Religion In South Africa Research Articles

Along Edges. Religion in South Africa: Bushman, Christian, Buddhist

Along Edges. Religion in South Africa: Bushman, Christian, Buddhist

Religions of South Africa. David Chidester

<i>Religions of South Africa</i>. David Chidester

PEOPLE OF RELIGION ACTING TOGETHER

Whereas I ... have reason to apprehend that the safety of members of the public and their property and the maintenance of the public order will be seriously endangered by a gathering being organised, or purported to be organised, by the South African Chapter of the World Conference on Religion and Peace ... and since I deem it expedient for the public safety and the maintenance of the public order, I hereby prohibit the said gathering .... When a police order with the above wording was served on us on Friday, 13 September 1985, we were stunned. The meetings organized for that weekend were to be the culmination of both hard work and joyful co-operation during the first year of existence as an inter-faith organization. To mark this first year of working and growing together we decided to present the inaugural Desmond Tutu Peace Lecture and a Consultation on Women for Peace and Justice, simultaneous to our first annual general meeting. All of this was however thwarted by a power-yielding brigadier of police to whom goes the dubious honour of having banned a peace lecture! In an interview with an Afrikaans newspaper, he explained that the banning was imposed because of the presence of well-known left-minded and inciting people. At a private social gathering that evening, Mrs Leah Tutu made our day when she called us left but exciting! Early history The incident related above forms one chapter in the life of WCRP-SA. But to get the whole story, let us start at the very beginning. It was an international meeting which directly contributed to the establishment of an inter-faith group in South Africa, namely the Inter-Faith Colloquium on Apartheid, which was organised by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston and held in London in March 1984. Attended by leaders of all the major world religions from as far afield as India and Japan, this meeting unanimously condemned apartheid as sinful and inhuman. In its declaration, the colloquium expressed itself as follows: We met together from different religions of the world to respond from the viewpoint of faith to the fact of Apartheid. We were united in concern at the suffering it causes South Africa and the affront it presents to the moral conscience of humanity. Returning home, the three South African delegates were deeply aware of the need for the different religions in South Africa to form a united front in addressing -- as people of religion -- the evils of apartheid. So when Archbishop Desmond Tutu (then bishop) called together a meeting of religious leaders in April 1984 the scene was set for an historic coming together of people of religion. During that meeting it was decided to establish an inter-faith organization and to seek affiliation with the World Conference on Religion and Peace (WCRP). And so the South African Chapter of WCRP was born. Objectives The most immediate reason for the establishment of WCRP-SA was to share in the dismantling of apartheid. The silence of many religious people in South Africa had placed the credibility of all religions in jeopardy and by making itself available as a platform, WCRP-SA attempted to form a united front of religious people against an inhuman and oppressive system. …

Book Review: Religions of South Africa by David Chidester

Book Review: Religions of South Africa by David Chidester

David Chidester: Religions of South Africa. (Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices.) xvi, 286 pp. London and New York: Routledge, 1992. £13.99.

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Shots in the Streets: Violence and Religion in South Africa

Shots in the Streets: Violence and Religion in South Africa

Religions of South Africa

Religions of South Africa

Reviews

The World Development Report 1992. World Bank, Oxford University Press, New York, 1992. xii plus 308pp. including tables, graphs, notes, bibliography, index, and statistical appendices. Some Fell on Good Ground. An Account of the Queenstown Early Learning Centre by Michael Whisson. Occasional Paper 33, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University, Grahamstown 1992. 97pp. R33. Paperback. Foreign Military Intervention in Africa by Keith Somerville. Pinter Publishers, London and St. Martin's Press, New York, 1990. x plus 205pp. including maps, bibliography and index. Shots in the Streets: Violence and Religion in South Africa by David Chidester. Oxford University Press, 1991. 199pp. Index. South African Human Rights and Labour Law Yearbook edited by Michael Robertson, assisted by Chris Albertyn and Megan Seneque. Oxford University Press, Cape Town/Centre for Socio‐Legal Studies, Durban, 1990. vii plus 472pp. including appendices and index. Paperback. Coups and Army Rule in Africa: Motivations and Constraints by Samuel Decalo. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2nd Edition, 1990. xvii plus 366pp. Swaziland's International Relations and Foreign Policy: A Study of a Small African State in International Relations by Paul‐Henri Bischoff. Peter Lang Publishers, Bern, Frankfurt‐am‐Main, New York, Paris, 1990. v plus 548 pp. including tables and bibliography. Our Precious Metal: African Labour in South Africa's Gold Industry, 1970–1990 by Wilmot B. James. David Philip, Cape Town, 1992. ix plus 188pp. including maps, graphs, bibliography and index. Paperback. South Africa's Labour Empire: A History of Black Migrancy to the Gold Mines by Jonathan Crush, Alan Jeeves and David Yudelman. David Philip, Cape Town, 1991. xvi plus 266pp. including maps, tables, graphs, statistical appendix, bibliography and index. Paperback. South Africa's Foreign Relations in Transition 1985–1992: A Chronology compiled by Elna Schoeman, assisted by Chris Schoeman. South African Institute of International Affairs, Bibliographical Series no 24. Johannesburg, 1992. iii plus 666pp.

Shots in the Street: Violence and Religion in South Africa

Shots in the Street: Violence and Religion in South Africa

Religions of South Africa

Religions of South Africa

Shots in the Streets: Violence and Religion in South Africa. David Chidester

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsShots in the Streets: Violence and Religion in South Africa. David Chidester Robin PetersenRobin Petersen Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 72, Number 4Oct., 1992 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/489014 Copyright 1992 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Shots in the streets: violence and religion in South Africa

Shots in the streets: violence and religion in South Africa

Shots in the Streets: Violence and Religion in South Africa.

Shots in the Streets: Violence and Religion in South Africa.

Black and white civil religion as ideology

The author points out that the term ideology has changed to a negative connotation following the initially positive connotation it had. The negative connotation has been reinforced following its association with Marxism. In this article it is pointed out that ideology has increasingly gained the nature of civil religion because soteriological issues have come to be settled in terms of some immanent frame of reference. The author looks at White(Afrikaner) civil religion in South Africa as well as at Black civil religion. The conclusion is inevitably drawn that in both Black and White civil religion in South Africa the fundamental message of the Gospel has been identified with the suffering, oppression or nationalistic aspirations of some or other specific group. The author concludes by saying that to the extent that Afrikaners have done this in the process of history their experience of history ought to be subjected to a critical test in the light of Scripture. To the extent that Blacks are tempted to harness the fundamental message of the Gospel to their own cultural and national aspirations, the same test has to be applied.

Black Religion in South Africa

Black Religion in South Africa

The Sociology of Religion in South Africa

The Sociology of Religion in South Africa

An ethnographic description of Kavady, a Hindu ceremony in South Africa

SYNOPSIS In this paper I describe a sectional ceremony associated with Hindu religion in South Africa. Kavady was introduced by people of South Indian origin, and is typical of many sectional ceremonies in which a certain number of devotees become identified with a particular deity. The ceremony is backed by various myths and follows a typical Hindu ritual pattern. The deity worshipped symbolises the power of good over evil. The opening is marked, by the raising of a flag in his honour, and participants take a vow of purity for the period of 13 days to do his work. The main identification takes place on the 10th. day. The devotees are people who have recovered or are recovering from an illness or other misfortune and have made a vow to “carry kavady” for the deity Subrahmanya in thanksgiving. The identification of the privileged few is both psychological and physical and is translated as “trance” or “god‐possession” in which condition ordinary people manifest powers beyond those evident in profane existence: they possess powers of the god.