Stephen Hayes's Blog, page 77

Serbian bishop visits Johannesburg

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Bishop Vassilije of Srem in Serbia

The Bishop of Srem in Vojvodina, Serbia, is visiting Johannesburg for the Patronal Feast of the Church of St Thomas the Apostle in Sunninghill.

Bishop Vassilije said he visited the church once before, thirty years ago,  in 1981, when he was Bishop of Australia and New Zealand. The church was then three years old.Now it is 33 years old, and Bishop Vassiolije attended Vespers with a group of parishioners and some of the clergy of the Archdiocese of Johannesburg and Pretoria.

The main celebration will be on Sunday morning when Bishop Vassilije concelebrates at the Divine Lioturgy with the Archbishop of Johannesburg and Pretoria, Metropolitan Damaskinos.

Bishjop Vassilije also hopes to visit the Monastery of the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Gerardville, west of Pretoria, which was founded by a monk from his home monastery, and seminary classmate Father Nazarius (Pribojan). Fr Nazarius dies in 2008, and is buried in the monastery church.

Bishop Vassilije of Srem with the congregation of St Thomas's Sunninghill after Vespers

The parish priest of St Thomas's Orthodox Church, Fr Pantelejmon (Jovanovic) welcomed Bishop Vassilije to Gauteng.

Among the visiting clergy at St Thomas's were Fr Frumentius (Taubata) and Fr Athanasius (Akunda)

Deacon Stephen Hayes and Bishop Vassilije at Vespers

 

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Frequent Bible reading can make you liberal

Quite a lot of people have Bibles, and some of them may actually thump their Bibles — but do they read them?

The American stereotype is that Bible-thumpers are conservative, but it seems that people who actually read their Bibles, rather than just thumping them, tend to be more liberal, and the more they read, the more liberal they become.

Survey: Frequent Bible Reading Can Turn You Liberal | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction:

In 2007, the Baylor Religion Survey asked Americans how often they read the Bible on their own. (It was a five-point scale in this study, ranging from "never" to "several times a week.") It also asked whether the federal government should expand its authority to fight terrorism—a reference to the Patriot Act. For each increased level of Bible-reading frequency, support for the Patriot Act decreased by about 13 percent.

Frequent Bible reading also influences views on criminal justice. As might be expected, respondents who were more politically liberal were prone to disagree with the statement, "The government should punish criminals more harshly." Unexpectedly (at least given the conservative stereotype), the more frequently people read the Bible, the more they too are prone to disagree with the statement. This is not an anomalous finding: Support for abolishing the death penalty increased by about 45 percent for each increase on the five-point scale measuring Bible-reading frequency.

I can testify to this from personal experience. In my youth I went from liberal to progressive and back to liberal again.

In 1953, when I was 12 years old, I was passing through Sydenham, Johannesburg and saw a house with a big banner outside that read "Liberal Party of South Africa". We had just had a general election, so I was aware of some of the political parties, but this was a new one. When I got home I asked my parents about it, and they said that "liberal" meant freedom, so I thought it was probably a good thing.

A few months later the school I attended (St Stithian's College), which had started at the beginning of the year, was officially opened, and Mrs Mountstephens, the widow of one of the founders, unveiled a bronze plaque (which is still there if metal thieves haven't made off with it), which said that the school was founded to provide "a liberal education with a Christian teaching". We joked that while it may have been liberal, it wasn't free, in view of the fees our parents had to pay.

But the school did just that. It did indeed provide a liberal education with a Christian teaching.

It was our Conservative Evangelical loony leftist geography teacher (who died recently — see Notes from underground: Steyn Krige, RIP) who dragged me out of my heathen upbringing and got me reading the Bible, and over the next two years I read the King James version from cover to cover, twice (the second time with the Apocrypha).

The headmaster, Wally Mears, was the son of Methodist missionaries, and chose the magazines and newspapers for the school common room, among which was the Liberal Party-aligned Contact. Once, when it was my duty to fetch the papers from his house and take them to the common room, he singled out Contact and told me "it gives the best idea of the position of the natives." It sounded odd and old fashioned even then, but his heart was in the right place.

I left school and was induced by some friends to join the Progressive Party. After reading Neville Shute's novel In the wet I rather liked the idea of multiple voting, and hoped that the Progressive Party might adopt such an idea. I even attended a party congress, where I suggested it, but it clearly didn't appeal to any one else, and after endless wranglings over franchise policy with A rolls and B rolls I lost interest.

I went to the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg and majored in Biblical Studies, and so began reading the Bible again more seriously. And it became clear to me that whereas the National Party stood for racial discrimination, and wanted only whites to vote for the national parliament, the Progressive Party rejected racial discrimination, and wanted to replace it with class discrimination, with a qualified franchise that gave votes only to the rich and educated.

So the National Party said that only whites were fit to rule, and the Progressive Party said that only the wealthy were fit to rule. And the Bible turned their reasoning upside down and said that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, so no one was fit to rule. And the Liberal Party had the policy of one man, one vote, and that seemed somehow closer to a God who puts down the mighty from their seat, and exalts the humble and meek. In those days Anglicans used to sing that every Sunday at Evensong, so it tended to sink in, and the Orthodox still sing it every Sunday at Matins.

Studying the Bible again reminded me that the Lord works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed. The Lord sets the prisoners free, and helpeth them to right that suffer wrong.

It was the Bible that reminded me that when the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan.

