Signed languages are not only full linguistic systems but also powerful artistic media in Deaf communities. This paper explores how sign language poetics—visual rhythm, handshape patterning, spatial composition, movement quality, and non-manual expression—can inform and strengthen sign language Bible translation. Building on multimodal social semiotics (Kress & van Leeuwen; Kress) and Jakobson’s poetic function, the study argues that meaning is produced through coordinated semiotic resources rather than words alone. The paper surveys key poetic devices described in Deaf literature scholarship and integrates insights from Deaf poets and translators regarding performance, identity, and community reception. Two main examples are used to illustrate the argument: Clayton Valli’s ASL poem Dandelions and the Magnificat in Peruvian Sign Language (LSP). The LSP translation demonstrates that faithful translation is not “signed Spanish” but embodied Scripture. The paper concludes with implications for translator training, evaluation, and Deaf-led hermeneutics.
This research analysed the cultural, religious and environmental importance of the renowned composition of the first stanza of Owura Ephraim Amu, Yɛn Ara Asase Ni (This is Our Own Land), in the contemporary Ghanaian setting. The objective was to examine how Amu’s song, grounded in African theology and nationalism, expresses a vision of communal stewardship of land that remains vital in the face of the growing environmental crisis in Ghana. The study utilised a thematic analysis of the lyrics of the song, supported by an examination of environmental literature pertaining to land degradation, illicit mining, deforestation, and water pollution in Ghana. The findings indicate that Yɛn Ara Asase Ni resonates well when interpreted in an environmental context. Nimdeɛ ntraso, nkotokrane ne apɛsɛmenkomenya were identified as the negative attitudes affecting our land. The study draws attention to how the song’s message might influence love for the environment in contemporary Ghanaian society. The study recommends that the song Yɛn ara asaase ni be intentionally incorporated into environmental awareness campaigns, religious gatherings, and educational programmes to inspire a deeper sense of ecological responsibility and national pride. This study, therefore, contributes to scholarly discussion on environmentalism by presenting Yɛn Ara Asaase Ni as a cultural archive of ecological wisdom. Hence, by analysing the song and especially some key words in the Twi expression, the study shows how environmental values and a communal responsibility for the land are embedded in some Ghanaian patriotic songs. The study further adds to how Ghanaian musical traditions can be used to address pressing environmental concerns in contemporary times, therefore, bridging the gap between Ghana’s oral heritage to contemporary environmental consciousness.
This article interprets the logos Christology in the fourth gospel within Ewe-Ghanaian cosmic setting. The article employs a combination of the exegetical and mother tongue biblical hermeneutics as its methodologies. The article compares the concept of the logos in John 1:1–5, 14 with a similar concept in Ewe cosmology with the aim of finding their points of convergence and divergence. The article also identifies linguistic and theological gaps in the Ewe rendition of John 1:1–5, 14 and proposes a new translation that addresses it. A translation of the logos in Ewe cosmic perspective renders the term nyagbe, the intelligible word which dwells with the female pair of Sogbe-Lisa and manifests itself from the absolute state of existence [logo] to the embodied state [logosu]. When nyagbe journeyed from the eternal state of existence to the embodied state of existence, it manifests itself at five different levels of existence until it reaches the final state where humans exist. Although believed to be the epitome of all creation, human beings are at the same time described as being at the shore of ignorance and therefore must continually climb the ladder of knowledge in order to free themselves from it. It is for this reason that humans constantly petition the cosmic forces for their salvation. The article therefore, identifies a soteriological gap created in the Ewe soteriology and concludes that the only soteriological response to the Ewe cosmic cry for deliverance from the state of ignorance is the logos incarnate in John 1:14.
Contribution: The article contributes to the academic knowledge on the logos Christology in the prologue of the fourth gospel (John 1:1–5, 14), specifically in the use of mother tongue in biblical hermeneutics in Africa.
Pentecostalism in Africa has many expressions, types, and shadows contributing to the challenge of categorisations in the movement. There are some forms of Pentecostalism in Africa that resemble the American context in terms of theology and practice. However, the literature review also demonstrates that other forms are uniquely indigenous, meaning, non-American. In this article, the indigenous force of Pentecostalism was studied through the indigenous knowledge system approach. This was done by making links between indigenous Pentecostalism in Africa and the early indigenous forces. The indigenous Pentecostal liturgy characterized by a song, prayer, and sermon was discussed in detail. The article also demonstrated how the indigenisation of the gospel of Jesus Christ within the Pentecostal movement in Africa has made the movement relevant to Africans. The aim was to demonstrate that the indigenous force of Pentecostalism is relevant to the decolonisation of Westernized Christianity. The article proposes the acknowledgement of the indigenous knowledge system in the Pentecostal tradition which is relevant to the decolonization of the religious sphere in the African context.
