Chapters in Books (Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology)

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Browsing Chapters in Books (Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology) by Author "Jones, Chris"

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    The contentious issue of corporal punishment in South Africa
    (African Sun Media, 2020) Grobbelaar, Jan; Jones, Chris
    This chapter will focus on how children should be treated and raised in a culture where the distinctions between discipline and punishment have been blurred for decades. Why should a rights conception of discipline matter? The chapter will navigate these and other issues when it comes to disciplining children in a democratic, but often violent society. It will firstly attend to the legal framework for discipline in South Africa, especially regarding school discipline. Then it will describe the current situation in South Africa and also look at recent developments regarding corporal punishment and the continuing struggle against violence that children experience and are exposed to on a daily basis. Lastly, positive alternative ways of disciplining children in order to behave better and how people responsible for children can be assisted in this regard, will be addressed.
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    Death penalty : a human rights issue for South Africa
    (IntechOpen, 2021) Jones, Chris
    In South Africa, the death penalty has been repealed just after the arrival of democracy in 1994. At present, due to numerous daily murders, especially farm murders, this issue is being debated once again seriously – by ordinary citizens, politicians, theologians, and others. In the media, in particular, it gets a lot of attention and in view of the extent of violent crime in our country, the reinstatement of the death penalty is again supported by many. The death penalty as such will always be contentious because it is about the reasoned termination of someone’s life – which is a radical act. Between 2009 and 2013 I did research on the death penalty in South African prisons (the first of its kind as far as we could determine), in all 9 our country’s provinces. The content of this study, gathered from 467 convicted murderers, and several other core aspects of why the reinstatement of the death penalty particularly in South Africa, should not be an option, will be discussed with reference to supporting international and authoritative research.
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    Male initiation and circumcision : a South African perspective
    (African Sun Media, 2020) Jones, Chris
    I have been interested in and following this rite of passage for a long time, knowing that it creates contexts and opportunities within which children can be extremely vulnerable1. On top of this, so many responsible individuals and institutions have been relatively quiet – especially since the dawn of our new democracy (1994) in South Africa – about botched circumcisions, dehydration, infections and the annual loss of lives during this ritual. This chapter does not rely on statistical and other data as its primary resource, which would be a typical social science approach, followed by a number of chapters in this book, but rather on presenting important views and contributions by mostly African people and scholars who are/were in different ways involved in this ritual, with its accompanying culture. The role of religion in this ritual will not be discussed. I will often refer to the significant report on public hearings on male initiation schools in South Africa, published by the Commission for the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities2 (CRL Rights Commission)3. In their executive summary, they define culture as “the totality of human creation and expression in both tangible and intangible forms” (CRL Rights Commission 2014:5). For them, the tangible forms of culture “include all material products created by a society as a result of human ingenuity. Intangibles comprise, among other things, language, beliefs, tastes, attitudes, rituals, religion” (:5).