A new book examines how a charismatic church is brainwashing poor and gullible South Africans with the idea that God can be bought, writes Anthony Egan.
A CHURCH OF STRANGERS: THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN SOUTH AFRICA by Ilana van Wyk (Wits University Press)
The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, a Brazilian-founded church with branches worldwide — including a number set up in South Africa — is one of the most controversial new religious movements today.
Banned in some countries, it is condemned by most “mainstream” Christian denominations, including many Pentecostal charismatic churches, as nothing more than an elaborate money-making scheme that uses elements of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity to serve its goals.
It has been examined, and often condemned, by theologians for its practices as well as by sociologists and anthropologists of religion, and regarded (somewhat unfairly, I think) as “typical” of the pernicious nature of religion in general and of charismatic Christianity in particular by secularists of every stripe.
Cape Town-based anthropologist Ilana van Wyk draws on extensive field research (conducted initially for a doctorate) at the church in Durban for this new and important study of the church’s activity in South Africa. Though her approach is secular and academically rigorous, with the intention of understanding rather than condemning it, her explorations reveal an institution that few outside it — whether one is religious or not —can do anything but condemn.
See full review by Anthony Egan in Mail & Guardian
