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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.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 I would like to thank the Special Issue editor, John Pazdziora for the invitation to submit this article, as well as the peer reviewers and editors of the IJSCC for their invaluable insight in the development of this article. Special thanks to Gillian Hart who read the first drafts of the article with a keen eye and provided helpful insights and conversations. I would also like to thank colleagues at the UCSIA Summer School (Antwerp) and at the Political Theology Network Conference (Philadelphia) for invaluable conversations about parts of the arguments of the article. In addition, I would like to thank The Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA), University of Ghana, for the fellowship that provided me with the space to focus on research and writing in 2022. Last, thanks to Elina Hankela for her support, always.
2 Gillian Hart, ‘Why Did It Take so Long? Trump-Bannonism in a Global Conjunctural Frame’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 102, no. 3 (2020): 239–66; Gillian Hart, ‘Book Review of Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States’, Contemporary Sociology 50, no.6 (2021a): 525–6; Gillian Hart, ‘Decoding “the base”: white evangelicals or Christian nationalists?’ Alternatives, Studies in Political Economy 102, no. 1 (2021b): 61–76.
3 Dhammamegha Annie Leatt, The State of Secularism: Religion, Tradition and Democracy in South Africa (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2017), 187.
4 Enyinna S. Nwauche, ‘To Be Secular and Neutral: The Challenge of Religion in South Africa’, in Religion in the Era of Postsecularism, ed. Uchenna Okeja (London: Routledge, 2019), 64.
5 Ibid.
6 Hart, ‘Decoding the base,’ 62.
7 Mookgo. S. Kgatle, ‘The Unusual Practices within Some Neo-Pentecostal Churches in South Africa: Reflections and Recommendations’, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 73, no. 3 (2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v73i3.4656; Kwabena J. Asamoah-Gyadu, African Charismatics: Current Developments Within Independent Indigenous Pentecostalism in Ghana (Leiden: Brill, 2005).
8 Asamoah-Gyadu, African Charismatics, 26.
9 Siphiwe I. Dube, ‘The New Religious Political Right in Neo-Apartheid South Africa’, Religion & Theology 28 (2021): 158; Michael W. Apple, ‘Ideology, Equality, and the New Right’, Phenomenology + Pedagogy 8 (1990): 293–314; Peter Kallaway, ‘Privatization as an Aspect of the Educational Politics of the New Right: Critical Signposts for Understanding Shifts in Educational Policy in South Africa during the Eighties?’ British Journal of Educational Studies 37, no. 3 (1989) : 253–78; Harvey J. Kaye, ‘The Use and Abuse of the Past: The New Right and the Crisis of History’, Socialist Register, Conservatism in Britain and America. Rhetoric and Reality 23 (1987): 332–64.
10 Kallaway, Privatisation as an Aspect, 256.
11 Sara Diamond, Not By Politics Alone: The Enduring Influence of the Christian Right (New York & London: The Guilford Press, 1998), 7.
12 Ibid.
13 Apple, Ideology, 299.
14 Ibid., 298.
15 Jeffrey Marishane, ‘Prayer, Profit and Power: US Religious Right and Foreign Policy’, Review of African Political Economy 18, no. 52 (1991): 86.
16 Apple, Ideology, 300.
17 Marishane, Prayer, Profit and Power, 82.
18 Diamond, Not By Politics Alone, 7.
19 Sara Diamond, Roads to dominion: Right-wing movements and political power in the United States (New York & London: Guilford Press, 1995), 6.
20 M. Frahm-Arp, ‘The Political Rhetoric in Sermons and Select Social Media in Three Pentecostal Charismatic Evangelical Churches Leading up to the 2014 South African Election’, Journal for the Study of Religion 28, no. 1 (2015): 126.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., 117.
23 Tiffany K. Mugo, ‘Evangelicals in South Africa are “Broadcasting Hate Masked as Morality”’, Open Democracy, 2018, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/evangelicals-south-africa-broadcasting-hate-masked-as-morality/ (accessed January, 2020).
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 B. Fogel, ‘South Africa is Ripe for Right-wing Populist Movements’, The Mail & Guardian, May 1, 2019, https://mg.co.za/article/2019-05-01-00-south-africa-is-ripe-for-right-wing-populist-movements/ (accessed November, 2019).
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 4.
31 Amanda Tyler, ‘Introduction in Christian Nationalism and the 6 January 2021 Insurrection’, Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, 2022, https://bjconline.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Christian_Nationalism_and_the_Jan6_Insurrection-2-9-22.pdf, (accessed July 12, 2022), n.p.
32 Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006).
33 Goldberg, Kingdom Coming, 5–6.
34 Hart, ‘Decoding “the base”’; Hart, ‘Book Review of Taking America’.
35 Siphiwe I. Dube, ‘The New Religious Political Right in Neo-Apartheid South Africa’, Religion and Theology 28, no. 3–4 (2021): 153–78.
