Browsing by Author "Palm, Selina"
Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- ItemAlways reforming? : nurturing a church for human rights in South Africa(Pieter de Waal Neethling Trust, 2018) Palm, SelinaThis article explores the post-apartheid call to South African churches to play an ongoing theological role in the shared task of building a human rights culture for all. It seeks a counter-hegemonic human rights praxis that emphasises the lack of a human rights culture and turns to the early insights of German Reformed theologian Jürgen Moltmann on human rights realisation. This points to an important task for local congregations today. It places this in conversation with current South African empirical realities to argue for a theological disruption of the power-laden imagery underpinning much human rights abuse. It concludes that a liberating Trinitarian praxis for human rights can shape a transformational ecclesiology that speaks to concerns raised by South African church youth within a local church today with a history of struggle involvement. Their voices offer a challenge to churches to be “always reforming” on human rights concerns.
- ItemSeen but not heard? Engaging the mechanisms of faith to end violence against children(African Sun Media, 2020) Palm, SelinaIn South Africa today, many children face high levels of physical, sexual, verbal and emotional abuse, as well as sustained neglect and exploitation. Families and homes, despite their protective possibilities, often remain the most vulnerable place for young children. Violence against children, either silenced or hidden from public sight, can become a normalised pattern for both adults and children with concerning long-term consequences. In the last few decades, this issue has received more sustained attention. Increasingly, evidence shows that it is imperative that both children and adults understand that children have full rights to bodily integrity and to grow, survive, thrive, participate and make their voices heard. This chapter will explore the role of Christian faith communities1 in ending violence against children in South Africa today, in the light of recent strategies identified by experts as effective in preventing violence. It will draw on key insights from global child protection experts in a 2018 scoping study (Palm 2019a) carried out by academic experts from South Africa who interrogated both positive and negative aspects of the relationships between faith and violence against children to offer recommendations for faith communities’ unique theological role in ending violence against children, including tackling harmful social norms and underlying beliefs (Palm & Eyber 2019). Children have not always been served well by religious precepts. The expression ‘children should be seen and not heard’ is an old English proverb dating from the 15th century2 which was recommended by religious leaders of the day and transported elsewhere on colonial ships. This harmful legacy of quiet obedience by children who were expected to know their place, was often accompanied by religiously infused dictates that ‘to spare the rod would spoil the child’. These are just two ways that religious values can entangle with existing cultural norms in ways that reinforce harmful attitudes to children. In a context of violence against children, these religious legitimations, still used today by some, endanger their safety and protection. Christian faith communities in South Africa are, therefore, faced with an ethical challenge which requires them to reshape inherited harmful interpretations of theologies still used to legitimise certain forms of violence against children. Only if this takes place, can they effectively collaborate with the wider children’s sector at many levels within the child protection system to help re-orientate how children are treated. This chapter will point to the promise within child liberation theologies that can help to underpin this ethical task. This can assist local churches to place children at the centre of their faith as full citizens of the beloved community of God whose suffering needs to be seen and whose voices must be heard.
- ItemA time to confess? :an ecclesiology of vulnerability in light of #metoo(AOSIS, 2019-10-28) Palm, SelinaThis article draws on Robert Vosloo’s call for an ‘ecclesiology of vulnerability’ in order to bear faithful theological witness to a vulnerable God. He is concerned that prophetic witness avoids a cheap triumphalism and rediscovers painful solidarity with the crises of our times, embodies a hope grounded in lament and mobilises the vulnerable ‘body’ of the church to perform resistance-in-action. South Africa’s kairos tradition of prophetic witness was addressed to the church, calling for a vulnerable self-critique that acknowledged its theological complicity in the face of the sin of apartheid and calling the churches beyond pious words to acts of embodied resistance. This article draws on this trajectory in light of the evidence regarding churches complicity in relation to sexual violence against vulnerable women and children. It explores the Dutch scholar, Leo Koffeman’s claim of 2009 that the church is ‘morally vulnerable’ and that as a result, violence plays an ongoing role in its life. This institutional complicity needs to be acknowledged if authentic prophetic witness is to emerge from current places of lament. In this task, a ‘pneumatology of vulnerability’ may help disrupt abusive theological power-claims. Churches must risk admitting their own institutional vulnerability to embody public practices of confession and lament, if they are to refuse an ecclesiology of denial for one of disruption for the sake of justice. This is an essential theological task if they are to enable the vulnerable body of the church to admit #metoo.
- ItemTransforming hope? : a theological-ethical vision, virtue and practice for the common good(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2012-03) Palm, Selina; Le Bruyns, Clint; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Theology. Dept. of Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The aim of this research project is to explore whether there are convincing, contemporary theological traditions within Christianity for conceptualising a socially responsible hope for our current times that can be envisioned, embodied and enacted in our world. It uses a theological-ethical framework of hope as social vision, virtue and practice to unpack the shape of hope systematically. It draws on diverse theologians such as Jürgen Moltmann, Albert Nolan, Walter Brueggemann and Flora Keshgegian as well as the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper to offer multi-denominational and country perspectives on the topic that point towards the social practice of this hope as a central part of the mission of the church in our world today. This project examines a range of theological arguments for a world transforming Christian hope with concrete this-worldly social implications that is not just about ‘pie in the sky when we die’. It looks for a hope that can balance the demands of an active human responsibility alongside faith in a divine presence that is capable of being incarnated into how we see, are and act as humans in the midst of actual life as it is and not just as an abstract doctrine of belief for another world. It seeks for an ecumenically endorsed hope that can enable us to be active contributors to the wider human projects of social transformation clearly needed at the start of the 21st century enabling us to interpret Christian mission as hope in action within our world.