Year: 2015
Type: book-review
Abstract: Every now and then a book is published that unsettles common-sense assumptions about a particular field of study.Ilana van Wyk's The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in South Africa: A Church of Strangers is one such book.Van Wyk pursues an ethnographic study of one of the most controversial Christian churches in South Africa, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG), which has its headquarters in Brazil, in order to question the widespread idea that much of what Christian religious practice is about is "socialising" and building community.Accordingly the book provides important insights into a religious organisation in which congregants are told to be suspicious of their co-religionists and in which pastors are discouraged from developing social ties with them.As such, this book is sure to surprise and promises to engender fruitful debates not only in the field of the anthropology of Christianity, but also among scholars interested in the role of religion in Africa more generally.Writing about the UCKG is nonetheless a precarious undertaking.As regards South Africa, rumours and sensationalist media reports containing allegations of satanism and economic exploitation of the poorest sections in South African society make any attempt to isolate the church from this context of critical public perceptions futile.Moreover, as van Wyk shows, these this is a minor shortcoming compared to what one can learn from van Wyk's insightful analysis into a "not particularly nice church" (23) in present-day South Africa.
Source: Anthropology Southern Africa
Author: Thomas G. Kirsch
Institution: University of Konstanz
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2276504628