Abstract:
The concept of empire has re-emerged as one useful to interpret and describe the joining
of dominant global themes that together construct a global homogeneous totality. Some
of the main themes of this totality are: global finance/capitalism which goes hand in hand
with consumerism, global media and communication technologies, security (including
personal, national and global), equity within a context of limited natural resources and
postmodern multi-culturalism with so-called religious pluralism. These themes, together,
have created a system of meaning – an imperial world-of-meaning, that is imperialistic in
the sense that it takes on absolute proportions as it does not acknowledge or
accommodate alternative worlds-of-meaning unless such worlds-of-meaning have
consumer value in a so-called pluralistic society, thus allowing alternative voices to be
assimilated into the Same. South Africa is not exempt from this imperialism as our
political-economic reality and our culture – which is strongly determined by the global
media and social life – is dependent on, and interpreted within, the context of empire.
This article will ask the question: What role can the local church play in such an
imperialistic context? In response to this question the article will unpack a hermeneutical
way of doing theology in and with the local community that is not of the empire as a
possible ecclesiological response to empire. In other words, a theology that is contextual
and embedded within the local community, yet that is not determined by the empire, but
critically engages with the empire as it challenges the local effects of empire, thereby
creating a liberated space for alternative realities.
