Faith communities and social cohesion
The case of congregations in the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17570/stj.2021.v7n2.a8Keywords:
Faith Communities, Social Capital, Social Cohesion, Intergroup Contact, Congregations, Social Justice, Reconciliation, TransformationAbstract
After 27 years of freedom and democracy, South Africa still struggles to make the ideal of a united, democratic, free, non-racial, non-sexist society a reality. International research indicates that the lack of social cohesion is not unique to the South African context, as other countries are faced with the same challenges. Faith communities and, in particular congregations, have a role to play in addressing these challenges. The study is interdisciplinary and investigates social capital theory to see how faith communities can be repositories of social, religious, and spiritual capital that bring about social cohesion; and interrogates intergroup contact theory to see how intergroup contact theory can reduce prejudice among diverse groups in faith communities. A qualitative methodology is followed and focus group interviews are conducted in multicultural congregations of the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa. The study finds that faith communities can provide much needed social capital to reduce prejudice in multicultural congregations that aggregate to social cohesion in society.
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Daniel Andrew, Willem J Schoeman, Lucius JS Botes
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
Please note that erroneous copyright information is given in the PDFs before Volume 9, 2023.