And when Steve Biko was beaten to death in a prison cell and Phakamile Mabija was defenestrated from the Security Police offices in Kimberley, I could say, with the Psalmist:

You never consent to that corrupt tribunal

that imposes disorder as law

that takes the life of the virtuous

and condemns the innocent to death (Ps 94:20-21).

Yes, frequent Bible reading makes you liberal, unless your eyes are shut and your ears dull, so that you will not see with your eyes, hear with your ears, understand with your heart, and be converted and healed (Isa 6:10).

 

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Rush Limbaugh defends the Lord's Resistance Army

Who's Rush Limbaugh? you might ask.

Apparently he's an American talk show host, renouned for propagating ignorance, and this is what he said about the Lord's Resistance Army

Now, up until today, most Americans have never heard of the combat Lord's Resistance Army. And here we are at war with them. Have you ever heard of Lord's Resistance Army, Dawn? How about you, Brian? Snerdley, have you? You never heard of Lord's Resistance Army? Well, proves my contention, most Americans have never heard of it, and here we are at war with them. Lord's Resistance Army are Christians. It means God.

In case you haven't heard of Rush Limbaugh, he is an American talk-show host, who is, I gather, renouned for his ignorance and promotion of ignorance, and spreading disinformation like the above.

And in case you haven't heard of the Lord's Resistance Army, it is a new religious movement, schismatic sect that broke away from the Roman Catholic Church in Northern Uganda, and has terrorised the countryside for the last 20 years or more, kidnapping children and arming them to assist in its terrorist activities. Here's what I have on it from the Database of African Independent Churches:

Alice Auma, a young woman from Acholiland in northern Uganda, became possessed by the spirit Lakwena shortly after her conversion to Catholicism in the mid-1980s. This gave her power to heal and find witches. The spirit eventually instructed her to lead her followers in a war against the National Resistance Movement shortly after its successful guerrilla struggle ended in 1986. Under the name of the Lord's Resistance Army, remnants of Lakwena's movements have continued to cause security problems in the North (Kassimir in Spear & Kimambo 1999:250). Under the leadership of Joseph Kony, a relative of the founder the movement turned into a militia, and recruited child soldiers,

The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), formed in 1987, is a rebel paramilitary group operating in northern Uganda, and as of February 2005 is engaged in an armed conflict against the Ugandan government. It is led by Joseph Kony, who proclaims himself a spirit medium and apparently wishes to establish a state based on his unique millennial interpretation of Biblical millennarianism. The rebels have been accused of many atrocities in the area. It is estimated that around 20,000 children have been kidnapped by the group since 1987 for use as soldiers and sex slaves. The group abducts new members primarily from the Acholi people, who have been the victims of many of the LRA's Acholi tactics. The insurgency has been mainly contained to the region known as Acholiland, consisting of the districts of Kitgum, Gulu, and Pader, though since 2002 violence has overflowed into other districts (Wikipedia, 13 Apr 2005).

Now I have strong reservations about the sending of US soldiers to fight against the Lord's Resistance Army, and suspect that it may have more to do with the discovery of valuable minerable resources in Uganda and the possible obstruction to the expoloitation of those resources by the LRA than with any humanitarian motives (see Notes from underground: Where child sacrifice is a business). The fact that China is interested in the same mineral resources may also have something to do with it. A hundred soldiers may not look like much, but Vietnam started with less. So this looks suspiciously like another exercise in US imperialism.

But it doesn't help to have ignoramuses like Rush Limbaugh spreading disinformation about it, and supporting terrorism.

The Way in Gauteng

We are hoping to run The Way, a course on the Orthodox Christian Faith, in Gauteng, starting at the end of October.

The Way is a twelve-session course that aims to present the Orthodox Christian faith in an atmosphere of friendship, free exchange and trust. Each session consists of a meal together, a talk on a central aspect of Christian belief, free discussion in small groups, and a question and answer session, where participants can put questions to a panel.

The Way has been developed by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge, England, under the oversight of Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia. His Eminence Metropolitan Damaskinos, Archbishop of Johannesburg and Pretoria, has given his blessing for the course to be offered in Gauteng.

The Way is already being run in Cape Town, and if you would like to learn more you can read the blog of The Way in Cape Town.

Who is it for?

The course is for adults, aged 18 and over, and is for Orthodox Christians to increase their understanding of the Orthodox faith. It could also be useful for people who are preparing for baptism and christmation in the Orthodox Church, and for people from other Christian backgrounds and traditions who would like to learn more about the Orthodox Church and what Orthodox Christians believe.

It is intended for people who have completed high school, or have some high school education.

Time, place and other details

We are not sure exactly when the course will be offered, and this is a kind of advance notice to informpeople who might be interested, and ask for feedback from those who would like to take part. It will probably be held first at St Thomas's Orthodox Church, 14 Tana Road, Sunninghill, Gauteng.

Because of the nature of the course, it is important for people who sign up for it to commit themselves attend every session. If you do not think you will be able to attend at least 10 of the 12 sessions, it would be better not to sign up for it.

If you think you might be interested in taking part, please send e-mail with the subject "The Way" to Deacon Stephen Hayes, giving your name, e-mail address, phone number(s), snail mail address and parish (or, if not Orthodox, denomination) so that we can send you more information.

The thought so far has been to hold the course on Friday evenings, which will mean preparing a simple meal of fasting food (no meat, fish, eggs or dairy). Other times that have been suggested are Saturday afternoons or evenings, or on Sunday afternoon or evening. If you are interested in attending, please indicate which time would be best for you.

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Liberal or sectarian?

