Abstract
After attending to shifts in the landscape of theological education at a public university in South Africa, this article explores the re-imagination of theological education as fostering faith-based agency. With reference to the (potential) role faith-based organisations play in response to developmental challenges in local communities, it then suggests a deliberate retrieval of faith-based sources – locatedness, voices, assets, agency and formation – in liberating theological education. It concludes with concrete curriculum recommendations for consideration.
Highlights
Unless theological education becomes deliberate about (1) fostering agency for faith-based action that goes beyond the local congregation, and (2) retrieving the latent assets of theological wisdom, experiential knowledge and grassroots embeddedness, to be found in many grassroots faith-based organisations, this will be a massive failed opportunity.In this article, the author considers the shifting landscape of theology – and students studying theology – at public universities in South Africa, the proliferation of faith-based organisations engaging in developmental challenges and the striking disconnect between these two worlds
The author considers the shifting landscape of theology – and students studying theology – at public universities in South Africa, the proliferation of faith-based organisations engaging in developmental challenges and the striking disconnect between these two worlds
The author challenges an assumption that theological education in our public universities is, or should be, to prepare (Protestant) pastors for church ministry, proposing, rather, a more deliberate intentionality about faith-based praxis that goes beyond local congregation
Summary
Unless theological education becomes deliberate about (1) fostering agency for faith-based action that goes beyond the local congregation, and (2) retrieving the latent assets of theological wisdom, experiential knowledge and grassroots embeddedness, to be found in many grassroots faith-based organisations, this will be a massive failed opportunity.In this article, the author considers the shifting landscape of theology – and students studying theology – at public universities in South Africa, the proliferation of faith-based organisations engaging in developmental challenges and the striking disconnect between these two worlds. In conversation with current students of Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Pretoria – those not focusing on becoming ministers or pastors of churches – my sense is that they already study theology hoping that it could prepare them to find vocations beyond narrow ecclesiastical boundaries: in faith-based or non-profit settings, social enterprises, ministries of healing and counselling, or somewhere in public sector.5 my contention is that current theological curricula fail them dismally, as our offering seems to still centre around the ecclesiastical requirements of the smaller percentage of students in our theological institutions.
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