Churches claiming a right to the city? Lived urbanisms in the City of Tshwane

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Authors

Ribbens, Michael
De Beer, Stephanus Francois

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Publisher

AOSIS Open Journals

Abstract

This article sets out to describe how churches have responded and continue to respond to fastchanging urban environments in Pretoria Central and Mamelodi East, animating Henri Lefebvre’s sociological perspective of citadins or urban inhabitants. We make tentative interpretations and offer critical appreciation. Churches, which were historically separated from the city centre, now directly participate in claiming a right to the city. With necessary fluidity, churches express lived African urbanisms through informality, place-making, spatial innovation and everyday rituals. Though not exhaustive, the article focuses on rituals shared among historic urban Christians and contemporary African urban Christians, namely prayer, listening to the Bible and worship. These rituals, when combined with the churches’ spatial innovation, to a certain degree contribute to place-making.

Description

This article forms part of a collaborative research project entitled ‘Religious innovation and competition amidst urban social change: a Pretoria case study’. The project is also a sub-theme of the ‘Faith in the City’ research project, hosted by the Centre for Contextual Ministry in the Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria.

Keywords

Churches, Urban environments, Separated, Everyday rituals, Spatial innovation, Place-making, Informality, African urbanism, City of Tshwane

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Citation

Ribbens, M. & De Beer, S.F., 2017, ‘Churches claiming a right to the city? Lived urbanisms in the City of Tshwane’, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 73(3), a4690. https://DOI. org/ 10.4102/hts.v73i3.4690.