Original Research - Special Collection: Practical Theology
‘Keeping head above water’: A case study in religious leadership in a polluted context
Submitted: 27 January 2014 | Published: 09 October 2014
About the author(s)
Ian A. Nell, Department of Practical Theology, Faculty of Theology, University of Stellenbosch, South AfricaAbstract
Toilets in the modern water closets rise up from the floor like water lilies. The architect does all he can to make the body forget how paltry it is and to make man ignore what happens to his intestinal wastes after the water from the tank flushes them down the drain … Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, as a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit and thus came to question the basic thesis of Christian anthropology, namely that man was created in God’s image. Either/or: either man was created in God’s image – and has intestines! – or God lacks intestines and man is not like him. (Milan Kundera, The unbearable lightness of being 1984:132)
Water is life, sanitation is dignity. (City of Cape Town, n.d., ‘Water and sanitation services standard’, Preliminary draft 2, March 2008)
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