Emerging Africa

I have written a general post about the upcoming Amahoro Insititute at the Rocklands Conference Centre in Simon's Town, on July 21-24, but want to specifically repeat here for Cape Town folks.

AMAHORO INSTITUTES were born out of our first Amahoro Gathering when Dr. Mabiala Kenzo, an African theologian, prophetically stated: “The church in Africa is at a crossroads, poised to become a major force in the world. But we will only be successful in this if we have the courage to differ; to innovate…there is a need for Africa to move from intuitive or secondhand faith and theology to a critical first hand faith and theology.”

David Bosch defined Christendom as "a society in which it is popular to be a Christian, in which the Church is a respected part of society because it does not turn the world upside down."

Steve wrote: "I'm not too sure what Christendom means, but to the extent that the Roman empire became Christian, abandoned places of empire refers to places where there were once Christians, but there are no longer any Christians there."

What is your understanding of 'Christendom'? Is it the same thing as 'empire'? Does it have any significance in the post-colonial conversation?

Hello all,

There's an organization called the World Index of Social and Economic Responsibility (WISER), which has started a user-generated website at www.wiserearth.org. It's a directory of over 100,000 local and global organizations who work for "the central issues of our day" (as they put it), to help people connect and find resources. It's a pretty amazing networking and research tool, so I thought it might be helpful for some of your organizations and work.

Kenyan Police Kill 11 in Nairobi Gang Crackdown

I was grieved when I read this article about violence in Nairobi.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/world/africa/07wire-kenya.html?hp

I'm posting this on Luc's behalf (I hope he doesn't mind! Donate to his cause here!). It's an update that appeared here. Luc is on staff at Nieu Communities in Pretoria, South Africa.

I continue to be challenged by Claude's presentation about Jubilee. Jubilee is a beautiful invitation to be about the work of the Kingdom. For many of us it is barely a dream let alone a hope. I'm convinced that a rediscovery of the practice of Sabbath is necessary to begin to move toward Jubilee. While in Africa I talked to some folks about my thoughts concerning Sabbath practice. I feel like the ministry of presence that we practiced with our sisters and brothers is a form of Sabbath practice. Letting go of our agenda to just be with the other!

This morning in Portland, Oregon, Oregon Public Broadcasting aired the show "World, Have Your Say" from a university in Kampala.
It is worth searching for online. The discussion was quite lively.
Kelly Bean

We're uploading photos to Flickr. If you have a flickr account, please tag the photos with "Amahoro" so we can pull them into the Amahoro pool which you can view online here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/amahoro/. You can subscribe to the photo feed too.

If you don't have a flickr account, feel free to use the generic flickr account we've set up (or even set up your own - it's free and you get 20 mb's upload space each month - just remember to tag the photos with "Amahoro").
Url: http://www.flickr.com
Username: amahoroafrica
password: peaceafrica

We believe that God has revealed himself as the One who wishes to bring about justice and true peace among men; that in a world full of injustice and enmity He is in a special way the God of the destitute, the poor and the wronged and that He calls his Church to follow Him in this; that He brings justice to the oppressed and gives bread to the hungry; that He frees the prisoner and restores sight to the blind; that He supports the downtrodden, protects the stranger, helps orphans and widows and blocks the path of the ungodly; that for Him pure and undefiled religion is to visit the orphans and the widows in their suffering; that He wishes to teach His people to do what is good and to seek the right...

Graeme Codrington has already posted some summaries of the keynotes as well as some mp3's at FutureChurch. Luke Miller has been adding daily updates written by Aryantungyisa Otiti, a freelance journalist from Uganda, at http://amahoroafrica.blogspot.com/.

Please add your links to your own summaries and reflections by commenting on this post.

Firstly, you need to sign up on this website and log in. Then view the Amahoro group home page and join by clicking on "Subscribe" on the right. You'll automatically be emailed any new content unless you change that in your account settings.

Now that you've registered, are logged in and subscribed to the group, you can post content by clicking "Create Group post" - give it a subject and write away.

Pictures

Please tag your photos at flickr.com with "amahoro" and we'll create a group pool for those photos. We'll set up a flickr account for those who haven't a clue what the previous sentence meant so that you can put your photos there.

Tagging blog posts

Please either link to any blog entries you've written, or post them here again - and also tag them with "amahoro" so we can find them.