Saturday 21 August: Bains Game Lodge, Bloemfontein

This is work. Honest.

But I confess it's as much pleasure as business ever gets. I arrived safely in Bloemfontein this afternoon and am now settled in the conference accommodation at the Bains Game Lodge (www.bainsgamelodge.co.za -- take a look, you know you’re curious). So here I am, sitting in the late afternoon sunshine under a clear blue sky beside an open air pool, with giraffes and zebras and various other game just out of sight.

The conference begins tomorrow. This is the 10th International Calvin Congress. It meets every four years and brings together scholars with an interest in either the theology of the French reformer, or the history of his time, to review research progress in the interval. A long time ago (it really does begin to feel like a long time), this is the area in which I completed my doctorate – but I’ve had difficulty staying up to date with the subject and I’m expecting to do a lot of catching up in the next six days.

Calvin was born in Noyon, France, in 1509; he left that country as a religious exile in the early 1530s and spent most of the rest of his life acting as a sort of Chief Pastor and City Theologian in Geneva, where he died in 1509. He was probably the first ‘protestant’ (though he would not have known the word) to articulate a coherent theological account of the Christian Faith for non- (or anti-!) Papal churches. For various reasons (most having to do, in my view, with developments in later ‘Calvinism’), he has unfairly become a bigoted and tyrannical figure in the popular imagination. In fact his writings are passionately rooted in the grace of God, giving them (especially if you make allowances for the bloody age in which he lived) an extraordinarily world-affirming and life-affirming flavour. I’ll be attempting to drip-feed into this blog some of the gems in Calvin’s thought over the next week or so.

The journey on from Dubai was pretty uneventful. I slept some of it, or snoozed anyway in half hour bursts. We left at 4.40am local time (1.40am UK time) and arrived in Johannesburg at 10.00am local time (9.00am local time). The flight path basically took us down the east coast of Africa… over the Gulf States and then Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania, before moving inland over Zimbabwe. We flew, so the computer consoles at our seats told us, right over Dar es Salaam, and Harare, among other places.

I had a three hour stopover in Jo’burg – during which I think I was probably conned (though not too expensively), over some excess baggage charges. A porter had attached himself assiduously to me in baggage reclaim, and (genuinely helpfully) had guided me through the labyrinthine halls to the right check-in for my onward flight to Bloemfontein. But there he’d had a conspiratorial chat with the check-in staff, and had apologetically explained that my bags were too heavy and that she wanted to charge me an excess fee. I duly handed over a credit card, which was swiped (I mean, through a card reader; I don’t mean it was nicked!). I asked what the charges would be and he (not she) explained that it would be one figure if applied to the card and a second figure if paid in cash. Like a lemon, I opted for the lower figure and paid cash. It was only as I walked away that I realised that i) I had no receipt; ii) I had no proof that any charge was due; and iii) I may yet discover that I paid both by credit card and in cash. Not to worry. Haviing already had a glimpse from the plane of the poverty in which many black South Africans are still living – the townships are visible from the air – it’s hard to escape a feeling that a little appropriate redistribution of the worlds wealth was taking place, that’s all.

The good people of the University of the Free State met me on arrival, and delivered me to the Bains Game Lodge, where I arrived soon after Pakistan had sealed their Test victory over England – and in time to follow the afternoons Premier League football. The Chelsea-Wigan game (6-0) was on terrestrial TV here, when it will not have been in England.

This trip is work, though, I repeat – honest.