Research Articles (Practical Theology and Missiology)

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Browsing Research Articles (Practical Theology and Missiology) by Author "Barnard, Marcel"

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    Art as sacrament
    (Pieter de Waal Neethling Trust, 2019) Barnard, Marcel
    Inspired by Johan Cilliers’ roots in the silence and emptiness of the Karoo, Marcel Barnard explores in this article to what extent Christian Boltanski’s modern art exposition AFTER/NA in the Oude Kerk (Amsterdam) can be viewed as “sacramental art”. To do this, Barnard makes use of Louis-Marie Chauvet’s sacramental theology, in which the power of language to call beings – including human symbols – “into presence” has a central place. It is shown that Boltanski’s interventions in the Oude Kerk call the unseen, the absence, into presence – by remembering the thousands of dead buried beneath the floor, by making wilting life visible and by raising the question of what absence means. By doing this, Boltanski makes the visitor aware of the scandalous, ambivalent and vulnerable character of the sacrament. Barnard concludes that Boltanski’s installations may be called sacramental works of art.
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    My father’s tobacco-jar, Church Square Pretoria and Freedom Park : an autoethnographical exploration
    (AOSIS, 2014) Barnard, Marcel
    Julian Müller, in his advocacy of a narrative theology, has called for an autobiographical theology. In addition to Julian Müller’s plea, the author turned to what may be seen as the liturgical and ritual variant of this method, namely autoethnography. Thus he would honour Julian Müller and his tireless commitment to Practical Theology. Autobiographical and autoethnographical theology do not start from well-ordered and systematically arranged knowledge, but from a life as it has developed and as it is developing in its connections with others. Difference is therefore a keyword in the method. Others and other worlds evoke the consciousness of differences, incite reflections on the cracks, fractures and fissures that show themselves to the self and provoke negotiations with the otherness of the other. Never in his existence as a theologian had the author experienced this process more intensely than in his contacts with colleagues and religious practices in South Africa. It was described in the article how the author became acquainted with South Africa and, more particularly, with its liturgical rituals and visual arts since 2001. The different experiences of successive visits to Church Square in Pretoria functioned as a point of reference in the article. It was shown how the self re-negotiated its position in the world through the confrontation with a totally ‘other’ – in this case, South African liturgical rituals and visual arts. This re-negotiation focused on the Western academic position of the self when confronted with African epistemologies and ontologies.
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    Rev Pungula Wellington Dingani : leadership in the Corinthian Church in Phepheni, Eastern Cape, South Africa
    (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Teologiese Tydskrif (NGTT), 2014-09) Barnard, Marcel; Nell, Ian; Mbaya, Henry
    Local leadership is crucial in Africa. This article focuses on leadership in African Independent Churches, more specifically on the leader of a local congregation of the Corinthian Church, Rev Dingani in Phepheni, Eastern Cape. The article is composed of two parts. The first part is a portrait of Dingani, mainly from an emic (inside) point of view. After a biographical sketch, his ministry and liturgical leadership are outlined, followed by a portrait of Rev Dingani as a theologian. The second part, which mainly takes an etic (outside) stance, places this portrait in a wider context of leadership in African Independent Churches and sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. After indicating some general features of African leadership, the article focuses more specifically on two leadership styles: 1. The humane-oriented and charismatic/value-based style. 2. The participative and autonomous style. By distinguishing this emic and etic positions, we confront Western and African epistemologies, without reconciling them in advance.