Bibliography: leaves 131-134. / The dynamic discourse between religion and public life is illustrated in South Africa in both the pre- and post-apartheid eras. Specifically, this relationship is manifested in the lives of a number of individuals who straddled both facets of society. This thesis centres on a social analysis of the journeys undertaken by thirteen men and women who held Christian faith and political commitment in each hand as the New South Africa emerged from the Old. In-depth interviews were conducted with all subjects using qualitative research methods based on an oral history approach. Subjects were asked to consider their faith identities and the ways in which their faith directed their involvement in the public arena.

Includes bibliographical references ( p. 212-234). / This thesis is in search of "unity in difference" in 'Onjeong' (human being's warm hearted love) biblical hermeneutics on the basis of Korean and South African political and cultural contexts. The theme of difference was, explicitly and implicitly, directed into the stream of discrimination in the dimension of "questing for sameness." Under the motto of "becoming metaphoric Israelites," each group of Korean and South African political Bible readers identified themselves with metaphoric Israelites and explicitly discriminated against metaphoric non-Israelites in the name of imperialism, nationalism, classism, racism, and liberation movement. In addition, each type of Korean and South African cultural Bible readers dissolved the tension of difference on the dialectical dimension of "questing for sameness" towards "becoming Christians." However, under the strong influence of 'dichotomous discriminative Cartesian psyche' and 'the pressure of the discriminative political ideology', cultural Bible readers could not avoid the violence of the imposition of the grand narrative of "becoming metaphoric Israelites."

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-185). / This study seeks to discuss the persistence of religion in colonial and postcolonial narratives of confinement and exclusion. I begin by first exploring the history of religion in relation to colonial representations of Africa(ns) as savage and, situating the narratives of confinement and exclusion in the context of South Africa's colonial history, I set out to demonstrate the temporal and spatial expressions of the sacred as it is invoked/ produced by both the colonized and colonizer. I then proceed to explore such contests of power to produce the sacred in Frantz Fanon's On National Culture and the indigenous authorities in post-apartheid South Africa. In doing so, I draw upon the resources of postcolonial theory, subaltern studies and African/Fanon studies to demonstrate how strategies of containment and exclusion have been employed to mediate the persistence of the sacred in colonial, anti-colonial and African nationalist discourses. A further distinguishing feature of this study is that it seeks demonstrate through the metaphor of infection, the persistence of religion regardless of, and in fact activated by, these strategies that seek to domesticate and disinfect the sacred.

Bibliography: leaves 92-103. / The question of identity is one of the pressing issues for many disciplines, and is a key question in feminist theory. Theorists occupy diverse positions across a spectrum. At one end there are those who believe there is something "essential" which defines us (both as individuals and in groups). At the spectrum’s other end are those who take the view that identity is constructed - whether unconsciously through the practices identified by interactions, through performances of the body. This study seeks to explore some of these understandings of identity, using a specifically post-structuralist feminist lens which, inter alia directly challenges the dualisms upon which western philosophy is founded. Having outline some approaches to the question of identity, the study concludes by examining some of the consequences and possibilities for Christian anthropology in its understanding of what it means to be human and how the human person can be said to constitute the Imago Dei.

Bibliography: leaves 118-122. / Belief in ancestral spirits among the Africans has always aroused a hot debate among scholars of African Religion. To a great number of scholars this belief seems to have been exaggerated. The fact that Africans speak more about their ancestors than about God has led some scholars into thinking that God has no place in African Traditional Religion.They argue that God is not worshipped in African Traditional Religion.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-136). / South Africa has been hard hit by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This pandemic has had many sectors in society mobilizing and creating awareness around prevention and the effects of HIV/AIDS. One such sector is the religious community, which, with all its diversity, has tried to address the issues that stem from this pandemic. This mmor dissertation looks at the South African situation of HIV I AIDS from a gendered religious perspective, the perspective of South African Christian women's theologies. It further catalogs the research to Anglican women in Cape Town. This study aims to find the participatory levels and status of Christian Anglican women in the church's mobilization activities and decision making. Through this study two main theologies are explored, African women's theology and the theology of Hope.

