Stephan De Beer
Biographic Data
| ID | 2559946 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stephan De Beer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stephan |
| FAMILY NAME | De Beer |
| SIGNATURE | DE BEER S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pretoria |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8614-099X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Reimagining theological education
This article explored the urgent need to reimagine theological education in Africa by contextualising identity, curriculum and pedagogy for urban ministry, with particular emphasis on Kampala, Uganda. By situating theological education within the historical trajectories of both the city and the church, it demonstrates that theological education in Uganda – especially in Kampala – has not evolved in isolation, but has been continually shaped by wi…
‘Where are the prophets?’
Against the backdrop of precarious global and local politics – a threat to democracy, global wars, xenophobic violence, oppressions of sexual minorities and a permanent youth precariat in South Africa – do academic theologies foster prophetic responses or succumb to imperial co-option? Departing from the Kairos Document’s threefold call to conversion, this article laments the lack of a Kairos consciousness today, with reference to five areas of c…
Acknowledging Urban Overlookedness
Acknowledging ‘urban overlookedness’ is an attempt to create awareness for that which might be overlooked—certain cities; places and populations in cities; sectors, stories or solutions; and forms of urban resources or leadership—whilst at the same time acknowledging that we are being looked at. Considering whether urban overlookedness is ignorance, accidental or deliberate, this article offers reflections on a praxis that can counter overlookedn…
Kairos theology and church exclusion in Zimbabwe
This article critically examined the exclusion of the church from Zimbabwe’s coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis management, focusing on the government’s reliance on scientific and health expertise to the neglect of ecclesial contributions. Employing a liberative reconstruction methodology and guided by the Kairos liberation perspective, the study interrogated the implications of church marginalisation for public theology and social justic…
Interracial conflict and cultural division in Moreleta circuit
Interracial conflict and cultural divisions have been a serious challenge in the church globally. Through the years there has been vast available literature about the phenomenon as it happens and this study will specifically explore it in the Methodist church at the Moreleta circuit in the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality, South Africa. This article seeks to explore factors affecting developing an inclusive missional church. It aims to c…
Just housing
Against the backdrop of Africa’s urban revolution and the vastly unequal housing patterns in most African cities, this article argues for just housing to be a theological praxis-agenda. Drawing from a very local journey in one South African city, it considers David Korten’s four generations of development as a possible framework to guide such a theological praxis-agenda in (South) African cities.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implicat…
Just housing
In cities worldwide, housing is precarious. Local socio-economic environments can exacerbate existing social differences and exclusions, but can also contribute to alleviate these differences, and to foster high levels of social inclusion. This article introduces a special collection of articles asking how theology should contribute theologically to address the challenges of housing and human settlements. It derives from an assertion that theolog…
Housing' as Christian Social Practice in African Cities
Decent, affordable housing and secure housing tenure remain elusive for Africa's urban majority. The urban majority is expected to live in self-help housing, reflected in the fact that 62% of African urban dwellers live in urban informal settlements. The inability to access safe, decent, and secure housing, and the reality that Africa's urban majority is perpetually precarious, have a severe impact on Africa's urban households and the well-being …
Urban Africa 2050
Africa’s staggering rate of urbanization and the silence of religion or theology in response form the backdrop of this article. Africa’s urban futures, up through 2050, are considered through the lenses of fifteen African cities and theological institutions in these cities. I employ a set of research questions, seeking to contribute theologically to a body of knowledge known as African urbanism. The article imagines theological education/formatio…
African cities by 2063
Grounded in a postcolonial, liberationist urban vision, this article lamented the theological and political paralysis of urban denialism that fails African cities and African urban populations. Considering different possible urban trajectories towards 2063 – ranging from floundering to flourishing, implosion to explosion, and apocalyptic disaster to complete rebirth – it then proposed theologies of African urban citizenship, as response. It sough…
Change agency and urban vulnerability