The GetReligion web site performs a quite useful service in pointing out instances of how the media often just don't "get" religion, and sometimes produce some really weird and distorted reports. Sometimes its selections seem rather parochial for the USA, but occasionally they look further afield, and did so recently, though mainly to discuss how the American media were reporting recent incidents of the burning of Christian churches in Egypt.

GetReligion objected, quite rightly, I think, to the tendency of the US media to simplistically dismiss this as "sectarian violence".

"Sectarian" does imply that there are two religious groups out there and they are fighting each other. The question, in Egypt, is whether this is an accurate description of reality.

Yet, once again, the New York Times has framed the latest outbreak of bloodshed in precisely that manner — at the top of the following report (which is now out of date due to the rising death toll):

CAIRO — A demonstration by Christians angry about a recent attack on a church touched off a night of violent protests here against the military council now ruling Egypt, leaving 24 people dead and more than 200 wounded in the worst spasm of violence since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in February.

The sectarian protest appeared to catch fire because it was aimed squarely at the military council that has ruled Egypt since the revolution, at a moment when the military's latest delay in turning over power has led to a spike in public distrust of its authority.

When the clashes broke out, some Muslims ran into the streets to help defend the Christians against the police, while others said they had come out to help the army quell the protests in the name of stability, turning what started as a march about a church into a chaotic battle over military rule and Egypt's future.

Please pay close attention to the shift that takes place between the second and third paragraphs. To me it seems as if the word "sectarian" is now a matter of Times copy-desk style, even if the hard details of this event actually undercut the use of that term.

"Sectarian" conflict, as in Coptic Christians vs. Muslims?

If you read the story carefully, there appear to be multiple groups of Muslims involved — Muslims helping protect the Christians, Muslims issuing appeals for "honest Muslims" to come support the government forces, Muslims in gangs that appear out of nowhere, their loyalties unknown. And which of these competing groups of Muslims represents either the dominant Muslim Brotherhood or the rising Islamist tide of the Salafi parties? Who is backed by the military?

But a day or two later they confused the issue in this article Define Egyptian 'liberal'; give three examples | GetReligion

The big news here is that the word "sectarian" is missing in the latest New York Times report. The emphasis in this story is on the fervent laments and protests of Coptic Orthodox leaders — who are being supported by "liberal activists" who oppose the military's current role in that tense and shattered nation.

So who are these "liberal activists"?

The bloodshed appeared to mark a turning point in the revolution, many here said. It comes just eight months after Egyptians celebrated their military as a savior for its refusal to use force against civilians demanding the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. Confidence in the military had already been eroded by its repeated deferrals of a handover of power to civilian rule, now set to take place perhaps as much as two years after parliamentary elections, set to begin next month.

Now political liberals as well as Copts said the brutal crackdown had finally extinguished the public's faith in the ruling military council as the guardian of a peaceful transition to democracy.

"The credit that the military received from the people in Tahrir Square just ran out yesterday," the party leader Ayman Nour said at a news conference of prominent parties and political leaders denouncing the military. "There is no partnership between us and the council now that the blood of our brothers stands between us."

The word "liberal" in this case seems to imply either "secular" (whatever that means in an overwhelmingly Muslim nation) or pro-Western, in terms of support for human rights, especially for minorities. Truth is, the Times never makes that clear. Is this an interfaith coalition? A coalition led by progressive Muslims who are clashing with the military, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi parties?

In the first report, they want "sectarian" descriptions dropped, but in their second their chief complaint is that the report lacks sectarian descriptions — they want to know the exact religious make-up of the "political liberals". That seems a bit like wanting to have yout cake and eat it, or, to mix the metaphor, to take a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" approach. One day they are complaining about the descriptions being to sectarian, the next they are complaining about them not being sectarian enough.

GetReligion appears to be appealing here for the use of the weasel word "pro-Western" instead of the less loaded term "political liberals". The implication seems to be that political liberals in Egypt ought to be "pro-Western", whatever that is supposed to mean — and it doesn't necessarily mean support for human rights for minorities, or even for majorities. The Murbarak regime was regarded by the West as "pro-Western", as have many even more unsavoury dictators and autocrats.

The Western media have too long been in the habit of labelling politicial leaders in other parts of the world as "pro-Western", and hence implying that they were the "good guys".

Of course whether you regard "political liberals" as "good guys" depends on where you stand politically, and quite a large segement of American (and even South African) society seem to regard them as the bad guys.

But "political liberal" is a non-sectarian description. It refers to people who are in favour of human rights (including freedom of religion), who are in favour of democracy and accountability of political leaders. I regard myself as a political liberal, however unfashionable it may be these days, and I was once a card-carrying member of the Liberal Party of South Africa, which was pretty non-sectarian. Its members included Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, African traditional religionists, atheists and agnostics. If there's anyone I've left out, it probably included them too. It didn't include fascists and communists, though. The point is that all these people with different religious (sectarian) affiliations managed to work together to achieve a common political goal. The more enthusiastically religious among them would no doubt have produced different theological justifications for their political goals, but their theological differences did not stop them working together politically.

And I would think that political liberals in Egypt would have similar political goals, regardless of their religious background or lack of it.

And let's leave "pro-Western" out of it.

Using audiovisual media for training for ministry

Thirty years ago today I used videotape for the first time in training for ministry. No camcorders back then, just a big fat camera on a tripod connected to a recorder, which had to be plugged into the mains. The recorder used the superior Betamax format video cassettes, which were later ousted by the inferior VHS ones.

