Browsing by Author "Iyakaremye, Innocent."
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Item The Free Methodist Church of Southern Africa and it's response to HIV and AIDS in Southern KwaZulu-Natal : postulating a reclamation of Wesleyan Healthcare Response from a gender perspective.(2013) Iyakaremye, Innocent.; Phiri, Isabel Apawo.; Hewitt, Roderick Raphael.This study will explore and investigate the response of the Free Methodist Church of Southern Africa (FMCSA) to HIV and AIDS in the Southern KwaZulu-Natal region. It will also reflect on how the Wesleyan Healthcare Response (WHCR) can be used as an inspiration for this Church to fulfil its mission in engaging with HIV and AIDS from a gender-sensitive perspective. With reference to the knowledge that religions possess assets for addressing HIV and AIDS and gender inequality, the study argues that the FMCSA possess the necessary resource to address these interconnected challenges which it is not profitably employing currently. This resource is the theological and practical healthcare response developed by the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, during his lifetime. Using the missio Dei theory to explain the mission of the church in the world, and considering Jesus‘ healing ministry as patterns of the missio Dei‘s materialisation in times of health crises, the study suggests that the FMCSA as a Christian church is expected to respond to HIV and AIDS, a contemporary health crisis in South Africa. The study also hypothesises that Wesley‘s healthcare response is a legacy to the Free Methodists that the FMCSA can appropriate as an effective asset to fulfil missio Dei in time of HIV and AIDS and its gendered nature in the South African context. Therefore, the question responded to in this study is: how can the Wesleyan Healthcare Response inspire the FMCSA to respond to the HIV and AIDS pandemic from a gender-sensitive perspective? The following objectives were formulated in order to respond to this question: 1. to explore the discursive account of HIV and AIDS and its gendered nature in South Africa and the response of the FMCSA; 2. to critically reflect on WHCR as FMCSA‘s potential resource for missio Dei's fulfilment in time of HIV and AIDS; 3. to examine the attitude and concrete response to HIV and AIDS pandemic in the Free Methodist Southern KwaZulu-Natal (FMSKZN); 4. to assess the extent to which WHCR has been used as a resource for addressing HIV and AIDS by the Free Methodist Southern KwaZulu-Natal; 5. to suggest insights to make WHCR a resource to respond to HIV and AIDS within the Southern KwaZulu-Natal context. The data for the study was collected using empirical and non-empirical research methods. Therefore, in addition to the written sources, individual interviews with selected church leaders and caregivers and focus group discussions with ordinary adult and youth church members in five circuits of the FMSKZN were conducted. In examining the attitudes and concrete responses to HIV and AIDS in the FMSKZN, the study realised that this Church failed to learn from WHCR in order to fulfil missio Dei during this pandemic in terms of gender issues. It therefore postulates insights from WHCR that will help fill the gaps identified in the response of this Church to HIV and AIDS and its gendered nature.Item The mission of the church as Missio dei : an assessment of the response of Ubunye Free Methodist Church to domestic violence.(2010) Iyakaremye, Innocent.; Phiri, Isabel Apawo.This dissertation is an assessment of the response of Ubunye Free Methodist Church (UFMC) of Pietermaritzburg to domestic violence in light of the mission of the church in the world as missio Dei. It was undertaken because of the suspicion that the response of this church deals with consequences of domestic violence, but leaves aside its origin and causes, thus providing an incomplete solution to deal with the complex problem. This suspicion was nurtured by my observation of what the church was doing and the knowledge of the theology of the missio Dei, one of the current understandings of the mission of the church in the world. With missio Dei, the church is understood as not having its mission as such but as participating in God’s mission. As the situation to which the church was responding relates to women’s oppression, the model of accomplishing God’s mission during oppression was drawn from the reaction of the prophets in the Old Testament and Jesus Christ in the New Testament to the injustice and the oppression in the community. With regard to this, prophets’ and Jesus’ approach displays four main elements: envisioning a just community, standing with the oppressed, caring for the oppressed, and challenging oppressive structures. Therefore, the question this study sought to answer was: to what extent does the response of UFMC to domestic violence embody the fullness of these elements taken as characterising missio Dei? Through empirical research, these four elements have been used as yardsticks to analyse the goal, strategies and activities comprised in the UFMC’s response. Finally, the study revealed that this response fulfils three conditions as follows: envisioning a just community, standing with the oppressed, and caring for the oppressed. It falls short in the area of challenging oppressive structures. From these results, some lessons have been drawn and have served as basis to suggest how this response can be improved so as to reflect the fullness of missio Dei.