36 Hart, ‘Decoding the base’, 63.
37 Hart, ‘Decoding the base’, 63.
38 Dan O’Meara, ‘Analysing Afrikaner Nationalism: The “Christian-National” Assault on White Trade Unionism in South Africa, 1934–1948’, African Affairs 77, no. 306 (1978): 52.
39 Saul Dubow in Charles Bloomberg, Christian Nationalism and the Rise of the Afrikaner Broederbond in South Africa, ed. Saul Dubow (London: Macmillan, 1990), xv.
40 Bloomberg, Christian Nationalism, xxii.
41 Ibid.
42 Hart, ‘Decoding the base’, 62.
43 Bloomberg, Christian Nationalism, xxiii.
44 Bloomberg, Christian Nationalism, 1.
45 Bloomberg, Christian Nationalism, 1.
46 Bloomberg, Christian Nationalism, 1.
47 See, for example: Samuel L. Perry and Andrew L. Whitehead, ‘Christian nationalism and white racial boundaries: Examining whites’ opposition to interracial marriage’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 38, no. 10 (2015): 1671–89; Samuel L. Perry and Andrew L. Whitehead, ‘Christian nationalism, racial separatism, and family formation: Attitudes toward transracial adoption as a test case’, Race and Social Problems 7, no. 2 (2015): 123–34; Ramsey Dahab and Marisa Omori, ‘Homegrown foreigners: how Christian nationalism and nativist attitudes impact Muslim civil liberties’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 42, no. 10 (2019): 1727–46. Samuel L. Perry, Ryon J. Cobb, Andrew L. Whitehead, and Joshua B. Grubbs, ‘Divided by faith (in Christian America): Christian nationalism, race, and divergent perceptions of racial injustice’, Social Forces soab134 (2021): 1–30, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soab134; Samuel L. Perry, Andrew L. Whitehead, and Joshua B. Grubbs, ‘Prejudice and pandemic in the promised land: how white Christian nationalism shapes Americans’ racist and xenophobic views of COVID-19’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 44, no. 5 (2021): 759–72; Samuel L. Perry, Andrew L. Whitehead, and Joshua B. Grubbs, ‘“I Don’t Want Everybody to Vote”: Christian Nationalism and Restricting Voter Access in the United States’, Sociological Forum 37, no. 1 (2022): 4–26.
48 Centre for Development and Enterprise, Under the Radar: Pentecostalism in South Africa and its Potential Social and Economic Role, 2008, https://www.cde.org.za/under-the-radar-pentecostalism-in-south-africa-and-its-potential-social-and-economic-role/ (accessed January, 2019), 19.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid.
51 Frahm-Arp, ‘The Political Rhetoric’, 135.
52 Frahm-Arp, ‘The Political Rhetoric’, 116.
53 Kuperus, Tracy, ‘The Political Role and Democratic Contribution of Churches in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, Journal of Church and State 53, no. 2 (2011): 278–306; Kelebogile Thomas Resane, ‘“And they shall make you eat grass like oxen” (Daniel 4: 24): Reflections on Recent Practices in Some New Charismatic Churches’, Pharos Journal of Theology 98, no. 1 (2017): 1–17.
54 CDE, Under the Radar, 19.
55 Dean C. Curry, ‘Religion and the New South Africa’, First Things, October, 1990, https://www.firstthings.com/article/1990/10/religion-and-the-new-south-africa; Ove Gustafsson, ‘A New Religious Political Right’, in Religion and Politics in Southern Africa, eds. Carl Fredrik Hallencreutz and Mai Palmberg (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1991), 109–22.
56 Saul Dubow, ‘Afrikaner nationalism, apartheid and the conceptualization of “race”’, The Journal of African History 33, no. 2 (1992): 224.
57 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
61 https://familypolicyinstitute.com/pcsa/; https://www.facebook.com/csse.smartchoices; formerly on this now defunct page: https://familypolicyinstitute.com/common-sense-sexuality-education/; for general literature on common-sense and Conservatism see, for example: Fulvio Cammarano, ‘To Save England from Decline’: The National Party of Common Sense: British Conservatism and the Challenge of Democracy (1885–1892) (Lanham, MD & Oxford: University Press of America, 2001); Rose Capdevila and Jane Callaghan, ‘“It’s not racist. It’s common sense”: A critical analysis of political discourse around asylum and immigration in the UK’, Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 18, no. 1 (2008): 1–16; Antii Lepistö, The Rise of Common-Sense Conservatism: The American Right and the Reinvention of the Scottish Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021).
64 https://familypolicyinstitute.com/take-action/; https://www.facebook.com/SAMustRise/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid.
