THE ANC AND RELIGION - PART 2
Today we bring you the second instalment from an essay on the ANC and religion.
The five instalments are:
1. Introduction
2. The ANC and Religion
3. Thabo Mbeki and the Truth
4. Jacob Zuma and God
5. Conclusion
Next week we will bring you the third section, on Thabo Mbeki and the truth.
THE ONE TRUE CHURCH
By: Gareth van Onselen
The ANC and religion
“Those who say the ANC is atheist are simply wrong. Practicing their different rituals, clad in different clothes, citing separate songs and scriptures, ANC supporters may seem divided, but in our struggle for liberation and transformation they share a belief in God and support a common political platform. Through their calls upon Jehovah, Jesus, Thixo, Allah, Umvelinqangi, Krishna, Modimo, or the teaching of the Buddha, Bahula, or Marx, similar themes emerge. We are all spiritual people, even though we are not all religious. We recognise a supreme driving force of goodness, success, and hope in the heart of the human community which does liberate and does transform. We have seen it happen. The ANC believes that Faith and Politics go hand in hand, two sides of the same coin. We believe that the African world view of religion as an inclusive factor of life is accurate: ubuntu is a holistic view of life in the whole community. It is spiritual politics.” [1] [ANC Today]
“Transformation extends spiritual understanding from the religious world to the whole secular creation. It recognises that spiritual strength lies in human communities as such, and not necessarily in religious institutions. The RDP of the Soul which moves us from the Liberation to the Transformation of our society is a secular activity of the spirit of ordinary people, not reserved as a religious activity for saints. Its proclamation and practice by some transformed experienced progressive religious and theological people is a huge bonus.” [2] [The RDP of the Soul]
With the advent of the ‘modern’ state and the rise of nationalism, the longstanding relationship between politics and religion has come to take a very particular form. For Hegel, the state was “God on earth”; nationalism is certainly more complex than that, but it is fair to say that they (religion and nationalism) reflect and complement each other in a number of important respects.
Perhaps most significantly, both the nationalist and religious zealot see themselves as the central role players in a grand meta-narrative and their respective movements as the (specially chosen) vehicle through which a final and ideal outcome is to be realised.
(It is, of course, one thing to embrace a particular belief in your personal capacity; quite another to impose it on others - the primary reason behind the principle of divorcing politics from religion and, in turn, the personal from the public. For the nationalist, however, this distinction becomes blurred. In its most virulent form, nationalism will adopt a particular religion as part of its mythology entirely, while a less fundamental movement might simply see itself as a parallel but equal social force. The ANC tends towards the latter, rather than the former.)
Inherent in this idea are a number of others. Chief among these is the notion that, because both the nationalist and the religious zealot are chosen, in the diametric world they occupy they are ‘good’ and their respective beliefs ‘true’ and param
| Posted on 13/6/2008
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