THE PROPHETIC VOICE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN COUNCIL OF CHURCHES AFTER 1990 â SEARCHING FOR A RENEWED KAIROS

• Main Author: Göranzon, Anders Bengt Olof
• Other Authors: Prof PJ Strauss
• Format: Others
• Language: en-uk
• Published: University of the Free State 2011
• Subjects: Church History and Polity
• Online Access: http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-10192011-142138/restricted/

This thesis is a study of how the prophetic voice of the South African Council of Churches (SACC) has changed over time. The focus is on the relationship between the SACC and the South African government of the day. The thesis analyses central texts from the National Conferences of the SACC held from 1969 to 2004. The analysed texts are Minutes and Resolutions, General Secretariesâ Reports, and the Presidentsâ Addresses. The thesis asks how the prophetic voice has changed since 1990, which is chosen as the cutoff year. This choice was not a matter of course. 1990 was the year when Mandela was released and the liberation movements were unbanned; but 1994 could be seen as the more obvious alternative. The author argues that the role of the SACC had already changed by 1990. The period between 1990 and 1994 is different from both the time before 1990 and the post-1994 situation. With the use of a method built on hermeneutical and discourse theoretical premises, a number of orders of discourse are delimited. In the first reading the prophetic voice is analysed in relation to intersectionality (with ethnicity, religious diversity, gender, and social class as suborders of discourse), violence versus non-violence, HIV and AIDS, and the Zimbabwe issue. A number of different discourses are discerned, some of them based on terminology borrowed from the Kairos Document. One paragraph treats the HIV and AIDS pandemic as a case study that deals with how the prophetic voice has been articulated within the different orders and sub-orders of discourse. Special attention is also given to the relationship between a prophetic ministry and a moralising ministry (which also is a kind of prophetic ministry). With inspiration from Walter Brueggemannâs theories about Mosaic and Davidic trajectories in the Old Testament, the second reading deals with the relationship between âthe prophetic voiceâ and âreconciliationâ as two nodal points in the material. Discourses that are discerned here are the âDavidic Propheticâ, âMosaic propheticâ, âState Theologyâ, âChurch Theologyâ, âProphetic Theologyâ, âDevelopmentâ, âLiberationâ, âNation-buildingâ, âCritical Solidarityâ, and âCritical Engagementâ discourses. With the sub-title of the thesis, the author argues that the SACC is searching for a renewed Kairos (or focus). After the dismantling of apartheid, the question is whether or not this focus is found. In the final discussion, reconciliation (and unity) is put alongside justice, development alongside liberation, and liberation alongside reconciliation.