This is what I wrote in my diary, Saturday 10 October 1981

I returned to KwaNzimela after tea, and Mike Kruger had arrived and brought up his videotape recorder and camera, so we had a recording session in the chapel, of leading worship, and I read out part of the bishop's charge to synod, about the lack of participation in worship, and said that if the leaders did not know what they were doing then the congregation would be even less likely to participate. After supper we looked at the recordings in the dining room and discussed them, and then Mike had a tape he had made of a Campus Crusade for Christ film on "The role of the pastor", which had some good material in it.

The scene was the KwaNzimela conference centre of the Anglican diocese of Zululand, where we had about 20 people who came one weekend a month for training as self-supporting priests and deacons. One of the most important roles of priests and deacons was as worship leaders, and that meant that they should be leading worship, not worshipping vicariously on behalf of the congregation. Watching the videotape enabled them to see what they had done, or failed to do, which made the comments of their fellow students more useful.

Mike Kruger was one of the trainees, who ran an electronics shop in Empangeni, about 70 km away. The following year Sony brought out the first portable video recorder, which was about the size and weight of two substantial laptop computers together, and the Diocese of Zululand bought one, and a camera to go with it. The camera was still connected to the recorder by a fat cord.

We used it to film the self-supporting priests and deacons ministering in their home parishes, showing the variety of conditions in which they ministered. But they could only be shown to small audiences on a normal TV screen. Video projectors had separate red, green and blue projectors, and were hideously expensive.

Technology has come a long way since then, sometimes with bizarre results. I suspect that for some Christians today the audiovisual technology is not a means of training people to lead worship, but an essential part of leading worship, so that worship without the technological gadgetry would be quite unthinkable.

Restoring the Kingdom – book review

Restoring the Kingdom by Andrew Walker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm writing a book, with John de Gruchy, on the rise and decline of the charismatic renewal movement in South Africa, and one of the influences on it was what Andrew Walker in this book calls the Restoration Movement, and was at one time called, by some, the House Church Movement, but which now seems to be called The British New Church Movement.

The charismatic renewal was a worldwide movement that reached its peak in the 1970s, in which Pentecostal phenomena, such as speaking in tongues, appeared in non-Pentecostal churches, such as Anglicans, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Baptists and others.

I found this book particularly useful, as it provides a history of the movement including its relationship the the charismatic renewal in Britain, and to the "shepherding movement" in the United States. The main aim of the Restoration Movement was to prepare for God's coming Kingdom by restoring the New Testament Church and its ministries.

It could be said that the Restoration Movement is the result of the influence of the charismatic renewal movement on the Plymouth Brethren, though it generally appeared a few decadees before it appeared in other Christian groups. The Plymouth Brethren had been influenced from the start by the dispensationalist teaching of John Nelson Darby, which divided history into various periods, and asserted that things like speaking in tongues disappeared once the canon of scripture was complete, so that Pentecostal phenomena could not be attributed to the Holy Spirit. Thus many of the founders of the Restoration Movement were ex-members of the Plymouth Brethren.

The Restoration Movement retained some aspects of Brethren teaching, however, such as their opposition to what they called "denominationalism".

The path of the Restoration Movement briefly crossed that of the charismatic renewal in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but they parted ways when the Restoration leaders maintained that "denominations" could not be renewed, and that true Christians should "come out" of them, leading to accusations that they were "proselytising" and "sheep stealing".

Some of their teaching was also linked with that of the "shepherding movement" in the USA, especially the teaching on the restoration of the ministry of apostles as describerd in Ephesians chapter 4, and their doctrine of "covering", in which each Christian had to be accountable to someone who was over them in the Lord, so children were accountable to parents, wives to husbands, husbands to their local elders and the elders to the apostles. The apostles covered each other. This was taught by people like Ern Baxter, Derek Prince and Bob Mumford in the USA, and they also visited the UK and influenced the Restoration Movement there with this teaching.

This approach tended to be very authoritarian, though, as Walker notes, in 1976 the Restoration Movement split into two branches, which he called R1 and R2, and the R1 tended to be more authoritarian than R2. The authoritarianism was well expressed by Derek Prince when he said "We do not obey those in authority because they are right, we obey them because they are in authority."

In South Africa the Restoration Movement did not appear in the same form as it had in Britain, but it did have considerable influence on the charismatic renewal movement. Leaders from the Restoration Movement in the UK and the "shepeherding movement" in the USA visited South Africa and spoke at charismatic renewal conferences, and tapes with their teaching circulated more widely. One result was the formation of several new Neopentecostal denominations, often caused by groups breaking away from other denominations. Many of these new denominations were also influenced by things other than the Restoration Movement, such as prosperity teaching, and so the Restoration teaching was mostly present in diluted form.

One of the things that the Restoration Movement claimed to be opposed to was "denominationalism" and so its leaders insisted that it was not a new denomination, but was simply the Kingdom of God. Some of the Neopentecostal churches that had been influenced by its teaching claimed to be "nondenominational". This was regarded as disingenuous by those in other denominations.

Walker tries to deal with this in his book in a chapter headed "Is the Restoration Movement a denomination?"

In a way this is the least satisfactory part of the book, because the word "denomination" has several different meanings. Walker uses it in the sociological sense, where sociologists of religion classify religious bodies as "churches", "denominations" or "sects" according to various criteria. The problem is that the sociological classification does not match the ecclesiological classification, and the differing ecclesiologies of different groups classify them differently. So the denominations that the Restoration Movement distinguishes itself from would probably regard the Restoration Movement as yet another denomination, or series of denominations, having its own recognised leaders, its own distincive teachings, and regarding themselves as distinct from other Christian groups.

