Roderick R Hewitt – författare

This book has been prepared with acute awareness of how challenging it can be to comprehend the meaning of mission and to find direction for our own engagement in it – as individuals, churches, agencies or institutions. A key resource now available to help meet this challenge is Together Towards Life, the new mission affirmation of the World Council of Churches. This volume not only offers a wide-ranging analysis of TTL but explores the century of ecumenical missiology which underpins and informs this ground-breaking text. Every change in the global landscape has required new approaches to the practice of mission and new conceptions of its meaning. Tracing the changing landscape across the past 100 years will equip readers to develop the fresh thinking about mission that will be required today and tomorrow. This book is expected to be especially valuable in missional formation and leadership development.

The subject of race and identity is a burning issue which continues to occupy the attention not only of South Africans but also the wider residents of the continent of Africa and those who are Africans in the Diaspora. The outburst of xenophobic attacks against foreigners mostly of Black African origins in some communities of Kwa-Zulu Natal and areas of Johannesburg during 2008 and 2015 has raised questions about the social cohesion of South African society linked to unresolved structural identity issues bequeathed by the nation’s past colonial and apartheid legacy. This publication argues that there is an embedded schizophrenic identity crisis within the society that requires scholarly interrogation. The chapters assemble scholarly voices from different ethnic groups that examine the central research question of this study: Who is an African? Within the wider Southern African context, identity and ethnicity politics are framing nationalist economic policies and are impacting on social cohesion within many countries. Writing from different social and racial locations the authors have critically engaged with the central question and offer some important insights that can serve as a resource for all nations grappling with issues of race, ethnicity, identity constructed politics, and social cohesion.