A Wall in Jerusalem by Mark Braverman

Author:Mark Braverman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: FaithWords
Published: 2013-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

Kairos South Africa: A Challenge to the Church

In the South Africa Kairos document, South African Christians, black and white, address not the perpetrators of the evil in the Pretoria government, but rather their own church, and what they name the “church theology” that was complicit in both creating and maintaining the vast system of apartheid. It is a theology, the document asserts, that “tends to make use of absolute principles such as reconciliation and nonviolence and applies them indiscriminately and uncritically to all situations. Very little attempt is made to analyze what is actually happening in our society…Closely linked to this is the lack of an adequate understanding of politics and political strategy.”17 Church theology is as powerful as it is pernicious because it flies under the false flag of defending human rights and opposing oppression. “In a limited, guarded and cautious way this theology is critical of apartheid,” explain the authors. “Its criticism, however, is superficial and counter-productive because instead of engaging in an in-depth analysis of the signs of our times, it relies upon a few stock ideas derived from Christian tradition and then uncritically and repeatedly applies them to our situation.”18

The brilliance of the South Africa Kairos document is that in their analysis of three “stock ideas” (reconciliation, justice, and nonviolence) the authors go straight to the heart of the faith—to the heart of the Gospel, in fact. As we read the South Africa Kairos document today, the parallels to the apartheid system now in place in Palestine jump from the page.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.