Journal for the Study of Religion

Religion and its Role in Addressing Three Critical Social Issues in Africa: Gender-Based Violence, Crime, and Poverty

2025-01-10T06:33:29+00:00

This December edition of the Journal for the Study of Religion problematizes the role and influence of religion on societies in Africa as they navigate three of the most challenging social issues in Africa, namely gender-based violence (GBV), crime, and poverty. The articles in this edition look at Muslim communities, Christian communities, southern African language communities, and prison communities exploring what role religions play in helping ordinary people to deal with the challenges of GBV, crime, and poverty. The findings of these articles suggest that religious interventions have little effect on practically reducing crime or the lowering of GBV. The articles by both Banda and Isiko and Kisekka indicate the different ways in which scholars think about the role that many people in Africa believe religion can or does have on addressing poverty.

Social research methods for students and scholars of theology and religious studies

2025-01-10T06:54:56+00:00

This published work by Joshua Iyadurai is very timely and relevant for theologians, scholars in the field of religious studies, and students of different cultures and institutions. In this work, Iyadurai proposes multidisciplinary approaches in the study of religions that consider strategies rooted in social sciences.

Religion Behind Bars: Faith-based Programs in the Rehabilitation of Offenders in the Medium B Westville Correctional Center, Durban

2025-01-10T06:38:12+00:00

In order to maintain social control and order, several authors perceive religion to be a significant aspect of societal life (Akhverdiev & Ponomarev 2008:1; Stark & Bainbridge 2012:1; Welch, Tittle, & Grasmick 2006:1605). The right to religious practice is considered vital in almost all societies. There is a body of research that suggests that a decline in religious conformity erodes the moral fabric of society and hence perceives its decline to contribute to social degeneration leaving society in a state of disarray (Nwube & Edigbo 2023; Ezeonwumelu 2021; Sekhaulelo 2021; Dick, Ede, & Chiaghanam 2020; Nikolova 2018). A deviation from religious norms and values at an individual level is known to result in anomic behavior ensuing conflict with the law. On the contrary, religious fundamentalism is also known to be contributing to hostility, violence, lawlessness, harmful behavior, and social instability (Gorur & Gregory 2021; Wright & Khoo 2019; Sulaiman 2016; VanAernum 2014). It is in this context that this article reviews religious practices and beliefs among male offenders and its role in rehabilitating their deviant behavior so that they may self-actualize to become good citizens upon release in the South African society. Notwithstanding, the study provides very little support on the notion that correctional centers’ inspired faith-based programs indeed impact prosocial behavior as offenders engage with their respective religious belief systems as individuals. This finding refutes the notion contained in the literature study that avers that correctional centers’ inspired faith-based programs do in fact yield prosocial behavior.

Pentecostal Reinventions of the Passover: Contextual Reflections on the End of Year Night Worship Festivals in Uganda

2025-01-10T06:42:24+00:00

Pentecostal scholarship in and about Africa is a vibrant arena in world Christianity, with an upswing in the proliferation of scholarly works on Pentecostal Churches and its centrality in the political and social fabric of African societies. Pentecostalism has been hailed for revival of Christian conservatism in Sub-Saharan Africa, predominated by the nominal Roman Catholics and Protestant Christianity. While some authors have studied African Pentecostalism with prejudgments based on other Christian traditions, some have hailed the theological innovations in healing and evangelism. The study of the Pentecostal end of year worship festivals unravels one of the innovations that justifies the uniqueness of African Pentecostalism, promulgating theologies and traditions on the one hand, and reinventing Judeo-Christian practices in African perspectives, which in a sense give African Pentecostal Churches a claim to divine originality, on the other. In another way, theologies, traditions, and practices emerging from the observance of the annual Pentecostal worship festivals place African Pentecostal Churches among the towering African Christian traditions, which then borrow rather than debunk such Pentecostal theological innovations. This article therefore discusses the Pentecostal Church reinvention of the ancient Jewish Passover festival to mirror the lives of African Christians in contemporary contexts. The ‘contextual theology’ analysis is employed to reflect on both the Jewish Passover and annual Pentecostal worship festivals, with a view of establishing how Passover (non-)parallels and reinventions have produced African Pentecostal theologies, traditions, and practices defining the uniqueness of African Pentecostalism.

Agency in Community: Understanding Gender-Based Violence from within a Muslim Community in Lenasia, Johannesburg

2025-01-10T06:47:33+00:00

This qualitative study examines how a group of Muslims in a conservative community in Lenasia, Johannesburg, engaged with Islam and gender-based violence (GBV). Drawing on the framework of lived religion and Saba Mahmood’s conceptualization of agency and embodiment, the article highlights how the 13 interviewees actively negotiated their perceptions of and approach to GBV within their religious and cultural environment. First, the participants actively chose their religious authorities and illustrated how these authorities portrayed an Islam that is gender-just. Second, while largely opting to rather ignore than criticize probable patriarchal tones in their religion, participants freely expressed their critical views on patriarchy and GBV in relation to their culture. Through highlighting the agency and logic in the participants’ engagement with GBV, the article underscores the importance of involving conservative religious communities in combating GBV in their own terms.

Stifling Human Responsibility? Human Agency and Transcendency in African Spirituality and Cultural Idioms

2025-01-10T06:51:36+00:00

This article is an African traditional religious and cultural analysis of human responsibility as expressed in proverbs and idioms that demand human agency and transcendence in chiShona, Zimbabwean isiNdebele, and isiZulu languages. The analysis is done in line with the common spiritual belief that material wealth is a product of spiritual or magical power. The article analyzes selected proverbs and idioms from the three languages that demand or express agency and transcendence. This demand for agency and transcendence is juxtaposed with a religious belief of wealth as a product of spiritual and magical powers. Spiritualizing material wealth promotes a blame syndrome that is detrimental to human responsibility. A framework of human agency and transcendence that promotes human responsibility in African contexts of poverty is proposed. The article aims to contribute with an African response to poverty that promotes human responsibility and avoids a defeatist and escapist reliance on magic and spiritual solutions.