So turns out I have a few other blogs - one of which is FutureChurch, where I blog about the future of the church in South Africa. I tend to write my theological reflections there - and more about what is happening at Pangani and NieuCommunities here. This last week I've got some posts out of my system...

While talking about what church could be during our book discussion yesterday, and where Christians would go for community if they left the institutional church, this post was written: Resisting assimilation into the Borg: the future of the church. I'm not really a Star Trek fan, but I thought the tongue-in-cheek metaphor was a not-so-serious fit!

On Tuesday we were looking at the first four books of the New Testament and it reminded me of the first century scholar - N.T. Wright's - research on the Gospel (or "Good News") which the first Christians proclaimed (and why it got them killed by Rome) - "Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not."

I've also recently concluded my series on Easter by looking at Jesus's resurrection on Easter Sunday - and why the Christian hope is that what G-d did with Jesus on that day he will eventually do with all of creation. Earlier posts in that series on are on Good Friday - the death of G-d by G-d - and Holy Saturday - whether following Jesus is worth it.

The last post in my recent return to blogging is on a podcast from the parent organisation of NieuCommunities: CRM. They had a discussion on the shift happening within the church today - away from attractional church and towards missional church.

What also interests me about Apartheid is the white English role. Most English people in SA seem unaware that the British concentration camps were responsible for the deaths of 26,000 Afrikaner women and children. This is not a legacy to be lightly skipped over, and one that ties directly into one of the most thorny issues for English South Africans: identity. Who are we? We're not British, although many of us hold British passports (or can get ancestral visas, or flee to the UK when we get the chance). We're not Afrikaans, so therefore we're not responsible for Apartheid (so I've heard from many English people). "Apartheid was something which the Afrikaners were responsible for, not us. We had no say. In all levels of government the only people who were employed were Afrikaans." So we withdrew from the public sphere and happily existed in the neutral space between oppression and oppressed, mirroring the behaviour of everyone else.

And so, while not being the creators of Apartheid, we supported it by our silence. The saying, "All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing" applies to us. And applies specifically to our churches...and our theology. I have not seen any widespread work in South African English churches to rethink how we relate to the public sphere, and to how our theology needs to change in order to explain how we might respond to new Apartheids in a different way. In fact, it has been a continuation of business as usual, of a continuing existence in the neutral ground of prosperity, allowing our theology to continue our existence in the same way.

This is not good enough!