Dr. John Blevins

My colleague Steve de Gruchy,¹Steve taught in the School of Theology and Religion at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in South Africa. He drowned in 2010 during a rafting trip on the Mooi River.  Steve’s death while with his family on a holiday adventure is a tragedy; it is also a reflection of his passion to live exuberantly. Steve’s channeled this passion with a keen awareness that exuberance was not the same as extravagance and his deep, abiding commitment to a Biblically informed social justice grounded every part of his life and career.  His contributions to the field of religion and public health remain (though God only knows what else he would have produced) and he is missed. in 2009, wrote a theological paper entitled, “Dealing With Our Own Sewage.”²Steve de Gruchy, “Dealing With Our Own Sewage: Spirituality and Ethics in the Sustainability Agenda,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 134 (July 2009): 53-65. I periodically teach this paper in my classes in the study of religion and public health because it offers students in public health, religious studies, and theological studies (the students I teach) a glimpse of a rich theological reflection, drawing on insight from liberation theology, on a pressing ecological crisis—access to adequate, clean water.

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