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09 May 2019 | Story Eugene Seegers | Photo Johan Roux
Jan-Albert van den Berg
Prof Rantoa Letšosa, Dean of the Faculty of Theology and Religion; Prof Jan-Albert van den Berg; Prof Kobus Schoeman, Head of the Department of Practical and Missional Theology; and Prof Engela van Staden, Vice-Rector: Academic.
“Have we — have I — thought sufficiently about the deeper and sacred meaning of everyday life?” Intriguingly, this was how Prof Jan-Albert van den Berg concluded his inaugural lecture on 28 March 2019. During this journey, Prof Van den Berg took his listeners via the scenic route, starting with a mere outline of the divine — first a sketch, then a drawing, until a fully-fledged painting emerges — ending with a manifestation of glory as seen by each individual.

Faith in popular culture

“Practical theology,” said Prof Van den Berg, “implies a specific sensitivity and feeling for the description and meaning of practice and praxis. The use of narratives is one possible way of understanding and documenting a specific involvement in praxis.”

As an object lesson from popular culture, Prof Van den Berg cited the now-infamous-yet-ultimately-beneficial amateur restoration of the Ecce Homo by octogenarian Cecilia Giménez in Borja, Spain. The original fresco, ‘Behold the Man’, was painted in 1930 by Spaniard Elías García Martínez. By 2012, the artwork had suffered the ravages of time, until Giménez’s enthusiasm for art restoration happened to it. At first, the historical society and local townsfolk were up in arms. However, since 2012, Borja’s flagging tourist industry has been revived, and the proceeds from the picture’s fame help to fund not only a local museum but a care home for the elderly as well. 

The entire debacle quickly went viral on social media and the internet, leading Prof Van den Berg to comment on the underlying significance of social media as a field of praxis. As a nod to this aspect of modern culture, he specifically used hashtags (#sketching, #drawing, #painting, #tweetingGod, #findingthesacred) for the subtitles of his lecture. He said, “This is how the Twitter world in particular talks about God, in order to express multiple and compound understandings of daily life.” 

Evergreen Bible student

Prof Van den Berg’s love of practical theology dated back to his days as a student, when he said he learnt that “theology was not just a noun but a verb”. He said: “Practical theology’s description of the Divine in everyday life represents, for me, the relevance and topicality with which I associate theology.” He added that the title of his inaugural lecture directly relates to this understanding, as much as it can be strongly associated with his recent doctoral thesis at the University of Queensland, entitled Tweeting God: A practical theological analysis of the communication of Christian motifs on Twitter.

Expressions of faith in the mundane

In answering his question, mentioned at the outset, Prof Van den Berg said: “Perhaps there is more to be seen, heard, and read in everyday-life texts of the Cecilias of the world who take up their ‘paintbrushes’ ”. Stating that formal theological language has, in certain aspects, lost some of its impact and that many people have turned a deaf ear to the articulation of these truths, Prof Van den Berg concluded that “one must envision possible alternative descriptions, in the form of existing practices of #tweetingGod, finding the sacred in everyday life”.



News Archive

Four modernised controlled environment cabinets inaugurated
2006-07-27

Photographed in a controlled environment cabinet were at the back from the left:  Mr Adriaan Hugo (head of the UFS Electronics and Mechanisation Division), Prof Herman van Schalkwyk (Dean: Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the UFS) and Prof Koos Terblans (lecturer at the UFS Department of Physics).  In front is Mr Koos Uys (engineering consultant from Experto Designa who helped with the cooling systems of the cabinets).
Photo: Leonie Bolleurs

Different look for research in controlled circumstances at the UFS  

Research in controlled circumstances at the University of the Free State (UFS) turned a new page today with the inauguration of four modernised controlled environment cabinets of the Department of Soil, Crop and Climate Sciences.

“The controlled environment cabinets, which are situated next to the glass houses on the eastern side of the Agriculture Building on the Main Campus in Bloemfontein, were installed in the early 1980’s.  The cabinets, used for research purposes in controlled circumstances by the UFS for many years, became dysfunctional and needed to be repaired and put into use again,” said Prof Herman van Schalkwyk, Dean: Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the UFS.

“The cabinets are used by the agronomics, horticulture and soil science divisions of the Department of Soil, Crop and Climate Sciences to control factors such as the temperature, the intensity and quality of light, synthesis and humidity.  This is done 24 hours a day, with hourly intervals,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.

The cabinets are ideally suited to determine the joint and separate effects of these factors on the growth of plants.  The adaptability of plants to climate can also be investigated under controlled circumstances.  All of this leads to a better understanding of the growth and development process of plants, more specifically that of agricultural crops. 

“The effect of these environmental factors on the effectiveness of insect killers such as fungus killers, insecticide and weed killers can also be investigated and can help to explain the damage that is sometimes experienced, or even prevent the damage if the research is timeously,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.

A new cabinet can cost between R2-3 million, depending on the degree of sophistication.  “Although controlled environment cabinets have been used for agricultural research for a long time, it has become costly to maintain them     and even more impossible to purchase new ones,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.

According to Prof Van Schalkwyk the cabinets were re-built by die UFS Electronics and Mechanisation Division.  Some of the mechanisms were also replaced and computerised.   

“The re-building and mechanisation of the cabinets were funded by the faculty and because the work was done by our own staff, an amount of about R1 million was saved.  The maintenance costs will now be lower as the cabinets are specifically tailor made for our research needs,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.

Where all monitoring was done manually in the past, the cabinets can now be controlled with a computer.  This programme was designed by Prof Koos Terblans from the UFS Department of Physics. 

According to Prof Van Schalkwyk the modernisation of the cabinets is part of the faculty’s larger strategy to get its instruments and apparatus up to world standards.  “With this project we have proved that we can find a solution for a problem ourselves and that there are ways to get old apparatus functional again,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.

Media release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Media Representative
Tel:   (051) 401-2584
Cell:  083 645 2454
E-mail:  loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za
26 July 2006

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