Prof. Steve de Gruchy served
as head of the School of Religion and Theology at the University of
Kwazulu-Natal. He died recently in a river-tubing accident in South
Africa.
An Olive Agenda: First thoughts
on a metaphorical theology of development
This paper proposes a theological engagement with a metaphor that could
transcend the duality between the 'green' environmental agenda and the
'brown' poverty agenda that has disabled development discourse for the
past twenty years. The mix of green and brown suggests an olive agenda;
which in turn provides a remarkably rich metaphor - the olive - that holds
together that which religious and political discourse rends apart: earth,
land, climate, labour, time, family, food, nutrition, health, hunger,
poverty, power and violence.
Agency, Sin and Grace: Protestant
perspectives on mission and the earth crisis
This essay examines the relationship between Protestant mission thinking
and the ecological crisis facing the earth. An examination of five
contemporary traditions (Evangelical, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian
and Lutheran) notes that it is extremely difficult for Protestants to deal
with the earth crisis missiologically, and it is argued that this is
because Protestant missiology is deeply embedded in the self-same
affirmation of human agency that is at the heart of the earth crisis. The
essay then engages with the notions of agency, sin and grace to suggest an
alternative Protestant approach to mission that is responsive to the depth
of the crisis.