Globally, cities respond differently to their most vulnerable urban populations, notably so during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In the City of Tshwane, there seems to be a general paralysis of the church and theological education in relation to urban vulnerability. If the church and theological education are to participate as change agents to help transform urban vulnerability, a deliberate theological praxis and deep urban d…
Homelessness Is a Housing Issue
This article presents the case of one local housing organisation in the City of Tshwane and its mother organisation, responding to different faces of homelessness through creating diversified housing options. It asserts that the absence of such housing options would render people homeless, or extremely precarious. It insists that homelessness is also a housing issue, challenging a dominant discourse among city officials and politicians relegating…
Fostering Pathways Out of Homelessness
Finding pathways out of street homelessness in the City of Tshwane, South Africa, brought together major academic and community-based institutions as well as local government. This article reflects on the collaborative processes used between 2014 and 2020 and analyses the efforts needed to succeed. It considers the challenges faced and demonstrates that a carefully choreographed approach is key to determine common platforms from which to address …
Homelessness and Covid-19 in the City of Tshwane
Ivan Petrella argues that the goals of liberation theology can sometimes be better served by doing it undercover. This article reflects on responses to homelessness during Covid-19 in the City of Tshwane, describing and reflecting upon it from the perspective of a researcher-theologian as well as activist-urbanist. It employed two lenses in its reflection: Petrella’s notion of the ‘undercover liberation theologian’, as well as what is known as de…
A reflection on Vuyani Vellem’s longing for liberation
Vuyani Vellem was insistent on fostering a spirituality that could ground and sustain resistance of death as expressed in multiple unfreedoms, and the quest for life and freedom in abundance. After naming a number of themes evident in the life of Vuyani – ranging from racism and pigmentocracy to the managerialist university and the shackled church – this article traces his reflections on a spirituality that embraces the cross, resurrection as reb…
A practical theology of liberation
In this article, the authors bring two personal journeys together: one author’s liberationist journey, sparked by a search for justice and liberation in the slums of Guatemala City, and the other’s lifelong commitment to practical theology and spatial justice in South Africa. A practical theology of liberation is the result of life experiences in countries of the Global South amidst the search for justice and liberation. The worlds that come toge…
Migration, precariousness, and the linked lives of newcomers in Hong Kong
We develop the concept of linked lives to deepen understanding of the relationship between migration and precarity. Linked lives and precariousness are mutually constitutive as they embed subjects in the social, spatial, and temporal relations of everyday life while referencing transitions, trajectories, and biographies that unfold through the life course. Studying linked lives draws attention to how cumulative social and cultural processes, incl…
Just Faith
The purpose of this scholarly book is to expand the body of knowledge available on urban theology. It introduces readers to the concept of planetary urbanisation, with the view of deepening an understanding of urbanisation and its all-pervasive impact on the planet, people and places from a theological perspective. A critical theological reading of ‘the urban’ is also provided, deliberating on bridging the divide between voices from the Global So…
Transforming curricula into the next century
The FT at the UP celebrates its first century of existence in 2017. This chapter is an attempt to draw from the emerging approach in both the CCM and the CSC, asking whether it perhaps offers clues for transforming curricula as we enter our second century. The chapter seeks to offer a vision for doing theology collaboratively with communities, in liminal spaces, opening up a transdisciplinary approach to theological engagement. In its engagement …
Discerning a theological agenda for spatial justice in South Africa
A spatial turn has occurred in various disciplines over the past decades. This article holds that it has not occurred in a similar decisive manner in theological discourse and not in South Africa in particular. After considering the necessity of a spatial turn and spatial consciousness, the article examines the concept of spatial justice against the backdrop of how injustice was and is spatially expressed in South African cities. Considering the …
Ubuntu is homeless
This article is reading ubuntu in the light of homelessness in the cities and towns of South Africa. It suggests that ubuntu itself is homeless and displaced as a way of being human together. Instead of the mediation of dignity and justice through an ubuntu-solidarity, street homeless people and others living vulnerably and in precarious circumstances are violated and excluded through a displacement of ubuntu-values. It also suggests a growing di…