I suspect that most "denominational" Christians would think of a "sect" as a smaller group that splits from one denomination, either because of a quarrel, a personality clash, or a doctrinal or policy disagreement, and continues to define itself largely in contrast to the body it broke away from. This differs from the sociological understanding.

Like me, Andrew Walker is a member of the Orthodox Church, and in many ways Orthodox ecclesiology is closer to that of the Restoration Movement than to that of the "denominations", in the sense that the Orthodox Church does not regard itself as a denomination, but as the "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church". The Orthodox Church too rejects denominationalism, though possibly for different reasons than those of the Restoration Movement. From the Orthodox point of view, "denominationalism" is the understanding that Christianity is one entity of the large class "religion" and that Christianity is a religion composed of smaller units called denominations. The sociological categories are not the same as the ecclesiological categories, and there are several ecclesiological categories that differ from one another.

Another similarity that Walker does not mention, but which strikes me as quite interesting, is that the Restoration Movement is trying to restore some things that have been lost or neglected in Western Christianity, but have continued in Orthodoxy. The "shepherding" relationship seems to have some relationship with the Orthodox notion of having a "spiritual father" (or in some cases, mother, though the Restoration Movement or at least the R1 version of it, seems to insist on male leadership in this).

Yet another is that the Restorationist doctrine of "covering" seems to have some parallels with the Orthodox understanding of "jurisdiction" referring to the spiritual authority of a bishop or patriarch. In some parts of the world, where there are overlapping episcopal jurisdictions, Orthodox Christians might ask "What is your jurisdiction?" in almost exactly the same way as a Restorationist might ask "Who is covering you?"

Walker also notes that the Restoration Movement is sometimes called the "House Church Movement", and that this is a misnomer for two reasons: firstly, though house churches were quite common in the early days of the Restoration Movement, they are now the exception rather than the rule, and secondly because house churches were far wider than the Restoration Movement.

One example of the latter might be the house churches in Anglican parishes in England and elsewhere. This "house church movement" grew in the 1940s and 1950s, and was not linked either to the Restoration Movement or to the charismatic renewal, at least not in its beginnings. There was a similar movement in the Roman Catholic Church called "Basic Christian Communities".

But there were also some unattached house groups in the UK, or some that were loosely attached to Baptist, Evangelical or Pentecostal churches. Walker explains that some of these house churches got involved in the charismatic renewal, and that when, through that, they were exposed to Restorationist teaching, some of them asked one or other Restorationist apostles for "covering".

All this makes the book very useful to me. Though it doesn't mention South Africa more than twice, and then only in passing, it does help to make some aspects of the charismatic renewal in South Africa much clearer.

View all my reviews

Teaching, learning and transformation

In the early 1990s I was working at the University of South Africa (Unisa), and the political order in South Africa was changing. There was a lot of talk of the need for "transformation", but people were not very clear on what should be transformed into what. Some of us thought that it would be rather nice to transform Unisa from being a Broederbond-controlled brainwashing machine, designed to indoctrinate students with the ideology of apartheid, into something more educational, and suitable for a free society.

I've been encouraged to post this after reading some of the posts of fellow blogger Clarissa, who writes about her teaching experience and academia, and often gives some sound advice to students, for example here How to Read Accounts of Historic Events | Clarissa's Blog. That was the kind of thing I used to write in tutorial letters.

At that time at Unisa I wore two hats. I was lecturing in the Missiology Department, and I also worked in the Editorial Department. Since Unisa was a distance learning university, most of the "lectures" took the form of printed study guides, and these were edited and translated (from Afrikaans to English, and occasionally vice versa). So the Editorial Department was the last stage of quality control of study material going to students. And we also saw just about everything the university produced, and we were probably the ones who knew, better than anyone else, which courses were good and which were bad.

As part of the transformation excercise we arranged a seminar, where an educationist, David Langhan, came to help us discover criteria for good and bad study material.

As part of the exercise he asked us to give him a bunch of second-year student assignments from as many different departments as possible. He looked through these and picked four to use in the seminar. One was excellent, one was good, one was poor, and the last was excruciatingly bad.

I was quite chuffed to discover that his "excellent" example was from the Missiology Department. Langhan said it showed that the student had a good grasp of the material, argued a coherent case, and showed the ability to think for himself.

I was also not at all surprised to discover that the excruciatingly bad one was from the Education Faculty. The Education Faculty believed in rote learning of "concepts" couched in a made-up obscurantist jargon which they said was "scientific". If you wanted to know what was wrong with South African education, and what was most in need of transformation, the Education Faculty at Unisa was it. They had a captive audience of 30000 teachers who wanted to increase their chances of promotion by gaining better academic qualifications, and to them the Education Faculty peddled its ideological claptrap.

I once edited a first-year study guide, Fundamental Pedagogics 101, and after the first chapter went to see the lecturer because there were problems with the text.

"Who crossed this out?" she yelled.

"I did, because I didn't understand it."

"Your're not supposed to understand it, this is specialised stuff."

I pointed out that if I, with two degrees, couldn't understand it, the chances of a first-year student straight out of school understanding it would be a lot slimmer.

"They're not supposed to understand it," she yelled, "they're just supposed to learn it."

So how did we in the Missiology Department teach students to think for themselves?

With difficulty.

Because many of the students had been to schools where they had been taught by teachers who had been trained by educationalists like those at the Unisa Faculty of Education (and they wouldn't have liked to be called educationalists. They preferred to describe themselves as pedagogicians).

