Race, religion and identity in South Africa: A case study of a charismatic congregation

Nationalism and Ethnic Politics

Volumn 12, Issue 3-4, 2006, Pages 555-576

  Ganiel, Gladys ^a  

^a TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN   (Ireland)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL IDENTITY; CULTURAL INFLUENCE; IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION; NATIONAL IDENTITY; POWER RELATIONS; RACE; RELIGION;

AFRICA; SOUTH AFRICA; SOUTHERN AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA;

EID: 33749000857     PISSN: 13537113     EISSN: 15572986     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13537110600882858     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. Neville Alexander, An Ordinary Country: Issues in the Transition from Apartheid to Democracy in South Africa (Scottsville: University of Natal Press, 2002), ch. 5;
2. Neville Alexander, "The Politics of Identity in Post-Apartheid South Africa," in Johan Muller, Nico Cloete, and Shireen Badat (eds.), Challenges of Globalisation: South African Debates with Manuel Castells (Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman, 2001);
3. S. Friedman, "South Africa and Brazil: National Identity and Globalization," in S. Pinheiro Guimaraes (ed.), South Africa and Brazil: Risks and Opportunities in the Turmoil of Globalisation (Rio de Janeiro: IPRI, 1996).
4. Desmond Tutu, The Rainbow People of God (New York: Doubleday, 1994).
5. William Mervin Gumede, Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2005);
6. Michael MacDonald, "The Political Economy of Identity Politics," in Rita Barnard and Grant Farred (eds.), After the Thrill is Gone: A Decade of Post-Apartheid South Africa, Special Issue, The South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 103 (2004) pp. 629-56.
7. There is vast debate in the social science literature about identity. For a useful summary of the contemporary debate and prevailing conceptual confusion, see Rawi Abdelal, Yoshiko M. Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston, and Rose McDermott, "Identity as a Variable," Weatherhead Initiative in International Affairs, Harvard University, http://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/misc/initiative/identity/papers/index.htm. The research presented here makes use of a social constructivist framework.
8. See Peter Burger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (London: Penguin, 1966).
9. Adrian Guelke, Rethinking the Rise and Fall of Apartheid (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004);
10. Leonard Thompson, A History of South Africa, 3rd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000);
11. Donald Akenson, God's People: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel and Ulster (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992);
12. William H. Worger and Nancy L. Clark, South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid (Longman, 2004).
13. "Coloured" was a racial category used to classify people of "mixed race" descent.
14. Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001);
15. Thomas H. Eriksen, "Ethnicity, Race, Class and Nation," in John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (eds.), Ethnicity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 28-31.
16. Alexander, p. 81.
17. In a draft version of this article, I used the term "multiracial," which provoked objections from participants in the research and academic commentators. Throughout my research, there was no clear consensus as to which term the participants from the congregation, or South Africans in general, preferred. For instance, the congregation's website uses all three terms. A participant offered this feedback: I have noticed you have preferred to use the term "multiracialism" deliberately instead of non-racialism. Needless to say that I find this offensive⋯ For me, this seeks to emphasize how distinct one's race is amongst others. This was a similar tactic which was used by the oppressive white regime during the old apartheid era. They would, by crook and other means, bus in a load of black people into white areas or establishments to show a picture of a "happy South Africa" whilst our black people suffered silently in pain.... I speak as a South African with black experience. Non-racialism is a political state ofmind where, in my position in Christ, race is not emphasized but a commitment to fighting racism in all of its shape and size (email communication, 16 Feb. 2006).
18. Emerson and Smith, p. 7.
19. The "covenantal" aspects of Afrikaner identity derived from a particular interpretation of Calvinist theology. Akenson, God's People; Liz Fawcett, Religion, Ethnicity and Social Change (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000);
20. John de Gruchy and Charles Villa-Vicencio (eds.), Apartheid is Heresy (Cape Town: David Philip, 1983);
21. Roy Wallis and Steve Bruce, Sociological Theory, Religion and Collective Action (Belfast: Queen's University, 1986).
22. Mark Amstutz, The Healing of Nations: The Promise and Limits of Political Forgiveness (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005);
23. Audrey R. Chapman and Bernard Spong, Religion and Reconciliation in South Africa (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2003);
24. John de Gruchy with Steve de Gruchy, The Church Struggle in South Africa, 25th Anniversary Edition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005).
25. Stephen Ellis and Gerrie Ter Haar, Worlds of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa (Wits University Press, 2004);
26. Paul Gifford, African Christianity: Its Public Role (London: Hurst, 1998);
27. Jurgens Hendriks and Johannes Erasmus, "Interpreting the New Religious Landscape in Post-Apartheid South Africa," Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, Vol. 109 (2001), pp. 41-65;