Reading Psalms, and other urban poems, in a fractured city
This article was an attempt to (re-)read Psalms in the context of fractured cities, marked by socio-economic inequalities, woundedness, migration and exclusion. It explored urban motifs in selected psalms and considered their possible meanings in relation to both the socio-cultural contexts in which they were written but also how they could be read and understood today. It proposed the Psalms as urban poetry, and considered poems of praise, lamen…
Towards a fusion of horizons
This article proposes a ‘fusion of horizons’ in constructing urban public theologies in South Africa. This is done through the introduction of five interrelated themes that have emerged from the on-going knowledge and idea production by a distinguishable counterpoint in contemporary scholarly, intellectual and activist engagement with the urban, in the authors’ own South African context but also wider internationally. In advancing a praxis-agenda…
Jesus in the Dumping Sites
Jesus’ option for the poor should be reclaimed in a clear theological and ecclesial option for the dumping sites of our cities and towns. That is the basic proposal of this article. Reflecting upon three different dumping sites – different in size, age and history – this article will explore the central thread of material and human waste, often dealt with almost as synonymous, concentrated and overlapping in these marginal spaces. It will additio…
Informal community-based early childhood development as a focus for urban public theology in South Africa
This article highlights important dimensions of public theology and shows how the identified dimensions are relevant to the specific situation of informal early childhood development (ECD) facilities in a South African urban setting. The article considers the contributions and challenges of informal community-based ECD on the basis of research conducted in the Rustenburg/Phokeng area of the North West province of South Africa. It critically discu…
Migration, precariousness, and the linked lives of newcomers in Hong Kong
We develop the concept of linked lives to deepen understanding of the relationship between migration and precarity. Linked lives and precariousness are mutually constitutive as they embed subjects in the social, spatial, and temporal relations of everyday life while referencing transitions, trajectories, and biographies that unfold through the life course. Studying linked lives draws attention to how cumulative social and cultural processes, incl…
Absence, presence, remembrance
This essay is reflecting on frailty, the university and the city, in relation to each other. It seeks to transcend the binary concepts of presence and absence, proposing remembrance as the frail work of making absence present, of reweaving what is dismembered, and of a politics of hospitality. It considers the task of remembrance in the studio of life , disrupting or transcending the confines of laboratory and asylum
Ubuntu is homeless
This article is reading ubuntu in the light of homelessness in the cities and towns of South Africa. It suggests that ubuntu itself is homeless and displaced as a way of being human together. Instead of the mediation of dignity and justice through an ubuntu-solidarity, street homeless people and others living vulnerably and in precarious circumstances are violated and excluded through a displacement of ubuntu-values. It also suggests a growing di…
Absence, presence, remembrance
This essay is reflecting on frailty, the university and the city, in relation to each other. It seeks to transcend the binary concepts of presence and absence, proposing remembrance as the frail work of making absence present, of reweaving what is dismembered, and of a politics of hospitality. It considers the task of remembrance in the studio of life , disrupting or transcending the confines of laboratory and asylum
Towards a fusion of horizons
This article proposes a ‘fusion of horizons’ in constructing urban public theologies in South Africa. This is done through the introduction of five interrelated themes that have emerged from the on-going knowledge and idea production by a distinguishable counterpoint in contemporary scholarly, intellectual and activist engagement with the urban, in the authors’ own South African context but also wider internationally. In advancing a praxis-agenda…
Jesus in the Dumping Sites
Jesus’ option for the poor should be reclaimed in a clear theological and ecclesial option for the dumping sites of our cities and towns. That is the basic proposal of this article. Reflecting upon three different dumping sites – different in size, age and history – this article will explore the central thread of material and human waste, often dealt with almost as synonymous, concentrated and overlapping in these marginal spaces. It will additio…
Informal community-based early childhood development as a focus for urban public theology in South Africa
This article highlights important dimensions of public theology and shows how the identified dimensions are relevant to the specific situation of informal early childhood development (ECD) facilities in a South African urban setting. The article considers the contributions and challenges of informal community-based ECD on the basis of research conducted in the Rustenburg/Phokeng area of the North West province of South Africa. It critically discu…
