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WHEN THE UNHEARD VOICES BECOME VIOLENT. PERSPECTIVES FROM PSALM 109 AND THE #FEESMUSTFALL MOVEMENT

Acta Theologica: Supplementum 27: Unheard voices in the Bible, 2019

In October 2015, the #FeesMustFall protest movement began. These protests started as a protest by the poor who could not afford the tuition fees of South African universities. This turned quite rapidly into violent protests as the focus of the movement became the addressing of past injustices: students, feeling that their voices were not being heard, added the issue of decolonisation of education. In the book of Psalms, too, there are examples of where violence results when voices crying for justice are not heard. One of these psalms is the imprecatory psalm, Psalm 109, where the poor are the starting point for the charges made against the one praying the psalm, and violent curses are used to address the situation. In this article the text of Psalm 109 is analysed, and perspectives on violence and unheard voices are provided and applied to the #FeesMustFall protests. The analysis of Psalm 109 is used to indicate whether or not a possible solution is found to the problem of the unheard voices. 1 1 This article is a continuation and expansion on the research that was started in the project "A trilogy of war and renewed Honour? Psalms 108, 109 and 110 as a literary composition" (Sutton 2015).

Living right while righting wrong : a theology of protest shaping the Salvationist response to injustices against the world's poor and marginalised

2017

This thesis explores the theological underpinnings of The Salvation Army‘s advocacy on behalf of and with the poor and marginalised of the world and argues that the widespread forms of human suffering require an understanding of Christian salvation that is beyond the narrow focus of the soul. It proposes that the telos of shalom provides a theologically rich framework for the creative development of a first order theology of protest that is original, Christologically grounded, doctrinally sound and normative for the life of discipleship. Using a Trinitarian construct, the work identifies the sacrificial nature of the protest act as a key practice in the announcement of the Lordship of Christ and the establishment of the Kingdom of God. If the thesis is correct in its appropriation of a theology of protest, the Salvationist community (and by extension the church) is challenged to seize its prophetic responsibility to participate in humanity‘s redemption by living right and righting w...

Tyranny of the 2 per cent? - Alliance magazine

Though the estimated share of philanthropic dollars allocated to climate-related issues is only two per cent, Edouard Morena argues that these dollars went a long way in the run up to the Paris Climate Agreement.

Defending the One Percent

Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2013

Imagine a society with perfect economic equality. Then, one day, this egalitarian utopia is disturbed by an entrepreneur with an idea for a new product. Think of the entrepreneur as Steve Jobs as he develops the iPod, J. K. Rowling as she writes her Harry Potter books, or Steven Spielberg as he directs his blockbuster movies. The new product makes the entrepreneur much richer than everyone else. How should the entrepreneurial disturbance in this formerly egalitarian outcome alter public policy? Should public policy remain the same, because the situation was initially acceptable and the entrepreneur improved it for everyone? Or should government policymakers deplore the resulting inequality and use their powers to tax and transfer to spread the gains more equally? In my view, this thought experiment captures, in an extreme and stylized way, what has happened to US society over the past several decades. Since the 1970s, average incomes have grown, but the growth has not been uniform a...