Pentecostal Dynamics of African Initiated Churches

This essay is a historical consideration of the body of churches known as African Initiated Churches (AICs). The key research questions I am investigating are whether this church can be classified as Pentecostal and how it employs transnational networking in its mission strategy. I have approached this question by exploring the Pentecostal dynamics and transnational networking of the Cherubim and Seraphim Church as an example of an AIC. To this end, I analyze the Pentecostal and transnational nature of an international ecumenical conference organized by the church in London in 2017. This essay is written from the perspective of someone who was born and raised within the church movement, but has also studied the movement as part of African Christianity. The originality of this essay is in its analysis of the transnational nature of the international ecumenical conference.     

African American cultural history and reflections on Jung in the African Diaspora

Racism is defined as a psychopathology and the ground in which the covenant of whiteness is rooted and mirrored in the system of apartheid structured by American Constitutional Jurisprudence between 1857 and 1954. This historical period overshadowed Carl Jung's visit to America between 1909 and 1937. The spirit of the times and practices of racism coloured Jung's views, attitudes, and theories about African Americans, just as colonialism coloured his attitudes toward Africa and Africans. Consequently Jung failed to see the African Diaspora and the extraordinary intellectual and artistic period of the Harlem Renaissance (1919‐1929). Its introduction here foregrounds the exceptionalism of African Americans and the cultural continuity of African ancestry. This exceptionalism was not seen by Jung and there have been no attempts to redress its omission from analytical psychology and other sub‐disciplines of Western psychology. Jung's theories of personality and psychoanalysis and his negative projections about primitivism among Africans and African American ‘Negroes’ would have been mediated by knowledge of a legislated American apartheid and the Harlem Renaissance which occurred within the barriers of apartheid. In this paper I posit that culture, kinship libido, and the African principle of Ubuntu are healing modalities that play a critical role in instinct and the relational ground of human psychology and biology, from which culture as an environmental expression constellates around common goals of the human species. Cultural equivalencies and expressions within the wisdom traditions and mythologies of the Africa Diaspora are considered. Specifically, the Bantu principle of Ubuntu or ‘humanity’ is identified as the relational ground in African cultures, while the Kemetic‐Egyptian deity Maat, as an archetypal anima figure and the religio‐mythology offer a transcendent position from which to critique the inequities and constitutional jurisprudence that structured American apartheid. Maat is the personification of truth, justice, balance and weighing of the heart in orderly judicial processes. In her we find the alignment of the spirit and matter in the law and judgement. The paper concludes with reflections on pathways toward healing the psychopathology of racism and recommendations to enhance clinical training and practice.     

Interpreting the Reformation in Africa: Transformative hermeneutics of Manas Bethulezi in light of 500 years of the Reformation

A cursory look at the various histories of religious renewal shows three interrelated aspects; there is an experience of injustice that is followed by the religious movement's new revitalization through the special encounter or reference to divine communication, and then an effort to reorganize the socio‐economic and political structures of society in light of the newly discovered religious vitality. This article observes in the phenomenology of religious renewal that cultural renewal and cultural distinctiveness tend to accompany religious renewal.     

Revisiting interreligious relations: The convergence of global context and ecclesial developments

Following the important work of the 1980s and 1990s by the US churches and ecumenical bodies in developing interfaith statements and policies, significant events in both the US and international arenas were coincidental and motivational for US Christians to reconsider their interreligious engagement in a new context. This article examines the major contextual factors, as well as ecumenical developments with particular attention to the United Church of Christ and the National Council of Churches, which also will consider new statements in 2019.     

The Legacy,Leadership, and Hope of Pan‐African Women as a Missional Focus for Theological Education

This article analyzes the experience and self‐understanding of Pan‐African women of faith, who have often been viewed at the margins of church history and in the larger context of this history. This article challenges this marginal location. It argues that through the theological lens of the ecumenical Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace—and under the tenets of via positiva, via negativa, and via transformativa—the historical, present, and future pilgrimage of Pan‐African women of faith and their vision of hope needs to be further examined for a more inclusive embrace and accompaniment of the ecumenical community. Theological education should be a priority in preparing leaders for advancing the agenda of justice and peace. The article concludes by detailing the past, recent, and future work of the Pan‐African Women's Ecumenical Empowerment Network (PAWEEN) and its partners.     

Mentoring in Caribbean Theological Education

This article addresses the issue of mentoring in theological education, drawing against the context of the Caribbean and the insights of Pan‐African Women, such as in the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, as well as support and accountability groups such as Caribbean Women Theologians for Transformation and the Caribbean and North America Council for Mission. Drawing on biblical models of mentoring, the article argues that while the ways that individuals are mentored during their theological education programmes can and will vary, women in leadership can be sounding boards, cheerleaders, advocates, facilitators, coaches, guides, role models, and even critics as they help to shape and develop other women leaders in the church.     

Pan‐African Women of Faith and a Vision of Inclusive Global Theological Education

This article provides an introduction to the Pan‐African Women's Ecumenical Empowerment Network (PAWEEN), formally established as a network in 2015, but which traces its origins back to the 10th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Busan, the Republic of Korea, in 2013. PAWEEN provides an opportunity for a mutual invitation to deep listening and concerted engagement to make the realities of past and present living, of faith and agency visible. It is one example of a network under development, grounded in the liberating gospel message and committed to the aim of a transformative theological education, which extends this invitation to all who share this common concern and vision.     

The Narrative Architecture of Political Forgiveness

Although there is widespread agreement with the argument that Hannah Arendt made more than half a century ago, that forgiveness is “one of the human faculties that make social change possible” (Misztal, 2011, p. 201), beyond this, there is little consensus of what it means. Applying a narrative structure to this discussion, there is a lack of clarity around questions of who, what, where, when, and why to forgive. This article will explore the politics of forgiveness in East Germany, where these issues have been hotly contested for more than 25 years. The data examined in this article suggest that the fraught process of forgiveness embodies not consensus but contest, as people disagree on key questions such as who has the right to forgive whom, for what, how long the window for the opportunity of forgiveness stays open, and even why these questions matter, not only for individuals but for the whole of society.     

The League

About painting, cybernetics, and shared purpose, this article is partly a story, in part a memoir, an adventure in cybernetics, happening 30 years ago, in snow, in the small Swiss city of St. Gallen. A conference of the American Society for Cybernetics meets there. It is 1987. The author, a painter, searching for a new understanding of painting, encounters a convergence of the art of painting and the art of cybernetics through principles of second-order cybernetics in Pask, von Foerster and Maturana, dissolved in Kathleen Forsythe’s poetry. The form, as well as the content of this article, reflects cybernetics.     

The Ecology of Experiences for African American Women in Clinical Doctoral Programs

African American women must navigate higher education, in particular, clinical doctoral programs, as a gendered racial minority. These women often endure multiple levels of discrimination to obtain their degree. Findings of this study highlight these experiences and suggest the importance of increasing supports for African American women in clinical doctoral programs. Practices and supports should be put in place so that students of color are not marginalized because of their race. Las mujeres afroamericanas tienen que pasar por la educación superior, y particularmente en programas de doctorado clínico, como una minoría racial y de sexo. Estas mujeres sufren con frecuencia múltiples niveles de discriminación para poder obtener su titulación. Los hallazgos de este estudio destacan estas experiencias y sugieren la importancia de incrementar los apoyos para mujeres afroamericanas en programas de doctorado clínico. Deberían implementarse prácticas y apoyos para que las estudiantes de color no sean marginadas por su raza.