Since it was a distance education university we rarely saw the students face to face, and our main contact was through marking assignments and responding with printed tutorial letters. But once or twice a year we would have "group visits" where students could come and meet the lecturers, and ask any questions they had about the study material and discuss it. Usually most of the questions concerned the content of the exam paper.

At one such gathering I explained how I marked the assignments. If they regurgitated the study guide (one student just copied several pages from the study guide, and submitted that as an assignment) then if they did not give a reference to where they had found it, it was plagiarism, and they would get 0%. If they cited it, they would get 20% for honesty. If they wrote in their own words and showed they understood it, they would pass (50-60%). If they showed that they understood it and were also critical, they would get 60-75%. If they showed that they had read widely, and came up with fresh ideas, they'd get a first – over 75%.

Right at the end of the class, as they were leaving, one of the students asked, with a rather amazed expression on his face, "Do you mean you want us to think for ourselves?"

Got it.

Only the chances are that his next session would be with the Educational Faculty, where they would quickly knock that nonsense out of him.

How did this work out in practice?

One of the courses I taught was a third-year one, "Mission as African Initiative: the African Independent Churches."

Because Unisa was a distance education university, and most students had full-time jobs, they could take up to ten years to complete a Bacherlor's degree. So third-year students could have been studying five or six years or more.

One of the assignment questions had been set by my colleague Inus Daneel, who had taught the course previously, and I kept it because it was very good and very revealing, and I also used it as an exam question.

What criteria would you use for a theological evaluation of the African Independent Churches, and what preliminary conclusions would you draw about the Christian nature of these groups, on the basis of the evidence available?

In answering the assignment, 80% of the students failed to answer the first half of the question at all. They would plunge into their evaluation of the African Independent Churches without mentioning the criteria they would use.

And even the ones who did mention the criteria were disappointing.

One student was a Roman Catholic nun. She had done very well in the other assignments. But in this one she said that since the text book for the course (Quest for belonging by Inus Daneeel) used the Reformed "Marks of the Church", she would use those as her criteria. That was disappointing. She was a Roman Catholic, but wanted to hide behind a Reformed persona because that was what the text book said.

I tried to get the students to see what the question said. It was not "What criteria would Inus Daneel use" but "What criteria would you use?"

In the case of the Roman Catholic Church the "Marks of the Church" are derived from the Creed — the Church is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. So for a Roman Catholic the criteria would be unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity.

I wrote in a tutorial letter:

Naturally a theological evaluation will be very subjective, as it will depend on your own theological point of view. Daneel, for example, as a Reformed theologian, uses the Reformed Notae ecclesiae as criteria. In writing such an assignment, you should try to state your own criteria and your own theological point of view, so that there is some standard of comparison. Some of you did not do this at all, and you will have received much lower marks.

For example, one might note that the Nazareth Baptist Church founded by Isaiah Shembe teaches that Jesus is not equal to the Father, but is subordinate, and that Shembe identified himself with the promised Comforter.

On two points, therefore, Shembe's church differs from the majority of Christians – in christology and trinitology. You should therefore briefly state your own christology and trinitology, and then say how it differs from that of Shembe. If you merely say what Shembe's belief was and do not state your own, you have only half answered the question: What theological criteria would you use ….?

You should also, of course, not make the mistake of generalising from Shembe's christology to that of all the other independent churches. I have mentioned this example because Shembe's christology and trinitology were quite distinctive.

And the last point indicated another problem. At that time there were some 7000-10000 African Independent Churches in South Africa alone, yet many students generalised from one or two denominations to all of them.

In spite of emphasising this point, however, when confronted with the same question in the exam, only about 50% even attempted to state the criteria they would use.

The point of all this is to show that knowledge is not some fixed and perfect entity out there, that we only have to tap into, and having done so we can then confidently cite it as the Voice of Science. In the natural sciences, that might be so, at least to a certain extent. But in matters like theology, we always evaluate from a certain viewpoint, and before we can evaluate the theology of others, we need to be able to say "where we are coming from". But many of the students didn't even seem to realise that they had a viewpoint.

And so, when David Langhan said that a missiology student's assignment was the most excellent one, and showed evidence of him thinking for himself, I was pleased. At least something was getting through.

Language and culture

Some years ago I read somewhere that different cultures had different styles of writing, and that this could contribute to cultural misunderstandings. English speakers favoured a direct stryle, getting to the point as quickly as possible, whereas in Spanish and some other languages this was regarded as bad style, and good writing led up to a point gradually and in a roundabout way.

One of the blogs I enjoy reading is Clarissa's blog. She teaches Spanish literature, but has complained about over use of the passive voice (see, for example, my first paragraph — "was regarded as bad style").

I remarked on this, and Clarissa responded with a whole blog post, in which she responded Culture-Specific Writing Styles | Clarissa's Blog:

For years, I preferred to write my research in Spanish and dreaded writing in English because precision and concision that are marks of a good writing style in English were completely alien to me. If Spanish allows for interminable, roundabout sentences, then Russian does so to even a greater degree. I can create a sentence with 15 dependent clauses that goes on for 20 lines and uses a passive construction in every clause. I really dig writing this way, too, because it reflects my way of being so well. Learning to stop beating around the bush and just saying what I want to say was a long and painful process for me. It was very hard to get rid of all the verbal flourishes, all of the "It might be argued", "One might be justified in venturing a suggestion", "It should probably be mentioned", "What seems to be in need of being pointed out in this situation", etc.

She attributed the Russian predilection for this kind of writing to the repressive society of the 20th century. I think I agree.