Doing urban public theology in South Africa
This article serves as the introductory, first contribution to a special collection of articles on the theme, ‘Doing urban public theology in South Africa: Visions, approaches, themes and practices towards a new agenda’. The aim of the article is to set the conceptual and hermeneutical framework for undertaking urban public theology as a very intentional, new agenda in South African theological scholarship. The authors assert that public theology…
Urban South Africa
This article proposes the city as an opportunity and resource for liberating theological education. It explores going beyond adding "urban" to theological education as an addendum, but rather to consider "urbanizing" theological education as a whole, in an inclusive way that affirms the interconnectedness of urban-suburban-rural realities. It explores theological education that takes the whole of the urban and global reality, and its implications…
Demythologising social cohesion
This article considers the topical issue of social cohesion. It seeks to demythologise the issuebringing it into critical conversation with eight related categories. It proposes that a vision ofa socially cohesive society should employ all eight categories as parallel and complementarystrategies. Secondly, it proposes a practical theological vision of social cohesion that will notonly embrace these eight categories but will root itself in a spiri…
Ubuntu is homeless
This article is reading ubuntu in the light of homelessness in the cities and towns of South Africa. It suggests that ubuntu itself is homeless and displaced as a way of being human together. Instead of the mediation of dignity and justice through an ubuntu-solidarity, street homeless people and others living vulnerably and in precarious circumstances are violated and excluded through a displacement of ubuntu-values. It also suggests a growing di…
Reading Psalms, and other urban poems, in a fractured city
This article was an attempt to (re-)read Psalms in the context of fractured cities, marked by socio-economic inequalities, woundedness, migration and exclusion. It explored urban motifs in selected psalms and considered their possible meanings in relation to both the socio-cultural contexts in which they were written but also how they could be read and understood today. It proposed the Psalms as urban poetry, and considered poems of praise, lamen…
Discerning a theological agenda for spatial justice in South Africa
A spatial turn has occurred in various disciplines over the past decades. This article holds that it has not occurred in a similar decisive manner in theological discourse and not in South Africa in particular. After considering the necessity of a spatial turn and spatial consciousness, the article examines the concept of spatial justice against the backdrop of how injustice was and is spatially expressed in South African cities. Considering the …
Transforming curricula into the next century
The FT at the UP celebrates its first century of existence in 2017. This chapter is an attempt to draw from the emerging approach in both the CCM and the CSC, asking whether it perhaps offers clues for transforming curricula as we enter our second century. The chapter seeks to offer a vision for doing theology collaboratively with communities, in liminal spaces, opening up a transdisciplinary approach to theological engagement. In its engagement …
Just Faith
The purpose of this scholarly book is to expand the body of knowledge available on urban theology. It introduces readers to the concept of planetary urbanisation, with the view of deepening an understanding of urbanisation and its all-pervasive impact on the planet, people and places from a theological perspective. A critical theological reading of ‘the urban’ is also provided, deliberating on bridging the divide between voices from the Global So…
Homelessness Is a Housing Issue
This article presents the case of one local housing organisation in the City of Tshwane and its mother organisation, responding to different faces of homelessness through creating diversified housing options. It asserts that the absence of such housing options would render people homeless, or extremely precarious. It insists that homelessness is also a housing issue, challenging a dominant discourse among city officials and politicians relegating…
Fostering Pathways Out of Homelessness
Finding pathways out of street homelessness in the City of Tshwane, South Africa, brought together major academic and community-based institutions as well as local government. This article reflects on the collaborative processes used between 2014 and 2020 and analyses the efforts needed to succeed. It considers the challenges faced and demonstrates that a carefully choreographed approach is key to determine common platforms from which to address …
Homelessness and Covid-19 in the City of Tshwane
Ivan Petrella argues that the goals of liberation theology can sometimes be better served by doing it undercover. This article reflects on responses to homelessness during Covid-19 in the City of Tshwane, describing and reflecting upon it from the perspective of a researcher-theologian as well as activist-urbanist. It employed two lenses in its reflection: Petrella’s notion of the ‘undercover liberation theologian’, as well as what is known as de…
