Even though the West, or Global North, initiates extensive development policymaking and project activity on the African continent, this study argues that one source of major frustration between different parties entrusted to do the work arises from cognitive differences in their worldviews. These differences affect people's actions and have theological ramifications involving how we all understand meaning and reality. The study employs a case method analyzed through the lens of Alfred Schutz's sociology of knowledge theories and augmented by insights from African scholars to look at basic perceptual differences between Zambians and expatriates working on the Copperbelt Province's mines. After exploring how participants in the study interpreted various experiences, this study concludes that Zambians and expatriates were essentially living in "parallel universes" of meaning regardless of their apparently shared activities and objectives. The study further argues that viewpoints expressed by Zambian participants can be extrapolated into powerful lessons for members of civil society who are concerned about international development and the environment. Such teaching elements could especially help reshape how Americans and other Westerners understand ourselves in relation to physical creation and the cosmos as well as to those from radically different cultures. Lessons learned from the Zambian perspective could also help reinvigorate Western theological thinking, providing much needed critiques of discourses that currently dominate international development policymaking and planning and that determine value principally according to economic strategies and fulfillment of efficient, measurable objectives. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

This thesis discusses issues relating to development, sin and salvation. It examines the development visions of the Millennium Declaration and NEPAD Documents and compares them with the values of the Kingdom of God. It identifies some lessons from the Millennium Declaration and NEPAD Documents, and the Kingdom of God for the Union Baptist Church of Mozambique. These lessons are to help the denomination as it involves itself in the mission of the Kingdom of God in the community in Mozambique. The thesis argues that there is a relationship between the visions of the Millennium Declaration and the NEPAD Documents, and the values of the Kingdom of God on a number of issues such as the issues of sickness, orphans, vulnerability, gender inequality, poverty, the poor, hunger, unemployment, oppression, exploitation, wars, crime, violence against women and children, injustice and corruption. The Kingdom of God is about love, health, well-being for all, care, justice, unity and solidarity; harmony, life, peace, freedom, restoration, acceptance, righteousness, community, and salvation that includes both spiritual and physical salvation of the whole person both now in this life before death and after death. However, the thesis argues that the eschatological aspect of the Kingdom of God helps us see that sin is deeply rooted in human life, and even our best efforts at development will not rid the world of sin. The Church therefore has to remind society of this deeper sin, and to proclaim the gospel of the forgiveness of sins, while struggling with the evidence of that sin in poverty, sickness, injustice and violence. The church, especially the Union Baptist Church of Mozambique, has to be a key player in striving for Kingdom values. The church is called to holistic and integral mission. It should take a leading role in the issues that concern our people and society today, because that is doing the will of God. The commandment to love our neighbour as we love ourselves has to be expressed through our participation in integral mission, which is concerned with all human beings and all God's creation. The shalom of the Kingdom has to be experienced by all, and the church must be the means through which shalom is realised. / Thesis (M.Th.)-University of KwaZulu- Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.

Since independence in 1964, Zambia in general and the Copperbelt Province in particular have largely depended on the mono-economy based on copper mining. Around the 1970s the copper prices started falling causing the mining industry to collapse leading to economic stagnation. Efforts to revive the economy, such as the Structural Adjustment Programme implemented since the late 1980s have not brought about well-being for the people of the Copperbelt. As a result the government of the Republic of Zambia decided to launch an economic diversification programme for the Copperbelt province whose main aim is to seek and implement alternative economic activities that would accelerate economic growth thereby improving people's living conditions on the Copperbelt. This thesis proposes that in order to overcome poverty and improve people's living conditions, we need to shift our policy and practice from free market economic growth centred approaches, to shalom. The shift is based on the argument that development seen through the lenses of free market economic growth alone has not sustained life; instead it has contributed to environmental degradation and poverty creation in Zambia and the Copperbelt Province in particular. The thesis argues that shalom is an authentic development paradigm. This argument is based on three fundamental integral parts of shalom namely creation, people and justice. In order to bring about comprehensive well-being for people there is a need to a) appreciate creation as a phenomenon with its own integrity. It should not be destroyed for selfish economic ends; b) give pre-eminence to people as free agents who could participate in creating their own destiny based on their capacities and social conditionalities; and c) ensure social justice as a necessary condition for human relations and economic dispensation. / Thesis (M.Th.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.

This thesis is an evaluation of the members of the missionary religious Congregation of the Holy Spirits' understanding of their mission to the poor in the Dioceses of Bethlehem and Durban in South Africa. The Congregation of the Holy Spirit was founded on 27th May, 1703, Feast of Pentecost. A group of poor clerical students knelt before the statue of the Black Virgin of Paris (Our Lady of Deliverance) in the Church of St. Etienne-des-Gres. Their friend and leader was Poullart des Places. This small group of young men consecrated themselves to the Holy Spirit so marking the foundation of the Congregation. In the year 1848 some forty missionaries of the Congregation of the Holy Heart of Mary founded by Francis Libermann in 1841 were integrated into the Congregation of the Holy Spirit. From its foundation, the mission of the Congregation has always been the "evangelization of the poor" (Luke 4:18). For the founders, the poor meant those who were oppressed and marginalized among whom were the poor students and slaves in the colonies. My particular concern, however, is to evaluate the members of the Holy Spirits' understanding of their mission to the poor in the Dioceses of Bethlehem and Durban in South Africa. How do Spiritans in these two dioceses understand or interpret "the poor" whom they serve? How does this contemporary South African Spiritan understanding of the poor match with that of the founders or constitution of the Congregation? My response to these questions is an affirmation. In the evaluation, we will discover that the poor in the dioceses of Bethlehem and Durban include those who are unemployed, HIV/AIDS patients, orphans, children and women who are abused, refugees / asylum seekers, street children and many others. In summary, it is noted that the poor are those who lack physical necessities, socially oppressed and spiritually poor. In faithfulness to the intuition of the founders, it is observed that Spiritans in both Bethlehem and Durban Dioceses are attempting to be at the service of the poor. They are serving the poor through the proclamation of the Word, administration of the Sacraments, visitation of people in their own homes, attending to those who are infected and affected by HIV/AIDS pandemic, promoting the values of the Kingdom of God through justice and peace ministries and finally, Spiritans are working among the refugees, prisoners and hostel dwellers. Looking at these Spiritan ministries, it is noted that their choices of works are in accordance with the vision of the founders a well as what is in the Spiritan Rule of Life or constitution. Spiritans in both Bethlehem and Durban perceive their vocation as being at the service of these people. However, as religious, there are other elements which should be taken into consideration, such as prayer, community life and missionary spirituality. These are essential elements in the life of the members of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit. In general, the interviews show a lack of community life among members of the Congregation. This lack of community life affects prayer life as well. Other important elements include the need to revisit the idea of education and recovery of prophetic dimension of the Congregation where its members are always at the frontier situations. / Thesis (M.Th.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

This research centres on the church's involvement in human development and poverty alleviation programmes. This thesis acknowledges that many Third World nations received political freedom from Western colonialists, but many of these countries failed to successfully exploit the political freedom to improve economic growth and human development. Poverty is therefore one of the major problems facing people in Third World countries. / Thesis (M.Th.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2002

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