Intersecting culture, values and transformation in shaping an integrated ethnic identity within a diastratically variated society: Employing South Africa as a case study

Jennifer Slater

doi:10.4102/ve.v37i1.1598

Abstract

This article intersects various human diversities through the lens of Christian beliefs and practices as presented in Galatians 3:28. It sets out to identify some of the diastratic diverse factors that influence and shape the distinct socio-economic and cultural environments of the South African arrangement. The amalgam of Christian beliefs, together with cross-cultural practices and philosophical configurations, constitutes a wide range of worldviews that counter the formation of national unity and identity. By examining issues such as diversity and specifically diastratic diversity, as well as inclusiveness as the elixir to bring about national unity, it offers ways of embracing egalitarian ethics to bring about an integrated national identity. This article focuses attention on how value-transformation can be instrumental in the formation of national identity. As the demographics in South Africa are still dualistically designed, boundaries such as male and female, black or white, rich and poor, local or foreign, indigenous and alien, the study takes cognisance of these differences so as to bring all people into the equation of being human by accommodating multiple shades of skin colours, gender, social, cultural and ethnic variations into a diastratic unity. The article draws on how the composition of the Jesus Movement and early Christians, when St Paul, specifically in Galatians 3:28 dealt with diastratic diversity while establishing a Christian identity in antiquity.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The approach to the article is multidisciplinary in the sense that it puts the contextual socio-economic and cultural South African problem of diastratic diversity under the searchlight of biblical, theological, ethical, sociological and constitutional specialities. It scrutinises the contemporary societal disorder of antagonism in the light of the early Christian values of inclusiveness and respect for human dignity so as to develop a sense of national cohesiveness that transcends differences and division. It proposes the cultivation of an inclusive diversity consciousness as a pastoral realisation that diversity is positive and necessary for healthy national building.

Highlights

Despite the fact that much credit had been given to the most progressive constitution that South Africa had devised and the celebration of a Bill of Rights, it can be argued that since the provision and implementation of human rights, new visible and invisible prejudices and divisions have emerged in post-apartheid South African society
This article explores the concept diastratic diversity in the post-apartheid South Africa and draws lessons from the Jesus Movement, Christianity in antiquity, and how they dealt with diastratic diversity
Despite the fact that inclusiveness and equality are the underlying guiding principles of building the new South African society, exclusivity and inequality still remain very harsh realities. This is not confined to tensions between black and white, rich and poor; it is a harsh reality between black and black, between local and foreigner, between male and female, rich and poor

Summary

Introduction

Despite the fact that much credit had been given to the most progressive constitution that South Africa had devised and the celebration of a Bill of Rights, it can be argued that since the provision and implementation of human rights, new visible and invisible prejudices and divisions have emerged in post-apartheid South African society. The article discerns how the very early Christians, members of the Jesus Movement, under the spiritual formation of St Paul used the characteristic of inclusiveness towards creating diastratic unity in a diastratic divergent society where cultural, racial, gender and social alterity formed part of the order of the day.

Results

Conclusion