group, person or institution, including the idea of absolute, objective truth. Both offer alternative perspectives, and have serious implications for how people speak about God and respond to social challenges. Both may (and probably will) influence the moral choices of believing communities in years to come in significant ways (Mouton 2006:67-76).The first is a story with some observations from South Africa. The radical processes of transformation taking place in South Africa since 1994, with numerous societal shifts, have left no person or institution untouched - including the church and theological education. In spite of significant shifts away from simplistic, one-sided interpretations of the bible, relations among various forms of theology/faith and socio-economic realities in South Africa remain extremely complex. As far as Reformed Theology in general is concerned, "(i)t cannot be denied that, both within the Reformed communities and from the perspective of outsiders, apartheid has given the Reformed tradition, and even Christianity itself, a bad reputation in South Africa and has caused a lack of credibility and even self-confidence" (Smit 2003:238). In the process many people - black people and women in particular - feel disillusioned and deceived by the many ways in which scripture was used to justify and solidify racial, gender and other forms of apartheid within and among people, even between them and God. It has indeed become an enormous challenge for such people to be surprised (again) by the scripture's liberative and healing power.Although the present moment in South Africa bears the promise of a new, more accountable hermeneutic awareness, ironically it often seems to strengthen the deeply entrenched sense of alienation among and within people. A potentially constructive yet dangerous consequence of a secular society and postmodern thinking, for example, is that it leads to a breakdown of the hegemony of truth claims.3 Instead of celebrating the richness of plurality and complementarity, of sharing one another's identities and stories of joy and pain (which I believe is what postmodern thinking is about), the postmodern attitude for many becomes synonymous with a certain disintegration, with a loss of orientation and cohesion, the loss of a collective moral identity, memory and destination, and consequently, the loss of a corresponding (corporate) ethos of dignity and respect for life, of responsibility and involvement, with a general attitude of "who cares?". For many this means a loss of trust in all forms of leadership - including church leadership. Due to such detached and disinterested attitudes, extreme postmodernist thinking necessarily fails to cultivate a sustainable agenda for transformation.From a rhetorical perspective, such a profound sense of loss pertains to all three the basic elements of communication (sender-message-receivers), to which Aristotle referred as ethos, logos and pathos. In South Africa many people - including Christians - have lost trust in the ethos, integrity, truthfulness and authority of their (pastoral) leaders, as well as the logos, content, authority and intention of their (spoken and non-verbal) words, even the truthfulness of the bible itself. Consequently, the pathos of their audiences, the rhetorical effect of their words and gestures in the lives of people, is often