecological hermeneutics that exist in the theological disciplines. It involves the disciplines of biblical exegesis and ecological hermeneutics, African hermeneutics and insights from sustainability theories.

scholarly journals Reinterpretasi Relasi Tuhan dan Manusia Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-95
Author(s):  
Tri Arwani Maulidah
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Concept Of God ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
The One ◽  
The Universe

The article attempts to reanalyze the concept of God, human, and their relation. God, in Islam, is The One, The Life, The Eternal, and The Endless. His Oneness is absolute, but His Absoluteness is unlike the absoluteness of the universe. God is transcendent and immanent at the same time. Al-Attas distinguishes the concept of God as Rabb and God as Ilāh. Human, to al-Attas, is spirit and organism, and body and soul. The organismic side of human beings along with their five senses functions to help them living in the world. The spiritual dimension of human beings, on the other side, has an ability to formulate a set of meanings which involve assessment, differentiation, and explanation. When we observe the relation of God and human from the concept of tawḥīd ulūhīyah and tawḥīd rubūbīyah we will find two interrelated role of human, namely the role as God’s servant and the role as God’s representative and mandate (khalīfah) on the earth. These two roles are inseparable. Al-Attas argues that separation of the two will create imbalance personality of the human. It will subsequently jeopardize their existence and the earth they live on.

scholarly journals What next in mission? From the end of the earth to Jerusalem

2008 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-138
Author(s):  
M Masango
Keyword(s):  
The Earth ◽  
Mission Work ◽  
The World ◽  
African Churches ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Impact Of Technology ◽  
The Impact

This article sketches the impact of technology and globalisation on culture, and the results appear to be devastating. An appeal is made to churches to encourage missionary endeavours that reach out to the world. The challenge that African Churches face is, how they will take mission work, from the ends of the earth back to Jerusalem (Missionary Churches). A plea is made to pay respect to the creation of God, and to restore broken relationships. “Let thy Kingdom come”, is the final prayer.

Exiting Socialism Challenges

2006 ◽  
pp. 114-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Popov
Keyword(s):  
Social Challenges ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
Science And Culture ◽  
Municipal Economy

Exiting socialism by almost a third of the earth population appears to be the most prominent event of the late XX century. The author makes an attempt to formulate some challenges of this process and thus a theory of exiting socialism. First, he inquires into the concept of exiting socialism as it exists in the world. Then he analyzes real experiences in this field. The research enables the author to outline the main economic, governmental and social challenges of such exit - from municipal economy to science and culture.

A Māori Girl Watches, Listens, and Learns – Coming of Age from an Indigenous Viewpoint: Mauri (Merata Mita, 1988)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Indigenous Woman ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Force ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines Merata Mita’s Mauri, the first fiction feature film in the world to be solely written and directed by an indigenous woman, as an example of “Fourth Cinema” – that is, a form of filmmaking that aims to create, produce, and transmit the stories of indigenous people, and in their own image – showing how Mita presents the coming-of-age story of a Māori girl who grows into an understanding of the spiritual dimension of the relationship of her people to the natural world, and to the ancestors who have preceded them. The discussion demonstrates how the film adopts storytelling procedures that reflect a distinctively Māori view of time and are designed to signify the presence of the mauri (or life force) in the Māori world.

Slavery and the Trumpocene: It's Not the End of the World

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
Claire Colebrook
Keyword(s):  
Living System ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Geological Period

There is something more catastrophic than the end of the world, especially when ‘world’ is understood as the horizon of meaning and expectation that has composed the West. If the Anthropocene is the geological period marking the point at which the earth as a living system has been altered by ‘anthropos,’ the Trumpocene marks the twenty-first-century recognition that the destruction of the planet has occurred by way of racial violence, slavery and annihilation. Rather than saving the world, recognizing the Trumpocene demands that we think about destroying the barbarism that has marked the earth.

