Abstract:
Julian Müller, in his advocacy of a narrative theology, has called for an autobiographical
theology. In addition to Julian Müller’s plea, the author turned to what may be seen as the
liturgical and ritual variant of this method, namely autoethnography. Thus he would honour
Julian Müller and his tireless commitment to Practical Theology. Autobiographical and
autoethnographical theology do not start from well-ordered and systematically arranged
knowledge, but from a life as it has developed and as it is developing in its connections with
others. Difference is therefore a keyword in the method. Others and other worlds evoke the
consciousness of differences, incite reflections on the cracks, fractures and fissures that show
themselves to the self and provoke negotiations with the otherness of the other. Never in
his existence as a theologian had the author experienced this process more intensely than in
his contacts with colleagues and religious practices in South Africa. It was described in the
article how the author became acquainted with South Africa and, more particularly, with its
liturgical rituals and visual arts since 2001. The different experiences of successive visits to
Church Square in Pretoria functioned as a point of reference in the article. It was shown how
the self re-negotiated its position in the world through the confrontation with a totally ‘other’
– in this case, South African liturgical rituals and visual arts. This re-negotiation focused on
the Western academic position of the self when confronted with African epistemologies and
ontologies.
