Research Articles (Religion & Theology)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10566/312

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A Qualitative Model for Integrative Trauma-Informed Care for Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse in Marginalized South African Communities
(Health Psychology Research, 2026) Morgan, Leona; Nadar, Sarojini; Keygnaert, Ines
Background: Socioeconomic inequality, enforced through racial segregation during apartheid, continues to shape present-day disparities in South Africa. It limits equitable access to essential services and exacerbates health inequities, in particular, access to specialized trauma-focused mental health services in marginalized communities. Objectives: This study explores the intersections of systemic inequality and sexual violence by developing a qualitative framework for integrative trauma-informed care (ITIC) intended for resource-constrained settings. The study focuses on adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) from the Cape Flats region of Cape Town. Methods: Framed within a critical, feminist community psychology perspective, ITIC sessions were facilitated for 13 adult survivors of CSA, with variation in the number of sessions and the duration of the intervention. Clinical histories were assessed. Applying ITIC, participant-specific narratives, and trauma recovery pathways were analyzed. Results: The findings highlight the complex physical and mental health needs of participants, given the long interval that had elapsed since their experiences of CSA. These findings informed the development of a multi-component care framework that addresses prolonged trauma suppression among adult survivors of CSA from marginalized communities, such as the Cape Flats. Despite the long time elapsed between CSA and the initiation of ITIC, this form of therapy supported more equitable trauma recovery. Conclusion: The study develops a qualitative research-informed care framework that integrates various factors associated with sexual trauma. Addressing the complexities in marginalized South African contexts, it highlights the importance of recognizing individual differences in trauma responses, comorbidities related to systemic violence, and pre- and post-trauma experiences, allowing for tailored interventions that may potentially enhance therapeutic outcomes
Healing bodies, healing communities: a community-based qualitative study of adult survivors of childhood sexual trauma in South Africa
(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), 2025) Morgan, Leona; Nadar, Sarojini; Keygnaert, Ines
Highlights: Body-based care models respond better to long-term, intergenerational and somatic aspects of sexual trauma in survivors being historically excluded from mental health care. Co-creation of care pathways ensures culturally sensitive approaches that are responsive to lived experiences of marginalized survivors of childhood sexual trauma. What are the main findings? Relational safety and somatic engagement were foundational to trauma recovery, enabling survivors to process trauma at their own pace and integrate dissociative experiences through embodied therapeutic praxis. Recovery was relational and continuous, with participants reporting increased peace, authenticity and social connection despite structural barriers, highlighting the effectiveness of culturally grounded, non-pathologizing care. What is the implication of the main finding? Integrative Trauma-Informed Care (ITIC) offers a culturally sensitive, adaptable framework that can be tailored to diverse communities and age groups, emphasizing embodied, intergenerational and relational healing. Decolonial and feminist approaches to mental health care can bridge epistemic gaps in ITIC praxes by centering survivors’ lived, embodied experiences, promoting sustainable and inclusive therapeutic models globally. Background: While sexual trauma is inherently an embodied experience, research on psychological interventions that is cognisant of geographic and socio-political community contexts within which embodied, therapeutic interventions occur remains limited. Decolonial, African and feminist community psychologies have noted this epistemic–ethical gap. Objectives: This paper explores the co-development of trauma-informed care pathways for adult survivors of childhood sexual trauma (CST) in under-resourced communities in Cape Town, South Africa. The study aimed to integrate intergenerational community knowledge, embodied therapeutic practices and collaborative approaches into locally relevant models of care. Methods: Drawing on feminist mental health frameworks, this qualitative study engaged 13 adult female survivors who identify as “coloured”.
