This article reports on interviews conducted with 11 women at the Thohoyandou Victim Empowerment Programme (TVEP), a centre located in Sibasa, Thohoyandou, in the Limpopo province of South Africa. The centre provides support and advocacy to female survivors of domestic violence. The participants were victims of gender-based violence and the study aimed at exploring the spiritual experiences of women assaulted by their partners. Interviews were conducted over 4 days and were held on the TVEP premises. This article discusses how women of faith found meaning and support through their religious beliefs when experiencing violence in intimate spaces. Furthermore, the article drew insights from spiritual perceptions held by women that make them feel safer and assist them to find ways to cope with violence in intimate relationships. However, the study found that women prayed for divine intervention and change in their families and for God to help their husbands by removing all evil spirits from their lives. It was found that apart from prayer, the women do not have any other spiritual resources to combat gender-based violence. The authors suggest the deconstruction of harmful religious discourses (such as ‘God has made man to rule over woman’) towards healing religious discourses (such as ‘all people are equal in God’s eyes’) as a type of ‘intervention’ in the lives of the interviewees.Contribution: The article contributes towards understanding the harmful impact of religious discourses on the lives of women who are vulnerable towards domestic violence. Religious discourses that are either harmful or healing are here identified through the stories of women who have been violated in their intimate relationships, thus contributing to the body of knowledge in gender studies and to religious and social sciences in general.

This article analyses the current status of women in the church and compares this with the status of women in the Bible. The unheard voices of women in the Bible have a corrective impact on the way in which women currently deal with their social ills. This article journeys with a narrative from the New Testament that encourages deconstruction of discourses that are harmful to women and reconstruction of healthy discourses that are inclusive and do not discriminate against women on the basis of gender. As the empowerment of women is located within the discourses of gender equality, a gender lens, which is a biblical liberation hermeneutic of vhusadzi theology, is employed to reconstruct positive discourses regarding people's perceptions about women in societies. The researchers argue that the unheard voices of women are still an issue and that the empowerment of women still needs to be prioritised. The church can play a significant role in contributing towards the empowerment of women.

This article is a reflection on the role and contribution of the church in a democratic South Africa. The involvement of the church in the struggle against apartheid is revisited briefly. The church has played a pivotal and prominent role in bringing about democracy by being a prophetic voice that could not be silenced even in the face of death. It is in this time of democracy when real transformation is needed to take its course in a realistic way, where the presence of the church has probably been latent and where it has assumed an observer status. A look is taken at the dilemmas facing the church. The church should not be bound and taken captive by any form of loyalty to any political organisation at the expense of the poor and the voiceless. A need for cooperation and partnership between the church and the state is crucial at this time. This paper strives to address the role of the church as a prophetic voice in a democratic South Africa. Radical economic transformation, inequality, corruption, and moral decadence—all these challenges hold the potential to thwart our young democracy and its ideals. Black liberation theology concepts are employed to explore how the church can become prophetically relevant in democracy. Suggestions are made about how the church and the state can best form partnerships. In avoiding taking only a critical stance, the church could fulfil its mandate “in season and out of season” and continue to be a prophetic voice on behalf of ordinary South Africans.

This article sets out to unfold stories of Vhavenda women in the Pentecostal church. It discusses their good experiences and challenges encountered as they do ministry. Their rich experiences and voices can inform the way ministry is practised today. Purposive sampling is used to explore the narratives of seven church women sourced from a previously written thesis. The thesis was conducted in Venda for doctoral studies at the University of South Africa, completed in 2011, where data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire with 97 participants. Some findings from the thesis are that women in rural areas are particularly affected by healthy and unhealthy religious and cultural discourses in their daily involvement in the ministry. Apart from looking at the religious and cultural discourses, the article will also investigate how these women find ways of coping with social and religious challenges as they continue in their various ministry spaces. This will add knowledge concerning women, gender and theology by highlighting the specific voices and experiences of Vhavenda women within their contexts and ministry. The article adopts a qualitative approach and is researched theoretically, employing the insights of vhusadzi theology to analyse the findings. Some of the findings in this article are that the lives of Vhavenda women in the Pentecostal church are filled with struggles and uncertainties, as related to church leadership.

This article provides a brief report and reflection on the historical development of contextual theology at the University of Venda (Univen). Contextual theology offered academic institutions, even in Bantustans such as Venda, a theologically significant expression. It is noteworthy that the subject of “contextual theology” as a paradigm, in this regard, is dissimilar to traditional Western classical theology by substance and orientation. This study focuses on the historical development of contextual theology and the contribution made by Univen between its inception in the early 1980s and the end of apartheid in the early 1990s. There is a need to critically explore the unique experience and development of contextual theology during apartheid. The relevance of this study is predicated on the complexities of articulating contextual engagement in distinct settings and the issues that shape them. This further involves locating contextual voices, priorities, and how they contribute to theological discourse. It includes uncovering lessons available for current and future developments of contextual theology. The oral history methodology is adopted to buttress reflection and analysis in this qualitative research endeavour. Oral interviews are transcribed and interpreted to bring to light the historical development of contextual theology at a former Bantustan university.