Church of Strangers by Ilana van Wyk

ISBN: 9781868148097

Publisher: Wits Press, 1st July 2015

Paperback, 294 pages

The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God has been hugely successful in post-apartheid South Africa and urges members to give large sums for delivering wealth, health, and happiness. While condemned as manipulative, they are locally meaningful, have limits and are informed by local ideas about human bodies, agency and ontological balance.

The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG), a church of Brazilian origin, has been enormously successful in establishing branches and attracting followers in post-apartheid South Africa. Unlike other Pentecostal Charismatic Churches (PCC), the UCKG insists that relationships with God be devoid of ‘emotions’, that socialisation between members be kept to a minimum and that charity and fellowship are ‘useless’ in materialising God’s blessings. Instead, the UCKG urges members to sacrifice large sums of money to God for delivering wealth, health, social harmony and happiness. While outsiders condemn these rituals as empty or manipulative, this book shows that they are locally meaningful, demand sincerity to work, have limits and are informed by local ideas about human bodies, agency and ontological balance. As an ethnography of people rather than of institutions, this book offers fresh insights into the mass PCC movement that has swept across Africa since the early 1990s.