'I just want the pain to go away’: religious coping and sexual trauma recovery in South African, marginalised contexts
(Routledge, 2026) Morgan, Leona; Nadar, Sarojini; Keygnaert, Ines
There is increased recognition of the need to engage with psychosocial diversity in the psychotherapeutic treatment of sexual violence. Using a decolonial feminist community psychology lens, this paper explores how religious practices shape the trauma experiences of adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse in the Cape Flats region of South Africa. Drawing on data from qualitative semi-structured interviews and integrative trauma-informed care sessions with thirteen women who experienced childhood sexual abuse, this research explores how religion influences adult survivors’ efforts to process childhood sexual abuse and seek healing. Characterised by structural inequities, intergenerational trauma and limited mental health services resulting from apartheid, the Cape Flats provides a context in which religion plays a paradoxical role in study participants’ lives. Insights from reflexive inductive thematic analysis suggest that religion may provide supportive meaning, but also perpetuates trauma suppression through spiritual bypassing and premature forgiveness. This dynamic occurs where cultural and religious norms discourage trauma disclosure and institutionalised faith practices lack specialised trauma care. Integrative trauma-informed care sessions enable participants to engage with their trauma authentically, while cultivating an empowering connection to their faith. These findings highlight the necessity for trauma recovery approaches that address the intersections of structural inequity, gender and spirituality.
‘Stay with the body’: facilitating integrative silence in community-based sexual trauma care
(Taylor and Francis Ltd., 2025) Morgan, Leona; Nadar, Sarojini; Keygnaert, Ines
Background: Research has demonstrated that the verbal disclosure for adult victims of childhood sexual trauma (CST) presents significant challenges and seldom provides comprehensive trauma integration. Limited psychosocial support and specialist trauma care particularly in marginalised communities, can further exacerbate the non-disclosure of CST. Although various intervention models for adult victims of CST exist, the potential of facilitating integrative silence as part of community centred integrative trauma informed care (ITIC), remains under-explored. Objective: The objective of this article, is to document how facilitating spaces of integrative silence in a therapeutic context, shifts embodied trauma awareness, comprehensive trauma realisation and trauma integration for adult victims of CST from intergenerational marginalised contexts. Methods: Through participatory action research (PAR), framed in de-colonial feminist community praxis with 13 women aged 21-62, the first author as therapist-researcher facilitated audio-visual recorded semi-structured interviews (n = 13) and integrative trauma informed care (ITIC) follow-up sessions (n = 60) to assess the value of the spoken, unspoken and silence in trauma care. Inductive reflexive thematic analysis and a multistage recursive coding process of verbatim transcriptions, were used to identify embodied trauma awareness before, during, and after periods of silence. Results: The de-colonial, feminist framing for community centred ITIC enhanced participant-specific embodied awareness, establishing a safe space for self-reflection. Contextual sensitivity and careful attention to the therapeutic environment were paramount. The facilitation of non-verbal expression empowered participants to explore alternatives to normative, essentialist and religious narratives that often stigmatise trauma responses. This approach enabled participants to reclaim a sense of agency, improving self-regulation and self-care. Conclusion: This study highlights the potential of integrative silence in community based therapeutic contexts. Future research could explore the role of integrative silence in treating various forms of trauma in different cultural and geographic settings and its integration with other therapeutic modalities to enhance culturally sensitive mental health care.
A critique of christian zionism in South Africa: an analytical mapping
(Edinburgh University Press, 2026) Gamedze, Thandi
Israeli apartheid, occupation, and settler colonialism is sustained through a robust lattice, the material of which is both military and ideological. Christian Zionism has been recognised as arguably the most important aspect of the latter. While in many respects, the Global North — and the United States in particular — represents the most powerful stronghold of Christian Zionism, for numerous reasons, the necessity of understanding its manifestation within the Global South is becoming more recognised. South Africa, as a majority Christian context, and a country with a deeply contested historical and contemporary relationship with Israel, represents an interesting case in this regard. As of yet, scholarly work exploring Christian Zionism in South Africa is largely absent. This article situates itself in this gap through providing an initial broad lay of the land in terms of Christian Zionism’s manifestation in South Africa through an initial scoping and mapping of various actors involved on this landscape.
