Christian nationalism in post-apartheid South Africa: from the white broederbond to the transracial Neo/Pentecostals

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article sheds light on two extremely important processes of the rise of Christian Nationalism and Christian New Right ideology that are currently underway in post-apartheid South Africa and situates these processes in relation to other regions of the world. In particular, the article calls attention to a creeping religious orientation in post-apartheid South Africa towards Christian Nationalism by insisting on the ideological centrality of Christianity and argues that to fully understand how Christian Nationalism is taking root in South Africa, we have to frame it through the language of the New Religious Right, and specifically its instantiation in Neo/Pentecostalism. In making its argument, the article first makes the definitional link between Christian Nationalism and the New Religious Right and; second, clarifies the explicit ways to interpret electoral and civil liberties spaces as exemplifying the conservative encroachment of democratic South Africa by a specifically transracial form of Neo/Pentecostalism.