Interest in Theology

I grew up in a family that has always been active members of the Dutch Reformed Church. This participation in the church and my personal experiences as a practicing Christian became central to the way in which I viewed the world and made meaning of my life. By the time I left school I had experiences within the Church and amongst my peer group that reflected gifts for understanding the Bible and interpreting it in ways that were helpful and meaningful to others in their everyday lives. Theology was a passion and a natural way for me to make meaning of my life and position myself in the world. I had no doubt that God was calling me to become a fulltime minister.

However, in the mid-seventies women had been excluded from ordained ministry and all positions of leadership within the DR Church. It was with great pain that I decided to follow an alternative career path by studying psychology. I continued my participation in the church of my youth, but became increasingly frustrated with the way in which my church so seldom recognises laypersons as theological agents in their own right.

My life was dramatically impacted by the drastic changes that started happening in our country at the beginning of the nineties. It had the effect of robbing me of a lot of the "certainties" that had formed part of my everyday existence up until that point. With the dismantling of apartheid, exciting political events, such as the un-banning of the ANC as well as the release of Nelson Mandela from prison were reported in the news daily. Our country saw its first democratic election. Then came the stories told in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission about people's suffering under the apartheid regime. Like never before, I became aware of the oppression, the injustices, the pain, the violence, the poverty and the crime. As a direct result of the political changes, the company that my husband was working for was closed and he lost his job. Finding work, or starting a business, became extremely difficult in the light of new affirmative action legislation and economic turmoil. Around us many white people were struggling with the sudden loss of careers and businesses, a process that also involved loss of social status and financial position. Many of our colleagues left the country in order to continue their professional careers and to secure a safer and better future for their children. The world I was living in seemed to have become a very different place and I tried to make sense of it all.

I was extremely disillusioned to learn to what extent the Dutch Reformed Church, with it close ties to the National party, had supported apartheid. The injustices and the social problems that stemmed from apartheid pained me deeply. I could no longer be passive and ignore my responsibility to participate in restoring some of the injustices to which I contributed through being a member of the Church and through benefiting so much from the privileges I had taken for granted all my life. I knew that I had to be and do church in a different way. My participation and care with South Africans who have been affected by the evils of apartheid has become my way of doing church.

The opportunity to become involved in "formal theology" came in 2001 when I became the supervisor of students of pastoral therapy for the Institute for Therapeutic Development. I took the opportunity to reflect on my own practice from a theological perspective by enrolling for the MTh in pastoral therapy through Unisa. I completed my research reflecting on the caring work that I participated in with the Strand Muslim community and graduated in 2002. I have become more familiar with the work of contextual and specifically feminist theologians and this has been extremely helpful in finding a voice for my own experiences and to develop frames of understanding some of what I had been experiencing and witnessing.

I am now a member of the South African Association for Pastoral Therapists and have been the presenter of papers at their national and regional conferences.

I have continued to participate in the Dutch Reformed Church, but mine is now a critical voice in a church that struggles to deal with its apartheid past and with finding ways to transform itself. The only way in which I am able to continue my active participation is by making sure that I find out from those who have been affected by the injustices what the effects were on their lives and by doing sorry as best I can. The parable of the Good Samaritan has become the metaphor that guides my life and work. I am grateful for invitations by the leadership of the DR Church to talk at meetings about the ways in which the church might become more sensitive to the injuries to others through our racist and sexist past. I am also actively involved in seeking ways in which the church might do sorry and make connections with those that have been excluded and injured. The leadership of the congregation where I am a member, Helderberg Church, consult with me regularly around these issues, in this way I am hoping to contribute to healing of past injustices and transformation of unjust practices.