Towards a contemporary Islamic environmental ethics: the nature and moral status of animals
(Brill Academic Publishers, 2025) Mohamed, Nabil Yasien
This paper examines the moral and ontological status of animals in Islamic thought and advances a contemporary Islamic environmental ethic rooted in a theocentric worldview. It critiques dominant secular models, Peter Singer’s (b. 1946) utilitarianism and Tom Regan’s (d. 2017) deontology, arguing that their one-dimensional and non-transcendental grounding limits their scope. Drawing on classical Muslim philosophers of the third/ninth to the sixth/twelfth centuries, spanning Persia to al-Andalus, this paper highlights a teleological framework that grants animals moral consideration. The Islamic ethical framework constitutes both anthropocentric and ecocentric dimensions: humans are uniquely honoured, and animals are created for human benefit (taskhīr), animals nevertheless possess sacred value, with Qurʾānic and Prophetic teachings underscoring kindness and stewardship. To reconcile the apparent anthropocentric – ecocentric impasse, a theocentric ethic is proposed, grounded in recognition of all creatures as God’s creation. We develop this ethic through a tripartite framework
The significance of eschatology in the reception of the Belhar confession
(AOSIS (pty) Ltd, 2026) Conradie, Ernst M.
This article offers a constructive thesis on how the continued relevance of an ecclesial document such as the Belhar Confession can be maintained, given the need to recognise a particular casus confessionis. The Belhar Confession must indeed be understood as ‘a moment of truth’. While the themes of unity, reconciliation and justice have lost none of their relevance, the critique of heresy as expressed in the Confession cannot be reiterated given ideological shifts. Contribution: It is argued that the key to its continued relevance lies in its eschatology, in the tension between the already of the gospel and the not yet of its eschatological vision. On this basis, a brief account of the underlying and often implicit eschatology of the Belhar Confession is offered. It is argued that to endorse the Belhar Confession means to place oneself in a trajectory where this Confession is regarded as a moment where the gospel was at stake and where an appropriate response was expressed in and for that moment. The continuity in this trajectory is not provided by the precise formulations, the context or even the selected themes. It is provided by the gospel itself. It is the tension between the already of the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ and through the Spirit and the not yet of the eschatological vision that keeps the trajectory on track and sustains its momentum.
Christian faith, contingencies, and resonance
(John Wiley and Sons Inc, 2026) Henriksen, Jan-Olav
How are experiences shaping how people understand, relate to, and see Christian faith and doctrine as relevant in their lives? It can be argued that this is due to how such doctrines can relate to and interpret their experiences of contingency and resonance. This approach entails elements that can help understand the quest for experiences with religion within a larger theoretical framework and point to some of the implications that can be derived from a theoretical approach that addresses a specific understanding of Christian—and especially Lutheran—theology. A main idea here is that the contemporary discussion about the uncontrollable features of reality corresponds to and supports the notion of the human being as being referred to something other than its own agency.
On the intersections of power, critique, discourse and invention
(Brill Academic Publishers, 2025) van den Heever, Gerhard
In spite of the impression of unconnected contents, there is a golden line running through this issue of Religion & Theology that creates a conceptual unity in the collected essays here. This issue of Religion & Theology revolves around issues of power, critique, discourse, and invention, and not as freestanding topics but as interweaving practices that, in concert, illuminate the processes of manufacturing religion.1 Hence the two section topics of “On Power, Contestations, Contextualisation, and Innovation: Perspectives from Africa,” with essays on the reception and interpretation of the Council of Nicaea and its Creed in Africa (by Teddy Sakupapa), contestations around the intrusion of Christian discourses and practices in traditional cultural contexts, in this case Cameroon (by Elias Bongmba), and the construction of a new religious movement in the hybrid Christian–African traditional religion of the Ibandla lamaNazaretha (Nazareth Baptist Church) by Isaiah Shembe (by Sibusiso Masondo); and “Power, Critique, Feminism, and Invention: Critical Perspectives on Religious Discourses,” with essays on Catholic discourses on the paranormal and practices of exorcism (by Nicole Bauer), conceiving of new directions in Catholic theology of human dignity as public theology (by Christiaan Hermans), New Materialism as a philosophical framework to engage the figure of Mary, the Mother of God, to reconceptualise divinity for feminist theology (by Calvin Ullrich), and the retrojection of Romanticism and its legacy cultural values on to the processes of inventive curation of those material artifacts that (now supposedly) constitute – for us – the cultural world of the Roman Empire (by Robyn Walsh).