Bibliography: pages 232-241. / Philosophy and theology combine in Jonathan Edwards in a way that is not usual for either discipline. The field of study is therefore that of historical philosophy and historical theology but only in so far as to give the historical situation and interpretation of Jonathan Edwards' epistemology. The philosophy is Christian, Neo-Platonic and Lockean and the theology is Calvinistic. The author gives the historical background with reference to John Locke,· Isaac Newton and compares Edwards with Kant who was almost contemporary and shows that epistemology is situational and that a philosopher's works can never be studied out of context. He then touches on the massive Puritan heritage of Jonathan Edwards' and shows briefly the epistemological tradition of Calvin but chiefly concentrating on the knowledge of faith. He traces this through the English Puritans to Jonathan Edwards. The author then by means of a detailed commentary from various parts of Edwards' works· places the locus of Edwards' epistemology in the doctrine of the Sovereignty of God. · He shows that each Person of the Triune God, was a permanent emotional, devotional, theological and homiletical feature in Edwards' life. The holistic vision of God working in a consciously epistemological way from eternity to eternity, raises the locus of the epistemology far above Perry Miller's comment that Edwards was extrapolating Lockean psychology into the Godhead. The reverse was true, the vision of God in His eternal sovereignty, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient, places the locus in eternity, in the heavens, so to speak, and the ordinary elements of epistemology usually discussed by philosophers, must be considered in that context if they are to be true to Jonathan Edwards. This locus is most clearly seen when the eschatological development of his epistemology into eternity is systematised. Knowledge is bound up with glory, virtue, joy, beauty and with an existential encounter with God, growing into eternity. Knowledge is viewed as being mediated by Christ the God-man to an hierarchy of created spirits. Knowledge is itself in an hierarchy and must be considered in its full implications. The knowledge of the damned involves Edwards in a contradiction as he sees them growing in knowledge, suffering and pain yet cut off from Christ the mediator of knowledge and also growing in stupor.

Bibliography: p. 98-100. / This study examines the cultural implications of the methodology followed by Muhammed b Idris al-Shāfiʻī in the process of Islamic legalism. With reference to Clifford Geertz's model of religion as a cultural system, Shāfiʻī's methodology is presented as a process which expresses a certain cultural reality. That reality expresses an interrelationship between a world view- the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammed, and a social context of legal differences. The cultural significance of this interrelationship facilitates the extension of the religious experience beyond the ritual itself and thereby influences the life of society, their ethos. As consequences of a cultural process, rituals such as the salah and fasting emerge as environs which reflects a particular social context and expresses a physiological realty- the world view. The concept of intention (niyyah), an important principle in Shāfiʻī 's legal thought, is shown to enhance the interrelationship between the world view and the social context. A sociological discourse is propagated rather than a purely legal dicta in order to portray Shāfiʻī as a theologian whose specific style and methodology have been motivated by a specific social ideal. This ideal represents Shāfiʻī 's ideas of the social composition and structure of the ideal Islamic ummah (community) under the leadership of the Prophet Muhammed. In support of this hypothesis, Shāfiʻī is located within a socio-historical context which shaped and influenced his legal thoughts. Shown to be motivated by a cultural reality rather than mere legal differences with his earlier contemporaries, Shāfiʻī 's ideas express the ideal to experience the aura of the ummah who was once led by the Prophet Mohammed. Shāfiʻī 's systemisation of the legal process and his unique conception of the Sunnah are presented here as a means whereby Shāfiʻī sought that physiological reconciliation with the Prophet and his ideal ummah. His legal principles within this system become symbols which had a specific function- to motivate people to experience a realty in which their actions are modeled on a world view, the ' tradition or Sunnah of the Prophet.

Bibliography: leaves 105-116. / This minor dissertation engages a theoretical feminist discourse to identify the lack of benevolent female relationships in the development of religious mythology. The study explores two diverse belief systems, Hinduism and Shi'ism, in order to demonstrate that the feminine is reduced to a subservient and controlled creative force across different religious and cultural systems. The study further develops the roles of the woman in the religious tradition, as mother and nurse to the hero and the guardian of male symbols and language. I have drawn on the feminist critical analysis of Luce Irigaray, and on classical Hindu and Shi'ite myth, to discern ways in which the femaile has been alienated from patriarchal social reality, due to the male-defined construction of the sacred, divine and submissive woman.

Bibliography: leaves 131-139. / 'Absolute poverty', wrote Robert McNamara, President of the World Bank, in 1978, is "a condition of life so limited by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, squalid surroundings, high infant mortality and low life expectancy as to be beneath an reasonable definition of human decency" (Cited in Kevin Watkins 1995:13). That remains a powerful description of the reality experienced by a large segment of the population in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC). Although this study does not measure poverty directly, the various literature reviewed reveals the nature and extent to which poverty is prevalent in the SADC region.