The Indonesian Constitution guarantees the freedom of Indonesian citizens to worship according to their religion. In reality, however, the Indonesian government had issued regulations that restrict the building of worship places, which is one way of expressing religious freedom. These regulations, being trapped in the discourse of the politicisation of religion and the religionisation of politics, are contradictory to the aspirations of the founding fathers as expressed in the Indonesian Constitution. This article seeks to deal with this problem by conducting a critical and reflective study on religion–state relations, particularly on the concept of sphere sovereignty proposed by Abraham Kuyper. This study employed the content analysis method. The study demonstrates that this concept, when applied to the Indonesian situation, would prove helpful in restoring normative leadership to Indonesian politics and would enable it to align itself with the values of the Indonesian Constitution. The study also recommends a number of practical strategies in protecting religious freedom and rights in Indonesia, especially with regard to the restrictions on building worship places.
Contribution: The study of the concept of Kuyper’s Sphere Sovereignty can be helpful in restoring normative leadership to Indonesian politics and would enable it to align itself with the values of the Indonesian Constitution and allow religion to fulfil its responsibility towards the state and the state towards religion, without being trapped in the discourse of the politicisation of religion and the religionisation of politics.
In a post-apartheid South Africa, the value of reflective memories and their impact on community history gives credibility to their relationship with personal struggles such as disability, be it physical or political. Shaped by South African Indian heritage, an isolated individualised case of a second-generation descendant’s ability–disability experience is researched and narrated in this article. The respondent, Dr Kasturi Varley is a woman of the South African Indian community, who was born almost 101 years after the first shipload of Indian indentured labourers arrived in the then Colony of Natal. Her memories shed light on a unique Indo-African-European experience. Her indentured paternal grandfather arrived in the African continent in August 1900. Her reflective memories and shared experiences of various episodes of the ability–disability paradigm add to the body of knowledge of the Indian indentured labour system that already exists and partially fills up the prevalent gaps in the research on this topic. Her story is unique in that she worked wheelchair-bound at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria and subsequently settled in the United Kingdom. This study applied a qualitative research methodology.
Contribution: This article provides insight on reflective memories within the domain of social memory and contributes to an understanding of the historiography of the descendants of Indian indentured labourers in South Africa. In 2020, this community commemorated the 160th anniversary of the arrival of the labourers to the Colony of Natal.
Prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the churches in Nigeria contended with Bokoharam insurgency which mainly affected the churches in Northern Nigeria. However, COVID-19 affected various churches in all the nooks and crannies of the country. It brought about obvious changes in numerous practices of churches in Nigeria. Long-standing traditions of churches such as solemnisation of Holy Matrimony, Holy Communion, baptism, prayer and sharing of peace (This practice is commonly observed by the orthodox churches and entails shaking one another’s hands in the course of a communion service) have been modified or suspended. Whilst this article appreciates the efforts of the federal and state governments, it investigates the implications of COVID-19 outbreak on traditional religious practices of churches in Nigeria. It also examines the responses of churches towards controlling the pandemic. The phenomenological method is used to analyse the data collected from both primary (semi-structured interview) and secondary sources (journals and internet materials). Findings from this work indicate that COVID-19 outbreak is a challenge to the purpose of the institution ‘church’.
Contribution: The article investigated and examined the changes which churches made in their doctrine and liturgy with respect to the outbreak of COVID-19 in Nigeria. It discovered that many traditions of the church have been modified or suspended as a way of curtailing the spread of the virus.
Rekolekcje szkolne znacznie różnią się od lekcji religii. Stanowią one swoistą formę nauczania. Zastosowanie tej pozalekcyjnej formy organizacji katechezy szkolnej wpisuje się w dążenie nauczycieli religii do poprawy skuteczności edukacji religijnej dzieci i młodzieży. Forma ta, związana z rokiem liturgicznym, jest ważnym elementem wychowawczym z punktu widzenia dydaktyki katechetycznej. Wiąże się ona bowiem z poszukiwaniem optymalnych rozwiązań podnoszących efektywność katechezy szkolnej, związanych między innymi z przekazem treści wiary i kształtowaniem postaw chrześcijańskich wśród dzieci i młodzieży.
The article deals with the systematization and analysis of authentic ancient Ukrainian texts dedicated to the topic of the Last Judgment with the author's purpose to reconstruct the worldview of Ukrainian population of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times. The source base of the study included eschatological literature as the most popular and numerous during that ages as well as Holy Bible, hagiographic works, prophecies and the graffiti of St. Sophia Cathedral of Kyiv. The dominant idea in the works found was the idea of the Last Judgment. Through the prism of this idea the most urgent moral problems, which were of acute concern to society, are recovered: the problem of the fall of spirituality, social inequality, the decline of morality etc.
The author also verified the foreign influences on Ukrainian eschatological literature as well the influence of preachers and polemicists of that time on public opinion about the signs of the end of the world. Revealing works in the medieval and early-modern Ukrainian literature devoted to the most fateful subjects, analyzing their content for reflection of eschatological ideas, systematizing the main ideas related to responsibility for terrestrial life, comparing these visions with those translated in literature, revealed the presence of the eschatological ideas on the common background of the general cultural and historical context of the studied ages. A study of Ukrainian eschatological literature led the author to the conclusion that the whole range of written eschatological sources gives us a linear development of the idea of the Last Judgment, from the dissemination of eschatological ideas of the 12th century to their concretization, development, popularization with each new period. Summing up the analysis of the works of eschatological literature, distributed on Ukrainian lands in the 17th – 18th centuries, the opposition of secular and religious thinking becomes noticeable, which is quite clearly reflected in the literature.