A reflection on Vuyani Vellem’s longing for liberation
Vuyani Vellem was insistent on fostering a spirituality that could ground and sustain resistance of death as expressed in multiple unfreedoms, and the quest for life and freedom in abundance. After naming a number of themes evident in the life of Vuyani – ranging from racism and pigmentocracy to the managerialist university and the shackled church – this article traces his reflections on a spirituality that embraces the cross, resurrection as reb…
A practical theology of liberation
In this article, the authors bring two personal journeys together: one author’s liberationist journey, sparked by a search for justice and liberation in the slums of Guatemala City, and the other’s lifelong commitment to practical theology and spatial justice in South Africa. A practical theology of liberation is the result of life experiences in countries of the Global South amidst the search for justice and liberation. The worlds that come toge…
Migration, precariousness, and the linked lives of newcomers in Hong Kong
We develop the concept of linked lives to deepen understanding of the relationship between migration and precarity. Linked lives and precariousness are mutually constitutive as they embed subjects in the social, spatial, and temporal relations of everyday life while referencing transitions, trajectories, and biographies that unfold through the life course. Studying linked lives draws attention to how cumulative social and cultural processes, incl…
Change agency and urban vulnerability
Globally, cities respond differently to their most vulnerable urban populations, notably so during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In the City of Tshwane, there seems to be a general paralysis of the church and theological education in relation to urban vulnerability. If the church and theological education are to participate as change agents to help transform urban vulnerability, a deliberate theological praxis and deep urban d…
Urban Africa 2050
Africa’s staggering rate of urbanization and the silence of religion or theology in response form the backdrop of this article. Africa’s urban futures, up through 2050, are considered through the lenses of fifteen African cities and theological institutions in these cities. I employ a set of research questions, seeking to contribute theologically to a body of knowledge known as African urbanism. The article imagines theological education/formatio…
African cities by 2063
Grounded in a postcolonial, liberationist urban vision, this article lamented the theological and political paralysis of urban denialism that fails African cities and African urban populations. Considering different possible urban trajectories towards 2063 – ranging from floundering to flourishing, implosion to explosion, and apocalyptic disaster to complete rebirth – it then proposed theologies of African urban citizenship, as response. It sough…
Housing' as Christian Social Practice in African Cities
Decent, affordable housing and secure housing tenure remain elusive for Africa's urban majority. The urban majority is expected to live in self-help housing, reflected in the fact that 62% of African urban dwellers live in urban informal settlements. The inability to access safe, decent, and secure housing, and the reality that Africa's urban majority is perpetually precarious, have a severe impact on Africa's urban households and the well-being …
Interracial conflict and cultural division in Moreleta circuit
Interracial conflict and cultural divisions have been a serious challenge in the church globally. Through the years there has been vast available literature about the phenomenon as it happens and this study will specifically explore it in the Methodist church at the Moreleta circuit in the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality, South Africa. This article seeks to explore factors affecting developing an inclusive missional church. It aims to c…
Just housing
Against the backdrop of Africa’s urban revolution and the vastly unequal housing patterns in most African cities, this article argues for just housing to be a theological praxis-agenda. Drawing from a very local journey in one South African city, it considers David Korten’s four generations of development as a possible framework to guide such a theological praxis-agenda in (South) African cities.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implicat…
Just housing
In cities worldwide, housing is precarious. Local socio-economic environments can exacerbate existing social differences and exclusions, but can also contribute to alleviate these differences, and to foster high levels of social inclusion. This article introduces a special collection of articles asking how theology should contribute theologically to address the challenges of housing and human settlements. It derives from an assertion that theolog…
Sociology (26 works) · Political science (19 works) · Law (16 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (15 works) · Environmental ethics (13 works) · Christian Theology and Mission (10 works) · Theology (10 works) · Politics (9 works) · African cultural and philosophical studies (7 works)