Having an identity unconnected to their status is one of the challenges facing refugees. It is a challenge to create an alternative to the definitional context of being and belonging since the refugee phenomenon is arguably the largest migratory movement among all forms of human mobility. In South Africa, refugees often suffer in silence with little or no help even as they go through painful experiences. These and related phenomena pose a practical challenge for theology in South Africa and raise questions on the practice of diakonia in light of the refugee phenomenon. The question could, therefore, be asked: "How can we respond to the growing migratory trend"? This paper demonstrates how the church as an agent of hope can translate the multilayered dynamics of vulnerability experienced by refugees into a diaconal opportunity, so they can be able to say with confidence, for example, in South Africa, "We live, and move, and have our being." The article uses the findings from a recently completed doctoral dissertation on the health and well-being of refugees in Cape Town, South Africa. The data on which this article is based were collected qualitatively through interviews and focus-group discussions and reflects the findings of the doctoral research of the first author.

There is much debate around whether gender-based violence (GBV) interventions should be framed within 'women' or 'men' movements. While recognizing the gains made through both strategies, by drawing on data collected during a recent scoping study on the role of faith communities and organizations in the prevention and response to sexual and genderbased violence, we argue that there is a need, particularly within faith communities in the Global South, to explore the notion of an integrated approach. The dominance of restrictive patriarchal structures means that men, and especially male faith leaders, need to be systematically targeted and incorporated into faith-based intervention strategies, as partners in addressing the issue.

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Faith-based Organisations (FBOs) have been at the forefront of a growing interest of the intersection between religion and development. Their value has been recognised as both pragmatic (such as reaching the poorest at the grassroots level and encouraging civil society and advocacy) and, perhaps more contentiously, also ‘spiritual’ in nature because of advantages arising from faith itself (such as hope, meaning, purpose and transcendental power). For many FBOs, religion is far more than an ‘essential component of identity … it is a source of well-being’. In this manner, FBOs challenge the modernist assumptions of traditional development theory, which view the spiritual and physical domains as separate. In fact, for some FBOs, ‘spiritual faith provides the fuel for action’. This paper reports on an aspect of the empirical findings of a South African study and explores both the way in which Christian FBOs understand their Christian identity and the way in which they articulate this through their use of scripture as a motivating or an envisioning tool.

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