‘A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust’: The World and Self in Thomas Hardy's Poems

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Monika Szuba
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Recurrent Theme ◽  
Body Subject

The essay discusses selected poems from Thomas Hardy's vast body of poetry, focusing on representations of the self and the world. Employing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts such as the body-subject, wild being, flesh, and reversibility, the essay offers an analysis of Hardy's poems in the light of phenomenological philosophy. It argues that far from demonstrating ‘cosmic indifference’, Hardy's poetry offers a sympathetic vision of interrelations governing the universe. The attunement with voices of the Earth foregrounded in the poems enables the self's entanglement in the flesh of the world, a chiasmatic intertwining of beings inserted between the leaves of the world. The relation of the self with the world is established through the act of perception, mainly visual and aural, when the body becomes intertwined with the world, thus resulting in a powerful welding. Such moments of vision are brief and elusive, which enhances a sense of transitoriness, and, yet, they are also timeless as the self becomes immersed in the experience. As time is a recurrent theme in Hardy's poetry, this essay discusses it in the context of dwelling, the provisionality of which is demonstrated in the prevalent sense of temporality, marked by seasons and birdsong, which underline the rhythms of the world.

Indigenous Environmental Justice, Knowledge, and Law

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah McGregor
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
Indigenous Worldviews ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
Innovative Approaches

This article aims to introduce a distinct conception of Indigenous environmental justice (IEJ) based on Indigenous legal orders, knowledge systems, and conceptions of justice. This is not to suggest in any way that the existing environmental justice (EJ) scholarship is flawed; in fact, the scholarship and activism around EJ have been central in diagnosing and drawing attention to injustices that occur on a systematic basis everywhere in the world. This article argues instead that such discussions can be expanded by acknowledging that concepts of environmental justice, including distinct legal orders informed by Indigenous knowledge systems, already existed on Turtle Island for thousands of years prior to the arrival of Europeans. It also suggests that environmental justice framed within Indigenous worldviews, ontologies, and epistemologies may make significant contributions to broader EJ scholarship, particularly in relation to extending justice to other beings and entities in Creation. This approach acknowledges ongoing colonialism and emphasizes the need to decolonize in order to advance innovative approaches to IEJ. 

Ups and Downs

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy Livermore
Keyword(s):  
Mantle Convection ◽  
Laboratory Experiments ◽  
Inner Core ◽  
Computer Modelling ◽  
Great Depth ◽  
New Horizons ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The 1960S

Despite the dumbing-down of education in recent years, it would be unusual to find a ten-year-old who could not name the major continents on a map of the world. Yet how many adults have the faintest idea of the structures that exist within the Earth? Understandably, knowledge is limited by the fact that the Earth’s interior is less accessible than the surface of Pluto, mapped in 2016 by the NASA New Horizons spacecraft. Indeed, Pluto, 7.5 billion kilometres from Earth, was discovered six years earlier than the similar-sized inner core of our planet. Fortunately, modern seismic techniques enable us to image the mantle right down to the core, while laboratory experiments simulating the pressures and temperatures at great depth, combined with computer modelling of mantle convection, help identify its mineral and chemical composition. The results are providing the most rapid advances in our understanding of how this planet works since the great revolution of the 1960s.

II. The Question of God in the Struggle for Racial Justice

Horizons ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 172-194
Author(s):  
Christopher Pramuk
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face

In March 1943, having narrowly escaped Europe three years earlier, Abraham Joshua Heschel published “The Meaning of This War,” his first essay in an American publication. The essay shows, quite remarkably, his full command of literary English. It also shows, as biographer Edward Kaplan remarks, that Heschel “had found his militant voice.” “Emblazoned over the gates of the world in which we live,” the essay begins, “is the escutcheon of the demons. The mark of Cain in the face of man has come to overshadow the likeness of God. There have never been so much guilt and distress, agony and terror. At no time has the earth been so soaked with blood.” Heschel's extraordinary life's witness, his whole body of work, traverses precisely this anthropological and theological knife's edge: The mark of Cain in the face of man has come to overshadow the likeness of God. Where is God? Or better, Who is God? in relation to the rapacious misuse and idolatrous distortion of human freedom? Or simply, Is God?

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