Christianity side by side with the occult as one belief system? The juxtaposition is interesting. There is a noticeable resurgence of the occult (sorcery and witchcraft beliefs) in contemporary cities like Harare, Accra or Lagos adjacent with a growth of charismatic evangelist churches. Conversations, rumours and gossip about witchcraft, sorcery and miracles (works of God) […]
religion
Posted inNews/Politics
Charlie Hebdo, laughter, dogma and ‘truth’
The recent “terrorist” attacks at the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, in Paris, France, is a stark reminder of something that the Italian semiotician, philosopher, novelist and universal scholar Umberto Eco thematised in his first novel, The Name of the Rose (1998), namely, the supposedly negative, mutually exclusive relationship between what is taken to be absolute, […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
Killing in the name of God
No thinking person can escape being horrified by the actions carried out in the name of God by religious fanatics across the world today. Killings, rapes, executions, wholesale slaughter, genocide, torture, and sometimes just ordinary nastiness — a litany of horrors that deny humankind the right to claim ourselves to be a uniformly emotionally intelligent […]
Posted inBusiness
Max Weber on capitalism and religion
What must surely count as one of the shrewdest, albeit debatable, accounts of the distinctive traits of capitalism was penned by the justly famous German sociologist Max Weber in his controversial book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism of 1930 (London: Routledge Classics, 2001). The reasons for its controversial status are summarised as […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Are today’s secularists really secular?
By Ryan Peter Yesterday my Twitter feed went crazy after Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng’s speech “ Law and Religion in Africa” was posted on the internet. In it our chief justice talks about “how the interplay between law and religion could yield a product that is for the common good of all in Africa’s pluralistic […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Oh my Gad! Chief Justice Mogoeng wants to mix religion and law
For many who spent their childhood in Pretoria, they’ll remember all too well the threats parents wielded to curb errant behaviour. They would temper a lust for misadventure with the threat of the stout school in Hammanskraal. A hint of madness would be tempered with the threat of Weskoppies in Pretoria West. And any bent […]
Posted inEquality, Lifestyle, News/Politics
A sangoma should lead prayer at president’s inauguration
Every five years the residents of Pretoria are treated to the likes of Robert Mugabe and his rather peculiar scarecrow-like amandla fist-pump. Every five years our eyes are trained on that Herbert Baker monument that is the Union Buildings. Every five years we put on an august show that is a representative manifesto of our […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle
Thank God for Dunning Kruger
There’s not a word written in any of my posts on belief and spirituality that is not heavily weighed nor seriously considered. What will my post say, what effect will this have, what answers does this post potentially offer to those having difficulties with the topic I’ve chosen, and, last of all, what does this […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
The thinking Christian’s gay dilemma
It is no surprise, if media reports are to be believed, that the driving force behind Uganda’s new hate legislation against its LGBTI citizens is backed by US-based fundamentalist evangelical Christian organisations. It’s frankly embarrassing, as an albeit liberal Christian, to be associated even in general description with this kind of behaviour. What would Jesus […]
Posted inGender violence, News/Politics
Spreading hate in the name of God
For 10 minutes or so, the Wits Art Museum resembled a Pentecostal revivalist meeting. Hands were raised in worship as the crowd swayed and sang hymns. On stage, two pastors lay their hands on the person kneeling in front of them, the subject of their passionate prayers. This was not supposed to be. Not because […]
Posted inGeneral
Leviticus explained, and why sceptics should leave it alone
If I had to comment loudly and publicly about the play of a rugby match using the rules of golf, I would rightly deserve to be considered an idiot. Similarly anyone who uses the content of Leviticus as an argument against Christianity could with good reason be called the same. Yet I see this done […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle
The church has more money than God
In a world where many are continuing to tighten their belts and complain of the “financial pinch” there are some entities that seem to remain on the gravy train. Among the usual culprits one entity stands tall, a constant that no one questions or suspects. The church. It’s easy to speak of how big business […]