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Although the issue of transformation has always been on the agenda of higher education since the transition to a democratic government in 1994, it is only since the student protests in 2015 and 2016 that the call for decolonisation of higher education in South Africa attracted much attention. The aim of this article is to reflect on the discipline of practical theology in South Africa in view of this call for decolonisation. Looking through the theoretical lens of decolonial theory, the author opts for an epistemological perspective on decolonisation. More particularly, the call for decolonisation of knowledge implies a struggle for epistemic justice. With this understanding of the call for decolonisation, the author reflects on the situation of practical theology in South Africa. The article concludes with three proposals for the decolonisation of practical theological research.

The South African educational system is in a crisis. This situation places huge demands on school principals and school management teams, and raises many theoretical and empirical questions. Transformational leadership is needed to deal with these challenges and complexities. Not all school leaders show the same level of transformational leadership. Some leaders conform more to other leadership styles. The aim of this article is to explore the relation between spiritual character traits and leadership styles from a theoretical and empirical perspective. The theoretical part focuses on the conceptualisation of leadership (styles) and spirituality. The empirical research consists of a web-based survey conducted in some private and religiously affiliated schools in South Africa in 2011–2012. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) and Cloninger’s shortened Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI-140) were used to measure leadership styles and spiritual traits respectively. Statistical procedures included confirmatory factor analysis, correlation (Pearson rho) and regression analysis. Key findings are that leaders of private schools in South Africa mostly conform to a transformative leadership style, disagree with corrective leadership and strongly disagree with passive-avoidant leadership. Regarding the spiritual character traits they agree with self-transcendence and strongly agree with self-directedness. Spiritual character traits are strong predictors for transformational and passive-avoidant leadership. Higher levels of self-transcendence and self-directedness are strong predictors for transformational leadership. Our research suggests that traditional religious variables are less important as predictors of leadership style than spiritual character traits.

The importance of narrative for practical theology is today widely recognised, both nationally and internationally. There is, however, disagreement amongst practical theologians regarding the scope and role of narrative in practical theological methodology. The practical theologian Julian M�ller made, and continues to make, an important contribution to the methodology of practical theology through his narrative approach. The aim of this article was to contribute to the ongoing methodological discussion about the scope and role of narrative approaches in practical theology. M�ller�s narrative approach was discussed against the backdrop of the narrative turn in the human and social sciences. It was concluded that M�ller�s narrative approach reveals some of the key tensions in practical theological methodology. His metaphorical narrative approach, as a representative of the poetic pole in the methodological debate, helps to guard practical theology from losing its transformative orientation and its vital connection with religious practice. Embracing a variety of approaches could help practical theologians to steer between the Scylla of a one-sidedly scientific practical theology and the Charybdis of the triumph of the immediacy of praxis.

Self-reliant development of the Reformed Churches in disadvantaged communities since 1994 This article attempts to apply the development strategy of selfreliance to the Reformed Churches in disadvantaged communities within the greater Johannesburg area. The timeframe spans the 1994 transformation date to the middle of June 1999. The article looks at the marginalised and disadvantaged position – which appears to be in a peripheral state – of existence of the above churches. Attention is first focused on the extent of the problem from which the specific objective is derived: the setting of guidelines by which these churches can develop towards self-reliance. Since the subject is closely related to the discipline of theology and the subdivision, ecclesiology, this article also involves this discipline. The guidelines for self-reliant development vary between orthodox reformed principles and radical unorthodox guidelines, in line with the challenges facing these churches and their available resources. A change in the existing structures and relations is fundamental to the proposed guidelines for the self-reliant development of the Reformed Churches in disadvantaged communities.

