The vision of The Justice Conference South Africa is to see individuals and communities, compelled by a Kingdom-vision based on robust theological frameworks and deep critical social consciousness, released to
The Justice Conference South Africa 2017 happened at a time when South Africans were confronting questions raised by some of the hardest challenges facing South Africa and responding to the gospel invitation to allow the good news to speak to these. This was not exclusive to South Africans, as people world-wide wrestled with many of the same issues.
Those questions and that invitation remain. The three thousand-year-old lament and call of the prophet Amos echoes into 2018 declaring “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.” Amos exhorts us to imagine and then act on how the Kingdom of God will break through into spaces and places of death, despair, and persistent systemic injustice that are prevailing. What are justice and righteousness and how will they roll? What does gospel-centred spiritual, social, economic and political redemption look like at this time and place?
PROGRAMME
The Conference programme has been structured around a deep reading of Amos and 6 corporate plenary calls: A Call to Remember, A Call to Places of Pain, A Call to Righteousness, A Call from the Wilderness, A Call to Lament and A Call to True Worship.
Day 1 is focused on theological frameworks for justice and rooting participants in a critical social consciousness, with particular reference to Power (Race, Gender, and Wealth), Place (Spatial Inequality, the Environment, and Displaced People) and Systems (Courts/Government, Education, and Religion).
Day 2 will take us deeper into each of these areas as we listen to stories from communities of critical hope. Focus areas include gender-based violence, economic inequality, the commodification of common resources, anti-poor policies, and the role of religion in maintaining (and dismantling) injustice. We end with a series of workshops offering practical tools to engage through church, restitution, participatory democracy, and creativity.