New Histories of Christianity in South Africa: Review and Introduction

Abstract

This article charts recent developments in the history of Christianity in South Africa, while also offering a corrective to some of the orthodoxy on the history of Christianity. It begins with an account of two workshops in Cambridge and Johannesburg, where all the authors in this special issue presented. The article calls for a move away from overly rigid typologies of African Christianity, including those first developed by Bengt Sundkler in 1948. It draws attention to the importance of understanding church membership as fluid and multi-variate, and church movements as pan-denominational and transnational. Arguing against the tendency for South African history to focus on the histories of secular resistance, which downplays the significance of religion in people's lives, the articles discusses how the horizon of many Protestants was the entirely more expansive Kingdom of God that cut across national, ethnic and linguistic boundaries.