What sense does it make to speak of indigenous exegesis? In some sense this article is an exegesis of this question and this phrase. While acknowledging the presence and importance of ordinary African readers of the Bible in the formation of African biblical scholarship, African biblical scholarship has said very little about the textual interpretative interests of ordinary African readers and the place of these interpretative interests in the academy. This article addresses and redresses this anomaly, arguing that it does make sense to speak of indigenous exegesis and that indigenous exegesis does have a place in the academy alongside the more familiar forms of exegesis.

Indigenous exegesis: Exploring the interface between missionary methods and the rhetorical rhythms of Africa: Locating local reading resources in the academy

As art historians uncover the many sources and catalysts that have contributed to the emergence of black contemporary art in South Africa, one of the principal influences is that derived from the Christian mission churches and breakaway separatist groups the African Independent Churches (AICs). Histories of African art have failed adequately to consider the art that emerged from these contexts, regarding it perhaps as too coerced and distinctive – merely religious art subject to the rigours of liturgical or proselytizing function. The purpose of this dissertation is to foreground this art and its position in the development of both pioneer and contemporary South African art and to identify the many features, both stylistic and thematic, which distinguish this work. The incidence of religious based imagery in the work of black artists from KwaZulu-Natal is substantial, reflecting the abovementioned patronage as well as a post-colonial context of education, ethnology and alternate theologies that reinforced such content. However, as this art functions and was initially nurtured within both a liturgical and secular context, different readings and applications have accrued in relation to it, depending on its reception and shifting patronage base. While the focus in this dissertation is on the work of black artists, essentially it also considers the nature of church patronage and intervention, the influence of national and international developments in acculturated religious forms, educational developments and a historical context of theological revision from which it drew. My research has led me to examine some of the major art training initiatives in KwaZulu-Natal from which such art emerged, as well as independent initiatives by artists and patrons. I examine these diverse contexts with a view to establishing an understanding of initial motivations and the many expectations that have accrued around such art. I consider further how Biblically derived imagery became increasingly autonomous, personalized and idiosyncratic as artists implicitly challenged the ethos of the mission church and considered the applicability of religion to a context of state autocracy and segregation. Further, it will be shown, some art from the region addresses affinities between Biblical mores and practice and traditional belief systems and cultural practice. Reflecting at times both the desirable cross-culturalism that was later mooted by the church and its developing theologies, such art was mostly prompted by the skepticism and assertiveness of those individuals who challenged the suppression of indigenous belief systems in the regio It is further argued that religion inspired art requires foregrounding in that it established important precedents for the function of art, its iconography and the positioning of the artist in relation to a given community. This thematically specific art also provides insight into the dialogue between the colonial centre and its periphery, and that far from being critiqued as merely another sign of colonial invasiveness, such art needs to be re-examined as a reflection of the syncretic vitality that is highly visible in all spheres of contemporary black culture in the region. It is also an art form that parallels and even precedes discourses in literature, theology and religious practice. In this it functions as an important articulation of the centrality of belief in African cultures. In this disseration I have largely confined my research to a rather narrow definition of art, focusing primarily on graphic art, painting and carving, well aware that many other media have been used and developed by artrists in the region. These require further scrutiny in subsequent research.

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Contextualizing the use of biblically derived and metaphysical imagery in the work of Black artists from KwaZulu-Natal : c1930-2002.

1. Introduction: 'not English, but Anglican' 2. The Atlantic Isles and World Anglicanism 3. The United States 4. Canada 5. The Caribbean 6. Latin America 7. West Africa 8. Southern Africa 9. East Africa 10. The Middle East 11. South Asia 12. China 13. The Asian Pacific 14. Oceania 15. The Anglican Communion: escaping the Anglo-Saxon captivity of the Church?

/pdf/a-history-of-global-anglicanism-1vc0qjpk4k.pdf

A History of Global Anglicanism

Recognising the paradigm shift in African biblical studies where the image of a “decontextualized and non-ideological” scientific Bible reader is slowly being replaced with one of a “contextualized and ideological” reader, this research seeks to explore and understand the role of the “ordinary readers” in the development of biblical interpretation in colonial Kenya. It seeks to understand whether the semi-illiterate and illiterate can engage the Bible as capable hermeneuts. The study uses postcolonial criticism to recover and reconstruct the historical encounters of the Agĩkũyũ with the Bible. It reveals that ordinary African readers actively and creatively engaged biblical texts in the moment of colonial transformation using several reading strategies and reading resources. Despite the colonial hegemonic positioning, these Africans hybridised readings from the Bible through retrieval and incorporation of the defunct pre-colonial past; creating interstices that became sites for assimilation, questioning and resistance. The study proposes an African hermeneutic theory that accepts both scholarly readers and the ordinary readers with respect to biblical interpretation as constitutive of a community of readers positioned in a particular sociocultural milieu. It invites the socially engaged scholars to commit to: reading the Bible from the experienced reality of societal margins; reading communally with each other; and to read critically. The metaphor Sokoni (at the marketplace) is proposed as the starting point in which both the “ordinary” readers and scholarly readers can engage the Bible through the language of the African theatre and storytelling.

