A sinister charismatic mammon

A new book examines how a charismatic church is brainwashing poor and gullible South Africans with the idea that God can be bought

marries is subject to higher authority. Religious outsiders are also unwelcome: members are discouraged from interaction with them, even when they are family members.

Van Wyk has done us all a great service in this book. She has contributed a major work in English to the study of this church, the study of cults and marginal religions, the political economy of religion, and by extension, the psychology of marginalised groups. In addition, she highlights a tension emerging in contemporary South Africa: between secularisation on one hand and religious fundamentalism on the other.

In many respects, this is one of the most disturbing books I have read in recent years. Though written coolly and dispassionately, as one would expect from an anthropologist, who tries to see the Universal Church in South Africa as a reflection of the wider society and its success as a mirror of economic desperation and marginalisation, one cannot but be horrified by what she recounts.

In presenting these comments, I must declare certain clear “prejudices”: I am an ordained Catholic priest trained in nonPentecostal Christian theology with a strong interest in ethics. I have also worked for many years in the fields of history and political science.

Though not an expert, I know enough about the Pentecostal charismatic tradition (admittedly mainly in its Catholic form) to be aware that the Universal Church, as Van Wyk describes it here, is by no means a reflection of the Pentecostal mainstream. (Nor indeed, I must add, is snake-eating and petrol-drinking!) What I see (drawing on the field of political science) is rather a ruthless form of manipulation, a kind of brainwashing.

On an ethical level, the Universal Church practices Van Wyk describes are immoral: the deliberate manipulation and exploitation of poor people, and the misuse of popular beliefs and fears. In short, this is religious abuse. And though I readily concede to my secular friends that abuse is a reality, a dark underside in all religions, what we see here is religious abuse taken to new levels. It poses the questions: What is to be done? And what role do mainstreams religions (including Pentecostal Charismatic churches) have in challenging dangerous “religious” practices?