Echoes of empire: Nicaea’s legacy and the call to decolonise Orthodoxy
(Brill Academic Publishers, 2025) Sakupapa, Teddy C.
This article critically probes the early entanglement of imperial power and Christian orthodoxy through engagement with Peter Leithart’s Defending Constantine and selected African theological responses to Nicaea. Moving beyond conventional applications of ancient creeds to modern contexts, it interrogates how imperial-theological alliances at Nicaea forged enduring Church-State paradigms that continue to inform and, at times constrain the church’s public witness. Framed by Allan Boesak’s notion of “Kairos consciousness,” the article revisits the contested legacy of Nicaea within the shifting terrain of World Christianity and raises pressing questions for the decolonisation of ecumenical theology
Bondage instead of freedom? How can Lutheran Theology prevent the use of Sola Scriptura as an entrance to Pathological Theology?
(John Wiley and Sons Inc, 2026) Henriksen, Jan-Olav
The principle of Sola Scriptura was originally intended to liberate the Church from external authorities, ensuring that no power other than the Word of God dictated its teachings and practices. It served a critical role over against human authorities that demanded obedience to doctrines and practices that were not grounded in Scripture. The following analysis explores the shadow side of this principle, inspired by some elements in the psychology of religion. The reason for this approach is that the meaning of theology is not found solely in its articulation but in its practical effects—how it orients life, shapes identity, and enables or constrains human flourishing. To examine this, I will also employ Hanna Reichel's concept of theology as design. Her approach addresses “bad theology,” or theology that fosters pathological dynamics, and this can also be the case with the principle in question.
Understanding the ecclesial model of conflict transformation from a study of the Nigerian Baptist Convention in Northern Nigeria
(AOSIS (pty) Ltd, 2026) Adehanloye, Oladele Peter; Sakupapa, Teddy C.
Ethno-religious conflict remains a persistent challenge in Northern Nigeria, where religious communities navigate tensions between complicity and agency in peacebuilding. This article examines the Nigerian Baptist Convention (NBC)’s engagement in conflict transformation and develops a theologically grounded ecclesial model of peacebuilding. Drawing on Adehanloye’s qualitative, interpretive case study and employing Lederach’s conflict transformation theory, the study analyses the NBC’s praxis through a theological–hermeneutical lens. Using thematic analysis, it identifies motifs of reconciliation, justice and peace (shalom) and demonstrates how the NBC mobilises moral authority, relational networks and ecumenical partnerships across executive, mid-level and grassroots structures to foster peace and interfaith engagement. The findings inform a multi-tiered ecclesial model of conflict transformation that integrates theological reflection with practical strategies, offering a contextually grounded framework for churches seeking to sustain peace in Northern Nigeria. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article offers a praxis-oriented theological framework that reflects the NBC’s contextual witness and therefore contributes to broader discourses on religion and society, conflict transformation and peacebuilding in Africa.
Towards a contemporary islamic environmental ethics: the nature and moral status of animals
(Brill Academic Publishers, 2025) Mohamed, Nabil Yasien
This paper examines the moral and ontological status of animals in Islamic thought and advances a contemporary Islamic environmental ethic rooted in a theocentric worldview. It critiques dominant secular models, Peter Singer’s (b. 1946) utilitarianism and Tom Regan’s (d. 2017) deontology, arguing that their one-dimensional and non-transcendental grounding limits their scope. Drawing on classical Muslim philosophers of the third/ninth to the sixth/twelfth centuries, spanning Persia to al-Andalus, this paper highlights a teleological framework that grants animals moral consideration. The Islamic ethical framework constitutes both anthropocentric and ecocentric dimensions: humans are uniquely honoured, and animals are created for human benefit (taskhīr), animals nevertheless possess sacred value, with Qurānic and Prophetic teachings underscoring kindness and stewardship. To reconcile the apparent anthropocentric – ecocentric impasse, a theocentric ethic is proposed, grounded in recognition of all creatures as God’s creation. We develop this ethic through a tripartite framework: (1) Divine Command Theory, (2) the Higher Objectives of the Divine Law (Maqāṣid al-Sharīa), and (3) Islamic Virtue Ethics. This integrative model offers a holistic, theologically grounded alternative to secular environmental ethics.
