The second week of Advent focusses on peace. I suppose that the first week’s focus on hope hits us first in a more personal way. I say, ‘I hope’. But when we speak of peace, we often have grander notions in mind, like peace in the Middle East or in Ukraine. In today’s lesson, we will start with the idea of peace on earth but end up with a focus on the peace of the Church, in our families, and in our own lives. Governments We have heard the phrase, ‘Peace through strength’. It is perhaps most associated with policies of governments during the Cold War, but ‘peace through strength’ was the heart of imperial Rome, the pax Romana . The first emperor, Augustus Caesar, boasted that he had brought piracy under control and fought numerous wars to establish peace in the empire. Yet we have learned to fear governmental power. An article just yesterday, entitled ‘Slipping through our fingers: How democracy is being eroded’, mentions mul...
Theological Liberalism in the West was substantially an Enlightenment project. It sought to broaden or generalise theological understanding by making it universal through the reason and religious experience in common with all human beings. It was, therefore, construed as relevant across social groupings and at the intensely personal level. Just how, then, could theological liberalism at all be a feature of African theology, with its concerns for relevance to African experiences and contexts? Even more, what does it have to do with African Evangelicalism? Western theological liberalism found Christian theology too confining. Theologians did not want their theological reflection to be confined by Scripture. They found theology to be too confining in an environment that championed reason. They reduced the Son of God to a good moral teacher. They understood the essence of Christianity to be the threefold creed not of Trinitari...