When speaking of the direction of a people, the term direction has the meaning of a relatively stable trend or course over a relatively long period of the history of the majority of that people. The problem dis-cussed in this paper is the question whether such a direction(s) can be discerned in the history of the Afrikaans people. Such a direction can only be the result of values obtaining in a stable order of preference, forming a set of norms expressed in the views and actions of the people over a relatively long period of time. In a compact overview, eight of the most important areas of the history of the Afrikaans people are considered. The conclusion is that a definite trend is discernible. The most important aspects of this trend are a sharp awareness of self-identity; a desire for freedom, implying a negative reaction to British political and cultural imperialism; a fierce love of the Afrikaans language; and an aversion to mixing with people of non-Western descent.

This article investigates belief in God among 538 students from standard 9 who attend Anglican and Catholic schools in the Johannesburg/Pretoria region, and relates this belief to the students' religious socialization and praxis. The students' belief in God appears to correlate strongly with their religious praxis in the present and less so with their religious socialization. However, some elements within this religious socialization play a rather important role, namely the parents' religious modeling, communication, and transfer. Two elements do not appear to have any influence at all, namely the parents' church participation and the parents' religious steering of students in the past and present.

This article investigates belief in God among 538 students from standard 9 who attend Anglican and Catholic schools in the Johannesburg/Pretoria region. Within their belief in God they make use of different interpretations, namely anthropomorph theism and panentheism, non-anthropomorph theism and panentheism, as well as what is called aniconic transcendent pantheism. These interpretations do not appear to exclude one another, but co-exist in the students' minds.

The aim of this article is to contribute to the academic discussion on the inter-linguistic translation of the Christian message in the public sphere. There seems to be consensus amongst academic public theologians and social philosophers such as Habermas about the importance of translating religious language in the public sphere. Views differ, however, on the manner of translation. Five key aspects of Ricoeur’s paradigm of translation are discussed and offered as a framework for the academic discussion in public theology on the translation of the Christian message in the public sphere. It is argued that notions such as the tension between faithfulness and betrayal, the illusion of the perfect translation, striving for equivalence of meaning, the importance of the desire to translate, the work of translation and linguistic hospitality offer insight in the complexity of the translation task as well as its ethical nature.

The complex and problematic role of religion in the public sphere in modern, democratic societies raises many questions for a public theology. The aim of this article is to contribute to the ongoing debate about the task and methods of public theology by asking what we can learn from the ideas of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas was a leading participant in the thinking process on the secularisation thesis in Western societies. His view was that religion will eventually disappear from the public scene due to the rationalisation of society. In recent years he seems to have changed this view in the light of new developments in the world. He now maintains that religion has something important to offer in the public sphere. Religion could thus participate in this public discussion, provided that it satisfies strict conditions. We argue that public theology can learn from Habermas’s recent ideas regarding religion in the public sphere: attention should be paid to the cognitive potential of religion, especially regarding the importance of the lifeworld and the role of religion in social solidarity with the needy and vulnerable; hermeneutical self-reflection is important; a distinction should be made between the role of religion in faith communities and in public life; we have to accept that we live in a secular state; and we have to learn the possibilities and impossibilities of translating from religious vocabulary into a secular vocabulary in order to be able to participate in the discussions in the public sphere.

The philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Protestant theological structures Kant’s critical epistemology destroyed the idea of scientific metaphysics (valid up to Wolff) as the foundation of theology. Kant, however, reconstructed his own metaphysics on the basis of practical reason. In this scheme metaphysics and ethics are interwoven and culminate in a religion exclusively based on and conditioned by pure reason, usually known as Kant’s moral theology or rational religion. The purpose of this paper is, firstly, to give a very short exposition of the basic concepts of Kant’s moral theology, and secondly, to show its decisive influence on post Kantian protestant view of religion.

The philosophical background of the theological training of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Church of Afrika at the University of Pretoria Since the inception of the theological training of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Church of Africa at the University of Pretoria in 1917 philosophy has been a mandatory subject for all propaedeutic theological students. The history of the Department of Philosophy is traced to show the prevalent types of philosophy taught in the Department, because the philosophical training is considered important as preparation for theological training.

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