The University of Western Cape Project on Ecclesiology and Ethics

Abstract

In its simplest terms, the tension between ecclesiology and ethics is between what the church is and what it does, between what it is supposed to be and what it is supposed to do, between what it believes about itself and how it acts. Allowing for a degree of abstraction, this tension is not unique to the church although it gains a certain theological depth given the tension between the theological and the sociological dimensions of the church. In a secularized form, this is the tension between movement and institutionalization, between the vision of an institution and what it actually accomplishes. This is true of the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in a quite remarkable way.