67 Terry Tastard, ‘Christianity & Crisis in South Africa’, Providence, February, 2017, https://providencemag.com/2017/02/christianity-crisis-in-south-africa-today/ (accessed January, 2019).
68 Ibid.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid
71 Ibid.
73 Ibid.
74 Ivor Chipkin, ‘State of the Nation: The New Right in South Africa’, The Daily Maverick, February 10, 2017, https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2017-02-10-state-of-the-nation-the-new-right-in-south-africa/ (accessed December, 2019).
75 Ibid.
76 Dube, ‘The New Religious Political Right’, 159, 167.
77 Claude Lefort, The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism (Cambridge, MA & London: MIT Press, 1986); Claude Lefort, Democracy and Political Theory (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1988).
78 For a deeper examination of this phenomenon in contemporary South Africa see, for example, Haley McEwan, ‘South African radical-right groups are mobilising against anti-LGBTQI+ campaigns’, The Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR), 2021, https://www.radicalrightanalysis.com/2021/07/09/south-african-radical-right-groups-are-mobilising-against-anti-lgbtiq-campaigns/.
79 Goldberg, Kingdom Coming, 6.
81 Andile Nomabhunga, ‘Patriotic Front Will Bring Back God in Schools Once They Win November Elections’, The Informer, October 7, 2021. https://informer.africa/politics/patriotic-front-will-bring-back-god-in-schools-once-they-win-november-elections/.
82 Statistics South Africa, General Household Survey 2015, 2016, https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0318/P03182015.pdf (accessed July 2, 2021). Also, for an in-depth discussion of how what values matter for voters and how these are informed particularly by a religious orientation in the context of South African local elections of 2021 see, Siphiwe I. Dube, ‘A Religiously Motivated Electorate in South Africa?’ The Midpoint Paper Series N°8. Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, 2021, https://www.kas.de/en/web/suedafrika/single-title/-/content/a-religiously-motivated-electorate-in-south-africa.
83 Rebecca Davis, ‘God and Elections: Religion and Politics Meet Behind – and in Front of – the Pulpits this Easter’, Daily Maverick, April 23, 2019, https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-04-23-god-and-elections-religion-and-politics-meet-behind-and-in-front-of-the-pulpits-this-easter/.
84 Ibid.
85 Ibid.
86 Ibid.
87 African Transformation Movement (ATM), Citation2019, https://www.atmovement.org/.
88 African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), Citation2019, https://www.acdp.org.za/.
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid.
91 Ibid.
92 On the ongoing economic crunch see: Ann Bernstein, ‘Forget the Fiscal Cliff – Try Economic Swamp’, BizNews, September 3, 2019, https://www.biznews.com/thought-leaders/2019/09/03/bernstein-fiscal-cliff-economic-swamp; Richard William Johnson, How Long Will South Africa Survive? The Looming Crisis (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2015); Moeletsi Mbeki, Jannie Rossouw, Fanie Joubert and Adèle Breytenbach, ‘South Africa’s Fiscal Cliff Barometer’, New Agenda: South African Journal of Social and Economic Policy 70 (2018): 29–33; South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), The Rise of the New Right: South Africa’s Road to 2024, 2016, https://irr.org.za/reports/occasional-reports/the-rise-of-the-new-right-south-africas-road-to-2024.
93 Electoral Commission of South Africa, ‘Electoral Commission welcomes the signing of the Electoral Amendment Bill into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa’, 2023, https://www.elections.org.za/content/About-Us/News/Electoral-Commission-welcomes-the-signing-of-the-Electoral-Amendment-Bill-into-law-by-President-Cyril-Ramaphosa/.
94 William Gumede, ‘OLICY BRIEF 35: SOUTH AFRICA NEEDS ELECTORAL SYSTEM OVERHAUL’, Democracy Works Foundation, 2020, https://democracyworks.org.za/south-africa-needs-electoral-system-overhaul/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=south-africa-needs-electoral-system-overhaul.
95 Ibid.
97 Ibid.
98 Bloomberg, Christian Nationalism, xxii.
99 Haley McEwan, ‘South African radical-Right groups are mobilising against anti-LGBTIQ+ campaigns’, openDemoracy, 2021, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/countering-radical-right/south-african-radical-right-groups-are-mobilising-against-anti-lgbtiq-campaigns/.
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Siphiwe Dube
Siphiwe Dube is a Senior Lecturer and former Head in the Department of Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He is an author of numerous interdisciplinary articles and chapters (and also supervises) on a range of topics covering African politics and religion, feminisms, post-colonial literature, race, religion and masculinities, religion and identity politics, religion and popular culture, and transitional justice. His current two projects focus on African Political Theology (of which the IASH Fellowship is a part) and the Religious New Right in post-apartheid South Africa.