Sacred contradictions: religion, conflict and peacebuilding in Northern Nigeria
(AOSIS (pty) Ltd, 2025) Sakupapa, Teddy C.; Adehanloye, Oladele Peter
This article explored the ambivalent role of religion in Northern Nigeria’s ethno-religious conflicts in ways that move beyond reductionist interpretations. It aims to offer a nuanced and contextual analysis of how religion simultaneously fuels division and fosters peace and reconciliation. Methodologically, this study adopts a qualitative, literature-based methodology, engaging interdisciplinary scholarly sources on religion in Africa, African theology, peace studies and political theory. Drawing on Scott Appleby’s concept of the ambivalence of the sacred and Gerrie ter Haar’s multidimensional understanding of religion as descriptive and analytical framework, the article conceptualises religion as a holistic and embodied mode of knowing and being. This research revealed that religion in Northern Nigeria is deeply intertwined with identity politics, historical grievances and socio-political structures. It operates both as a catalyst for violence and as a resource for peacebuilding, depending on how it is interpreted, lived and mobilised. The article interrogated colonial legacies, postcolonial state formation and structural inequalities in Nigeria that shape the deployment of religious narratives, actors and institutions. Contribution: The findings of this contribution highlight the need for a transformative, context-sensitive ecclesial engagement that embraces the lived realities of faith communities. Such an approach affirms religion’s capacity to contribute to sustainable peace when grounded in historical consciousness and a hermeneutics of reconciliation. This study contributes to theological and interdisciplinary efforts to reimagine religion’s role in conflict transformation in Northern Nigeria, in particular and Africa, in general.
The culture, the council, and the really important sideshow
(Brill Academic Publishers, 2025) van den Heever, Gerhard
This essay surveys the dominant commentaries and discourses on the Council of Nicaea and the Nicene Creed, and proceeds to critique contemporary Nicene-derived and -inspired theological thinking which constructs its meaning to reside solely in the theological discourses associated with and clustering around the Council and its Creed. Through critical historiography and theories of discourse, the history of the Council and the Creed is read as a discursive formation the meaning of which lies outside of the Nicene disputation. By setting “Nicaea” as icon within the framework of changes in religious mentalities of the period, the rising cults of saints and martyrs, the article argues that the Council of Nicaea was actually conceived as the vicennalia, the celebration of Constantine’s rule, especially his victory over Licinius, and that the real prize for Emperor Constantine was the erection of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Church was celebrated as a monument to Constantine’s victory, and the celebrated Nicene formula of homoousios helped link Constantine to Christ as a means to authorise his rule.
Diaconia and Christian social practice in a global perspective: concluding synthesis of emerging topical issues and themes
(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), 2025) Swart, Ignatius; Eurich, Johannes
Trust in politics and institutions, as well as the upholding of social cohesion, is presently under pressure globally. This has side effects for the work of civil society organizations that take on social challenges. Thus, this seems to be an appropriate time for a special issue focusing on specific civil society organizations, such as faith-based organizations, which devote themselves to addressing the challenges of poverty and social exclusion in many societies. In some contexts, when dealing with the tradition of the Christian faith, such organizations are referred to as “diaconal organizations” within a longstanding tradition. In other contexts, these organizations fall into the category of “Christian social practice” or are recognized as “development actors” (faith-based development organizations) in the still relatively new field of religion and development.
A meditation on bending the carbon curve
(Brill Academic Publishers, 2025) Conradie, Ernst M.