28. Renier A. Koegelenberg, "Social Development Partnerships Between Religious Communities and the State: Perspectives from the National Religious Association for Social Development," Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, Vol. 110 (2001), pp. 97-109.
29. The terms "Pentecostal" and "charismatic" are contested, and scholars have drawn a number of distinctions between them. Pentecostalism is often used to identify with the revival associated with Azusa Street, California, around the turn of the 20th century; whilst charismatic Christianity is often used to identify with revivals that have taken place in the last 40 years or so. Margaret Poloma uses the term Pentecostal/charismatic to emphasize the continuities and cross-fertilization of these forms of Christianity, and that is the convention I use here. Poloma, Main Street Mystics (New York: Altamira, 2003); see also Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004);
30. Allan Anderson and Walter J. Hollenweger (eds.), Pentecostals After a Century: Global Perspectives on a Movement in Transition (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999).
31. Allan Anderson, "New African Initiated Pentecostalism and Charismatics in South Africa," Journal of Religion in Africa, Vol. 35 (2005), pp. 66-92.
32. David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002);
33. David Martin, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990);
34. David Stoll, Is Latin America Turning Protestant? The Politics of Evangelical Growth (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990).
35. Robert C. Garner, "Religion as a Source of Social Change in the New South Africa," Journal of Religion in Africa, Vol. 30 (2000), pp. 310-43;
36. David Maxwell, "The Durawall of Faith: Pentecostal Spirituality in Neo-Liberal Zimbabwe," Journal of Religion in Africa, Vol. 35 (2005), pp. 4-32;
37. David Maxwell, "Delivered from the Spirit of Poverty? Pentecostalism, Prosperity and Modernity in Zimbabwe," Journal of Religion in Africa, Vol. 28 (1998), pp. 350-73.
38. Gifford, 1998.
39. Anderson, 2004, 2005; Gifford, 1998;
40. Garner, 2000, Anthony Balcomb, "From Apartheid to the New Dispensation: Evangelicals and the Democratization of South Africa," Journal of Religion in Africa, Vol. 34 (2004), pp. 5-38.
41. Anderson, 2005, pp. 87.
42. Balcomb, 2004.
43. Nancy Ammerman, Congregation and Community (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001);
44. Nancy Ammerman, Jackson Carroll, Carl Dudley, and William McKinney (eds.), Studying Congregations: A New Handbook (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998)
45. Martin E. Marty with Jonathan Moore, Politics, Religion and the Common Good: Advancing a Distinctly American Conversation About Religion's Role in Our Shared Life (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000).
46. Rogers Brubaker, "Ethnicity without Groups," Archives Europeennes de Sociologies, Vol. 42 (2002), pp. 163-89;
47. Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd, "The roots of intense ethnic conflict may not themselves be ethnic: Categories, communities, and path dependence," Archives Europeennes de Sociologies, Vol. 45(2) (2004), pp. 209-32;
48. Jennifer Todd, "Social Transformation, Collective Categories and Identity Change," Theory and Society, Vol. 34(4) (2005), pp. 429-63.
49. http://www.jubilee.org.za.
50. The congregation was not associated with John Wimber's Vineyard movement, which originated in California.
51. New Frontiers, which has approaching 500 churches worldwide, is not a denomination in the conventional sense of having institutionalized structures or a headquarters, but there is much cooperation amongst congregations. See http://www.newfrontiers.xtn.org.
52. Ammerman et al., p. 15.
53. http://www.jubilee.org.za, accessed 21 Jan. 2006.
54. Simon Pettit, "What Answer Does the Church Have for Racism?" (http://www.jubilee.org.za/multiculture.php, accessed 18 Jan. 2006, no date).
55. The participant's use of "multipeople" here is interesting. No other interviewees used this term. Participants tended to slip back and forth between the terms "multiracial," "multicultural" or "non-racial."
56. The empirical categories are based on narrative analysis of the interview transcripts. I conceived of the categories as fluid and existing in the "real world" rather than as abstract "ideal" types. By listening to the stories of the people who actually inhabit the categories, I aimed to deepen my understanding of the cognitive, normative and practical content of these categories as understood by the participants. In contrast to abstract and often restrictive ideal types, empirical types have the advantage of existing as "real types used by real people." John D. Brewer and Gareth Higgins, Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland: The Mote and the Beam (London: Macmillan Press, 1998), p. 132.
57. I limited the data presented in this table to people who regularly attend Jubilee and who once regularly attended Jubilee and have left. The data from six interviewees was omitted.
58. http://www.restitution.org.za.
59. Stephen van Rhyn and Dave Adams, "An Example of a Local Church Response" (http://www.restitution.org.za/localchurchresponse.htm, accessed 01 Sept. 2005).
60. Some of Jubilee's projects, such as the Pregnancy Help Centre and Beauty for Ashes, are formally evaluated and monitored. This is especially so if the projects partner with other groups or receive outside funding. Gladys Ganiel is Lecturer in Reconciliation Studies at the Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin. She was a recipient of the Royal Irish Academy's Third Sector Research Programme Award for doctoral studies, which she completed in politics at University College Dublin (2005). She has been a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Cape Town.