Anhand einer ausführlichen Exegese der Kap. 1+2 des Buches Habakuk wird aufgezeigt, dass der Verfasser Prophet der Opfer der Gewalt ist, dass die Gewalt Gegenstand seiner Kritik ist und die Opfer der Gewalt diejenigen sind, für die er sich einsetzt. Hier klingen Ansätze einer Wirtschaftsethik bzw. politischen Ethik an. Der Idolatrie des Marktes, die zu einem Gegenevangelium geworden ist, gilt es zu widersagen. Dazu liefert Habakuk einen wichtigen Beitrag.
Niels Hendrik Gregersen’s ‘Deep Incarnation’ is opening up possibilities for engagementbetween science and theology. Recent discoveries, like that of Homo naledi, raise questions abouthow inclusive a Christian doctrine of Incarnation is. Is Jesus only God incarnate for Homo sapiensapiens, or is the incarnation inclusive of preceding hominid species as well? Does the incarnationstretch beyond the hominid line? This chapter engages Gregersen’s understanding of DeepIncarnation in light of 1 Corinthians 15:28 and emergence theory. It proposes that there is a directcorrelation between worldview and how we believe in the inclusive nature of divine incarnation.
In 1 Timothy 2:11–15 women are forbidden to teach and have authority over men in the church. The ground for this instruction is the creation account in Genesis 2 that asserts the priority of Adam over Eve in the order of creation. The second reason for the instruction is the deception of Eve according to the account of the Fall in Genesis 3. This pericope has elicited arguments between advocates of egalitarianism and complementarianism revolving over the issues of grammar, the context of the Ephesian church with regard to false teachings and the comparison of this text with the other writings of Paul, for those that subscribe to the authorship of Paul. The contention of this article is that verse 15 provides a major clue as to how this text should be understood. In addition, the author’s rhetoric in this text is interrogated with regard to the text’s own internal literary and theological logic. In this regard, the author is found to be inconsistent in his outlook, for the grace that was poured out abundantly on him: a blasphemer, a persecutor and a violent man and on account of his ignorance andunbelief (1 Tm 1:12–16) is apparently, being denied women on account of Eve’s deception.
This article aims to present and to analyse two texts the French-Tunisian intellectual Albert Memmi wrote in his youth : the first of them has never been published before ; the second one has been issued in a local magazine. Before Memmi’s thinking ended up as the famous The Coloniser and The Colonised, (Portrait du colonisé précédé de Portrait du colonisateur) which was a bible of the anti-colonial fight throughout the world, it was worked up progressively, groping in the dark. The analysis of manuscripts and typescripts of the both texts emphasises it. Indeed, the first text discussed above is limited to recommending a deep reform of the colonial system, while the second text deeds the implacable iniquity of colonialism and comprehends the Tunisian (and beyond North-African) problem in a global way, not only by its economical aspect, as the French Left conceived it at that time.
Marriage and marital roles in the Afrikaans cultural and religious context. The article investigates women’s socialization in terms of their position in society and the church, and their roles in the marriage relationship. A brief historical overview is given of how the understanding of marriage has developed, with specific emphasis on marriage and marital roles in Afrikaans cultural and religious contexts. The authors examine the ecclesiastical magazines Die Hervormer and Die Jaarboek van die Nederduitsch Hervormde Sustersvereniging (Yearbook of the Netherdutch Reformed Women’s Association). The article shows that the message communicated to women who are members of the Netherdutch Reformed Church with regard to marital roles is that they must be submissive. Centuries of conditioning has created submissiveness and inferiority in these women and this has affected them negatively not to be equal to men in society and marriage relationships.
Alternative approaches to text interpretation have introduced an opportunity to understand the biblical text afresh. One such an alternative approach is a Ricoeurian hermeneutic. Ricoeur’s understanding of the referential intention of poetic texts will be drawn on to explore its interpretive contribution to a reading of Proverbs 10:1–15:33 with specific reference to the phrase ‘the fear of the Lord’. It is suggested that the proposed reading strategy is a most productive effort.
The challenges posed by informal settlements are enormous, also in the Bloemfontein/ Mangaung area. The question asked in this article was how the church can reach out to people on the streets and in the informal settlements. Research was conducted to establish the views of the church and the task it has from randomly approached people on the streets. The Bible speaks positively on the task of the people of Israel and the church to reach out to foreigners. The church in informal settlements should see the people on the streets as its responsibility. A very important aspect is to gain structures in the informal community for the churches to be present in a more concrete way. Although the church remains the people of God and is not limited to structures, the presence of structures can in many ways enhance the positive help and influence of the church in the community; even to the people on the streets.