The Agikuyu, the bible and colonial constructs: towards an ordinary African readers’ hermeneutics

............................................................................................................................. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................... ii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... 1 1.1 THE CONTEXT FOR THE RESEARCH .................................................................................. 1 1.2 THE INTERDISCIPLINARY NATURE OF THE STUDY ........................................................... 2 1.3 THE RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY ..................................................................................... 3 1.4 IMAGE OF GOD AND SELF: DELINEATION OF TERMS ...................................................... 5 1.5 RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS ................................................................................................... 6 1.6 AIMS OF THE RESEARCH .................................................................................................. 6 1. 7 STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS OF THE RESEARCH ........................................................ 6 1.8 METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................................... 7 1.9 OUTLINE OF THE THESIS .................................................................................................. 8 1.10 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 11 CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW: THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES AND WOMEN ..................................................................................................................................12 2.1 THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES ............................................................................................. 12 2.1.1 Spiritual Direction: The broad context ................................................................... 12 2.1.2 Spiritual Direction in the Ignatian tradition ............................................................ 14 2.1.3 Ignatius’s experience .............................................................................................. 16 2.1.4 The purpose of the Spiritual Exercises ................................................................... 17 2.1.5 The dynamic of The Spiritual Exercises .................................................................. 20 2.1.6 Early Jesuit practice in giving the Spiritual Exercises .............................................. 23 2.1.7 Ignatius’s text and current practice ........................................................................ 25 2.1.8 Ignatius’s text and current practice ........................................................................ 28 2.2 THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES AND WOMEN ...................................................................... 30 2.2.1 The Spiritual Exercises and the experience of women ........................................... 30 2.2.2 Historical Background:  The Spiritual Exercises and women .................................. 31 2.2.3 The South African experience: An historical overview ........................................... 37 2.2.4 Women’s relationship with the Exercises as text and process .............................. 39 2.2.5 Women’s experience of the Exercises dynamic: The importance of desire .......... 41 2.2.6 The purpose of the Exercises .................................................................................. 43 2.2.7 Women and the Exercises of The First Week ......................................................... 44 2.2.8 Women and the Exercises of the Second Week ..................................................... 46 2.2.9 Women and the Exercises of The Third Week ....................................................... 53 2.2.10 Women and the Exercises of The Fourth Week ................................................... 54 2.2.11 The Contemplation to Attain Divine Love ............................................................ 55 2.3 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 56 CHAPTER THREE LITERATURE REVIEW: OBJECT RELATIONS AND DIALOGICAL THEORY IN RELATION TO THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES. ..........57 3.1. PSYCHOANALYTIC AND OBJECT‐RELATIONS APPROACHES .......................................... 57 3.1.2 Freud’s view of the development of the God‐representation ............................... 59 3.1.3 Rizzuto’s genesis of the God‐representation ......................................................... 61 3.2 OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY AND THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES ....................................... 63 3.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO FAITH DEVELOPMENT ........................................... 67 3.4 THE SHIFT TOWARDS A DIALOGICAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE SELF .......................... 68 3.5 THE DIALOGICAL SELF .................................................................................................... 70 3.6 IMAGINAL DIALOGUE .................................................................................................... 71 3.6.1 The dialogical self in relation to the Spiritual Exercises ......................................... 74 3.6.2 Imaginal Dialogue in Gospel Contemplation, Fantasy Prayer and Colloquy .......... 75 3.6.3 Colloquy .................................................................................................................. 79 3.6.4 The Private Audience .............................................................................................. 81 3.6.5 The Director of the Exercises as a “Private Audience” ........................................... 83 3.6.6 Possible Selves ........................................................................................................ 85 3.7 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 88 CHAPTER FOUR METHODOLOGY ..............................................................................90 4.1 THE INTERFACE OF PSYCHOLOGY AND SPIRITUALITY ................................................... 90 4.2 INTERDISCIPLINARITY .................................................................................................... 92 4.3 THE SELF‐IMPLICATING NATURE OF THE STUDY OF CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY ............. 93 4.4 RATIONALE FOR CHOICE OF METHOD ........................................................................... 95 4.5 OVERVIEW OF METHOD ................................................................................................ 97 4.6 CHOICE OF SAMPLE ....................................................................................................... 97 4.7 DATA COLLECTION ......................................................................................................... 99 4.8 DATA ANALYSIS ............................................................................................................ 101 4.8.1. Step 1: Description .............................................................................................. 101 4.8.2. Step 2: Critical analysis ........................................................................................ 101 4.8.3. Step 3: Constructive interpretation ..................................................................... 102 4.9 THE SELF‐IMPLICATING ASPECTS OF THE PROCESS ..................................................... 104 4.10 ETHICAL ISSUES .......................................................................................................... 104 4.11 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 106 CHAPTER FIVE ANALYSIS OF THEMES WHICH EMERGED FROM THE INTERVIEWS ......................................................................................................................108 5.

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The impact of the imaginal and dialogical (relational) processes in the spiritual exercises, on image of self and image of God in women making the nineteenth annotation retreat.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0040571X0010300208

The Academy of the Poor: Towards a Dialogical Reading of the Bible

Reading Gholdy Muhammad’s new book helped a teacher in Texas consider the possibilities for responding to the limiting educational policies being developed by state legislatures across the United States.

Elizabeth Moore

Papers

The Academy of the Poor: Towards a Dialogical Reading of the Bible

Columns: Books In Review: The Turn to Joy: A Guide for Now