Moral Majority redivivus

James Tengatenga

doi:10.17570/stj.2019.v5n3.a08

Abstract

John de Gruchy’s 1995 work Christianity and Democracy: Theology for a Just World Order was published at a heady time, not only in society but in the ecumenical churches, who were prominent as “midwives of democracy.” While the changes in Eastern Europe and South Africa were in the foreground, the book also covered emerging movements for democracy in sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa. Sadly, De Gruchy’s optimism was not borne out in the decades that followed. Partly, this was due to internal problems within the movements themselves; partly, it was a transformation in the identity of Christianity away from the role of an enabling midwife to that theocratic master. A new kind of Christian politics asserted itself, modelled on and enabled by conservative Christianity in the United States. Moreover, it asserted itself in rivalry to a new “other”: fundamentalist Islam, which succeeded communism as America’s global enemy. This article traces the emergence of this new assertive religious politics, criticizing both its theologically problematic “Christian nationalism” and its lack of concern for sustaining the human rights gains of the early 1990s.

Highlights

The early-to-mid 1990s was a time of great optimism in sub-Saharan Africa
John de Gruchy’s 1995 work Christianity and Democracy: Theology for a Just World Order was published at a heady time, in society but in the ecumenical churches, who were prominent as “midwives of democracy.”
While occasioned by optimism about democratic transformation in the 1990s, there is a realist current running through Christianity and Democracy.[40]

Summary

Introduction

The early-to-mid 1990s was a time of great optimism in sub-Saharan Africa. Besides the dramatic end of apartheid in South Africa, there was Tengatenga STJ 2019, Vol 5, No 3, 165–182 a new wave of democratization sweeping across the region. A “second liberation” of Africa was in the offing as the first generation of post-colonial governments, many of which had begun in hope but fell into single-party dictatorships of various kinds, began to fall This “second liberation” was itself part of a “third wave of democratization” sweeping the world – a third wave that many observers saw beginning in Mozambique in 1974 but energized by the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989.1 U.S President George HW Bush coined the phrase, “a new world order” to speak both of the challenges and possibilities ahead. The book featured a chapter on the recent movements in sub-Saharan Africa, especially the role of the ecumenical churches as “midwives of democracy.”. While their histories were entangled with colonialism, these churches were often the best organized and highest profile members of civil society. Christian Rightists may pose as grave a threat to democracy in sub-Saharan Africa as the one mainline and ecumenical churches opposed a quarter-century ago

Fundamentalism in sub-Saharan Africa

A Moral Majority redivivus

12 Quoted in “God and America

Prophetic theologies

18 See “Faith Communities and Apartheid

Conclusion