This article reflects on discourse on “bending the curve” in the context of the Covid19 pandemic and on carbon emissions in the context of climate change. Two crucial features of the latter are highlighted, namely, the need for carbon emissions to peak “soon” and to decline rapidly afterward in order to reach net zero emissions by around 2050.Thisraisesthequestionwhether(Reformed)Christianitycancontributetobending the carbon curve or whether it forms part of the underlying problem. Bending the carbon curve is contrasted with the “Christian curve” that could describe the transformative impact of the gospel in society. Several differences are emphasized in order to suggest that a “blending” of the curves is not advised so that, instead, these discourses are best held in a paradoxical tension.
Dialectics of Satanic technologies through the lens of Mountain of Fire and Miracles ministry, Nigeria
(Cogent OA, 2025) Adedibu, Babatunde Aderemi; Adeyemo, Adeleke Olujobi; Akanbi, Oluyomi Jude
Pentecostalism in Africa, particularly in Nigeria, has brought a new chapter in the history of Christianity. However, one of the conspicuous peculiarities of the kind of Pentecostalism that has emerged, especially in Nigeria, is the spiritual warfare and rituals of the movement. There is also the dawning fear and the use of prayer as performative acts that disarticulate visible and invisible political hegemony. Contextual and close-reading methodologies are employed for the study to discuss these peculiarities of Pentecostal doctrine and practices. As notably practised by the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries (MFM), Pentecostalism in Nigeria has been at the forefront of teaching and employing the doctrinal teachings and practices that deal with local satanic technologies. The contextual approach concentrates on a critical study of the literature produced by Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries (MFM) on ‘Satanic technologies’. In contrast, the close-reading approach relies on the Bible interpretation of selected Biblical texts on which the ideology of satanic technologies is built. The argument here is that the theological praxis of Mountain of Fire and Miracle Ministries, especially in ‘Satanic technologies’, undermines the basis of classical Pentecostal theologies and the Reformation theological orientation that interprets exposition of Biblical passages in their contexts for salvation and transformation to a ‘cacophonous’ phenomenon.
A critical analysis of ubuntu as the nexus of identity development in present-day Africa
(AOSIS (pty) Ltd, 2024) Anofuechi, Benson O.; Klaasen, John S.
In African society today, ubuntu as a notion of African humanism has been, and still is, subject to critical discussion. In African literature, philosophy, ethics, anthropology and theology, ubuntu plays a vast role and scholars in Africa and globally find the notion highly debated. The concept of identity development on the African continent has been written about broadly. This article unpacks the ubuntu philosophies of Augustine Shutte, Kwame Gyekye and John Mbiti. The views of these scholars will be contrasted to critically engage the conceivable commonalities for identity development through cultures. The question addressed herein is: What are the similarities and dissimilarities of ubuntu as a cornerstone for identity development in modern Africa? This article also examines the divergent definition and historical development of ubuntu culture, ubuntu philosophy of identity development, environmental development and various thinkers’ understanding of this African worldview in current Africa and further afield. Contribution: This research contributes to African theological ethics of the new landscape identity and explores the ubuntu worldviews as a developmental process of identities across cultures. Since identity development across cultures is highly dynamic, the hermeneutical interpretation of the principles of ubuntu is crucial.
Masculine aesthetics and food ascetics: an autobiographical exploration of fitness religion in Cape Town
(Taylor & Francis Group, 2025) Jodamus, Johnathan
This article explores how South African gym culture crafts racialised, gendered and classed identities through the aesthetics of the body (“bodywork”) and the discipline of diet (“foodwork”). following various scholars who have conceptualised fitness regimes as religion, i conceptualise gym culture as a form of “wild religion”. challenging mainstream literature on fitness and masculinity – which largely overlooks race and class dynamics – i draw on autobiographical embodied experiences within fitness spaces to reveal the power of this culture to function as a quasi-religious domain, with its own symbols, rituals and beliefs. this analysis exposes how ideals of masculinity are forged within these sacred spaces, underscoring the need to interrogate how race and class intricately shape these ideals in ways that are often hidden from view. by reframing fitness as a site where masculinities are not only formed but ritualised, this work calls for a new understanding of gym culture as a potent arena for exploring race, class and masculine identity in South Africa.

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