When I worked as an editor of academic texts at the University of South Africa (Unisa), I noticed that a lot of the texts originally written in Afrikaans and translated into English were written in this prolix roundabout style, and when I once wrote a memo in a direct style, an Afrikaans-speaking member of staff described it as "pre-scientific". Some departments at Unisa even explicitly instructed their students to use the passive voice, because it was regarded as more "scientific". But it also seemed to me that the departments that made a big fuss about being "scientific" were regarded by English speakers as putting on airs. Russian "nauka" and Afrikaans "weetenskap" have different connotations from the English word "science", and something is lost in translation. What a Russian, an Afrikaner or a Greek would call a "scientific paper", an English speaker would be more likely to call an "academic" or "scholarly" paper.

I was a student at Unisa before I worked there, and I first encountered this kind of thing in Practical Theology, which was a compulsory first-year course, and which I dropped as quickly as possible. Despite its name, it was almost entirely theoretical, and made up its own jargon in order to appear "scientific". One of the phrases that stuck in my mind was "the agogic moment in pastoral counselling".

It is the "soft" sciences, like the social sciences, that seem most attracted to nebulous verbosity, and it was one of their number, Stanislav Andreski (a Pole) who castigated his colleagues for this in his book Social sciences as sorcery.

One of the manifestations (unimportant in itself but very revealing) of the timorous but disingenuous humility characteristic of a burrowing apparatchik is the taboo on the word `I'. `One still shudders at the arrogance of the author in his repetitive use of the first singular concerning complex issues' – says a reviewer of one of my books, who for all I know may be the only creature in whom this obscene word can induce actual shudders, although by saying `one' instead of `I' he implies that most of his readers suffer from this allergy. I doubt whether the reviewer in question favours the majestic first plural normal among the older French writers, and still common among their successors, but which in England is reserved for the Queen. Presumably he prefers the anonymous `it', and likes to see an expression like `I think that …' replaced by `it is hypothesized …', which (apart from expurgating the dirty word `to think'), ministers to the bureaucratic underling's predilection for submissive anonymity combined with oracular authority. I do not see why declaring that I – a mortal and fallible man but entitled to express his opinions – hold this or that view should be more arrogant than pretending to be the Voice of Science (Andreski 1972:193).

I think this is where it links up with what Clarissa said. The burrowing aparatchik of the Bolshevik era in Russia had his counterpart in the bureaucratic underling in apartheid South Africa, and both were prone to bureaucratic circumlocutions.

And as Clarissa gave examples of Russian writers who wrote in a clear and direct style. And the same could be found in Afrikaans in the writing of people like Beyers Naude (a dissident Afrikaner theologian), who could turn Afrikaans from the clumsy and ponderous tool of bureaucratic oppression into something light, clear, and beautiful to read.

But while oppressive bureaucracy may account for some of the differences in style, I don't think it accounts for all. Perhaps English has also been affected (or infected) by the urban fast-food culture, with people eating on the trot.

Clarissa also writes about this in her blog, What You Need to Know About Your Russian-Speaking Friend | Clarissa's Blog

A Russian-speaking party is very different from the Anglo-Saxon party, for example. For one, nobody stands while trying to balance the plate and the glass. Everybody sits around a big table. Regardless of the economic situation of your Russian-speaking hosts, food will be abundant and will consist of several courses with many food choices. Nobody will ever ask you eat off a paper plate and drink out of plastic cups. The table will be beautifully and properly laid, there will be beautiful table linens and dinnerware.

In language, and in eating, the English direct approach often seems to people in other cultures to be rude and abrupt.

When people meet each other on a country road, they pass the time of day in drawn out greetings. In Zulu a common greeting is "Sawubona" (We see you), followed by "Usaphila?" (Are you still well?) and several other polite enquiries. In a busy city street, however, there are just too many people to greet in this fashion, and so people tend to pass each other without greeting, unless they recognise someone they already know.

This has got transposed into English telephone conversations, and I have often had people phone me and the first words they say are "How are you?" and I have to restrain myself from asking "Who wants to know?" It is one thing on a country road with someone you can see. It is quite another coming on the telephone from a stranger you can't see, who probably wants to sell you time share.

In Ovamboland in northern Namibia such greetings could get quite elaborate, and foreign visitors were warned to expect this, and advised to respond to these polite greetings and enquiries with "Ehe", which could mean "Yes" or "OK", depending on context. One old man used to like to take the mickey from the foreigners, and the conversation would go something like this

Ua le le po

Ehe.

Are you well?

Ehe.

Is your father well?

Ehe.

Is your mother well?

Ehe.

And your wife, is she well?

Ehe.

Did you steal my goat?

Ehe.

A ride on the Gautrain

Today was our wedding anniversary, so Val took a day's leave, and we went for a ride on the Gautrain, South Africa's newest and fastest passenger train service, which opened between Rosebank in Johannesburg and Hatfield in Pretoria last month. A small section, between the airport and Sandton, opened last year at the time of the football World Cup.

Inside the Gautrain

We drove to the new parking garage next to Hatfield station – the cost is added to the price of the train ticket. It was nearly full. It was about 10:00 am, and we had to park on the top floor. A good sign, we thought — people are clearly using the train.

We bought tickets, and a card which records the cost of the tickets and admits you to the train. It cost R128.00 for the return trip — Hatfield to Rosebank, Rosebank to Sandton, and Sandton back to Hatfield. That's nearly 12 Euros, or $US 16.24. Clearly this train is not intended for the hoi polloi. It's a middle-class thing.

