Bonding in Worship
A Ritual Lens on Social Capital in African Independent Churches in South Africa
edited by I. Swart, M. Barnard, C. Wepener and G. ter Haar
In Sub-Saharan Africa Christianity is experiencing unprecedented growth and many people worship on a regular basis. Simultaneously, many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa experience challenges such as poverty and inequality. Given this reality and these challenges, a group of international scholars investigated the ritual practices of one of the fastest growing traditions, namely African Independent Churches, over a period of more than four years. The research team set out to explore the role of religious rituals in social capital formation and social development at community level in an African Independent Church in South Africa. This book is the final, comprehensive and synthesizing product in which the international and interdisciplinary team of scholars from theology, religion and development present their findings.
In Sub-Saharan Africa Christianity is experiencing unprecedented growth and many people worship on a regular basis. Simultaneously, many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa experience challenges such as poverty and inequality. Given this reality and these challenges, a group of international scholars investigated the ritual practices of one of the fastest growing traditions, namely African Independent Churches, over a period of more than four years. The research team set out to explore the role of religious rituals in social capital formation and social development at community level in an African Independent Church in South Africa. This book is the final, comprehensive and synthesising product in which the international and interdisciplinary team of scholars from theology, religion and development present their findings. The book is structured into three parts that reflects its theoretical, empirical and evaluative dimensions. In part I, theoretical perspectives are offered on the main conceptual apparatus of the book and the authors’ own understanding of the nexus between the different concepts. In part II, the theoretical arguments of the book are further worked out by means of eight explorations comprising of qualitative field work research in the religious milieus of African Independent worshippers in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, South Africa. In part III, a final set of chapters, by reflecting on the case studies in part II, offer wider appreciations and applications of the role religious ritual in social capital formation. This includes reflections on the African notion of ubuntu and the challenges that the ritual lens offer to policy makers in South African society, but also African society and the global South more generally speaking when seeking answers to the problem of development.
- Edited by M Barnard
- Edited by I Swart
- Edited by G ter Haar
- Edited by C Wepener
Other Titles in this Series
From Fast to Feast
A Ritual-Liturgical Exploration of Reconciliation in South African Cultural Contexts
Volume 19
La liturgie des Heures par tous les baptisés
L'expérience quotidienne du mystère pascal
Volume 23
The Presanctified Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite
A Comparative Analysis of its Origins, Evolution, and Structural Components
Volume 21
Doing Ritual Criticism in a Network Society
Online and Offline Explorations into Pilgrimage and Sacred Place
Volume 29
Rituals in Abundance
Critical Reflections on the Place, Form and Identity of Christian Ritual in our Culture
Volume 17
Friedlicher Kreuzzug und fromme Pilger
Liturgiehistorische Studien zur Heilig-Land-Wallfahrt im Spiegel deutschsprachiger Pilgerberichte des späten 19. Jahrhunderts
Volume 27
Worship in the Network Culture
Liturgical Ritual Studies. Fields and Methods, Concepts and Metaphors
Volume 28
The Embodied Space of Worship
Liturgical Signs and Liturgical Bodies in Contemporary Finnish Orthodox Lay Worship
Volume 33
Patterns and Persons
A Historiography of Liturgical Studies in the Netherlands in the Twentieth Century
Volume 25
The Sound of Worship
Liturgical Performance by Surinamese Lutherans and Ghanaian Methodists in Amsterdam
Volume 26
Similar Books
‘For You I Study, For You I Work, For You I Live, For You I Am Ready To Even Give My Life’
Essays in Honour of Francis (Frank) J Moloney, SDB
A Late Antique Harrowing of Hell and Its Medieval Reception
Eusebius of Alexandria's Sermons 15 and 17 (CPG 5524; 5526) and their Latin Rewritings
Volume 99
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
Fear, Fear of God, God-Fearers
Philological and Historical Perspectives on the World of Ancient Judaism and Christianity
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Liturgia semper reformanda
Adaptations and accommodations in the liturgy in light of canon 838 of the Code of Canon Law
Pre-Christian Religions, Rituals, and Beliefs in Central and Northern Europe
Interdisciplinary Investigations
Volume 5
The Therapeutae as the Best Paradigm for the Contemplative Life
A Contextual Reading of Philo of Alexandria's De Vita Contemplativa