The first stop is the Pretoria central station. There is no through running there – the driver goes to the other end of the train and it goes out backwards. Since we were travelling in off-peak time there were only four coaches, and they seemed to be about 80% full.

Leaving Pretoria station for Centurion. The higher bridge carries the new Gautrain line to Hatfield, the lower line is the old Metrorail one.

On the way to Centurion the line runs alongside the freeway, and the train is clearly travelling faster than the cars. It goes through Centurion on a high viaduct, but on the train there is no sensation of height.

Centurion station, like the track, is elevated

At Marlboro Station passengers going to the OR Tambo Airport are asked to change trains, and thereafter the train goes underground. We got off at Rosebank, the temporary terminus, until the line opens to Park station in Johannesburg. We were curious to see what the Rosebank station was like, to see if the train could be used to go to the Metropolis in Houghton. Unfortunately, though the bus to Highlands North goes quite close to the archbishop's house, it is almost exactly halfway between the fairly widely-spaced bus stops. I was also rather surprised that no bus appeared to go the the Johannesburg Hospital, a few kilometres up Oxford Road. In my experience hospitals attract lots of visitors, so that seemed to be a surprising omission.

The exhortation to "brand yourself" didn't appeal to me

We wandered into the nearest shopping mall, called The Zone, for a cup of coffee, and immediately found ourselves in an alien culture, indicated by the printing on the paper that covered the windows of the many empty shops.

On the positive side, there was a rather nice fountain in the middle of the alley, not surrounded by parapets and such, and thus appealing to the younger generation to go and play in the water, not always with the approval of their elders. There were also paving stones with interesting quotations from various people, but no matter which way you were facing, they always seemed to be upside downm. But the entire place seemed to be filled with nothing but clothing shops and restaurants, mostly those of the bigger chains, where the food is entirely predictable.

Restaurants and clothing shops belonging to national chains make for predictable fare

Rosebank Station is under Oxford Road, which is the main street, with entrances on either side.

Entrance to Rosebank station (on the left)

We went back to the station and got the train to Sandton, which took 4 minutes (and cost R19.00, again, not an encouragement for ordinary people to travel on the train). But comparing the four minutes with the time it would take to drive through the traffic find a place to park makes it look a bit different.

Gautrain in Rosebank Station

We were also impressed with the helpfulness of the staff in the stations. They all seemed uniformly polite and eager to help. Also interesting was that most of the station staff seemed to be male — security guards, guides, cleaners etc. But when you got to the platforms, most of the train drivers were female. But that may just be an isolated impression from a couple of stations and a couple of trips.

Another view opf the Gautrain carriage interior

Sandton station was interesting because it is probably the deepest in the whole system, and so there are several levels of high-speed escalators to get passengers up and down.

Stairs and escalators at Sandton station

We went to have lunch at Pappas Restaurant in Nelson Mandela Square, near the station. The restaurant used to belong to Fr Athos Papaevripaides (perhaps it still does, but I've heard he has gone to Cyprus permanently). But the food was still good, and we had kleftiko lamb as our anniversary celebration. It was the first time I had been there since the erection of the controversial statue of Nelson Mandela — newspapers had given the impression that it was grossly out of proportion, and almost that it towered over all the buildings in the square. Actually it seemed to fit in rather well.

The restaurant is also a good place for people watching, and a great variety of people pass through the square. There are the men in ties and shirtsleeves, probably workers in nearby offices on their lunch breaks. Others wwearing name badges, probably attending a conference somewhere in the vicinity. As in Rosebank, children playing in the fountains, boys rushing in to embrace the jets, girls being more circumspect. A middle-aged woman with a ZCC badge, and a red skirt halfway to her ankles, probably working in one of the shops or restaurants, but I suspect behind the scenes. A much younger woman following her, short mini skirt, big earrings, no doubt a dedicated follower of fashion, heading for one of the clothing shops. Tourists stopping to have their photos taken in front of the Mandela statue, a party of schoolgirls on an outing.

We left about 2:30 to go back to the station for the journey home.

Val descending to the depths of Sandton station

Again the train was well-patronised, and we noticed the signs at the entrance to the station: no eating and drinking: fine R700. The fine sounds a bit steep, but it must save a fortune in cleaning bills. And the journey times are really too short for people to need to eat on the trains.

Quite a number of people on the train had tablet computers, or kindles, or whatever — another indication that it is mainly patronised by the rich.

We pulled into Pretoria station, and again the train reversed for the short leg to Hatfield, where we said goodbye to it at 3:17, after a pleasant day.

Gautrain at Hatfield station

We went up to the top of the car park, and it was still full of cars, and it was an interesting thought that if they hadn't been standing there, they would probably have been clogging up the roads between here and Johannesburg.

Hatfield Station car park. If it weren't for the Gautrain, these vehicles would probably be cluttering up the roads of Gauteng

So it was a pleasant day out, a nice train ride, and the train was impressively fast, quiet and well run. It was a nice way to spend a day off, nice to see that the train is well-patronised, unlike the Metroblitz of 25 years ago. It's good to see rail travel working well.

But there is also a negative side to it.

I think how good it is to see new railways being built. But the 80 km the Gautrain adds to the rail network must be balanced against the hundreds of kilometres that have been abandoned and neglected — see here Notes from underground: Deteriorating transport infrastructure.

My blogging friend Cobus van Wyngaard also went for a ride on the Gautrain, and his post points out some other negatives. If you want to know something about the history of it, see Notes from underground: Building bridges for the Gautrain, and the Wikipedia article is also quite interesting, and gives some of the technical details.

 

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