Jaco S. Dreyer

Interreligious orientations among South African youth: Expressions of religious identity

In a religiously plural world it is important to ask how people of different faiths and with different religious identities can live justly and harmoniously together. In this article we take as point of departure that there is an inescapable link between a persons religious identity and his or her attitudes towards adherents of other religious. Against the background of a narrative understanding of religious identity, we explore three questions regarding the interreligious orientations of a sample of South African youth: What are the interreligious orientations of this sample of South African youth? How do they evaluate these interreligious orientations? What is the religious location of these interreligious orientations?

Social Location of Attitudes towards Human Rights among South African Youth

In the previous article we inquired into the attitudes towards human rights of a group of 538 Grade 11 students in Anglican and Catholic church-affiliated schools in the Johannesburg/Pretoria region. We distinguished between civil, political and judicial rights, socio-economic rights, and environmental rights. In this article we examine the social location of these attitudes. We arrived at the following profile of students who favour human rights: they are female, come from the official indigenous language groups, and have been raised by parents who have a relatively high educational and occupational level, and are not self-employed. They prefer the ANC to other political parties, and are transethnically and post-materialistically oriented. Their attitude towards work is interest-oriented, definitely not money-oriented. They participate in a political culture of communication. With regard to religious characteristics, which are particularly relevant to their attitudes towards socio-economic rights, they are religiously socialised, involved in religious praxis and have open religious communication with their parents; but they are not intensely tied to a particular denomination nor do they regularly attend church services. At the same time, those who display these last two characteristics reject civil rights. With regard to interreligious interactions, the students who favour human rights, display multireligious orientations and reject monoreligious ones.

Knowledge, Subjectivity, (De)Coloniality, and the Conundrum of Reflexivity

An important task of every academic practical theologian is to do research and to contribute to the discipline’s knowledge base. We thus do research by tracing the sacred; by exploring, describing, and explaining religious practices of religious actors in particular locations.1 Our research efforts usually result in a description, explanation, or a theory of lived religion of people, whether in Baltimore, Bangalore, Belhar, Brisbane, or Brussels. Research is not complete if it does not result in some form of communication of the “research findings,” that is, our interpretations and constructions of our research efforts. Whatever form the communication of the research results take, it always entails some kind of interpretation and representation of whatever was researched. Positivistic approaches want us to believe that our research results can in some way be an accurate representation of what we research. It is the researcher’s task to give an exact representation of the “facts.” If you follow the same procedure, you should be able to replicate the “findings” of other researchers. The assumption is that the researcher is “neutral” regarding the “study object” and that “objective” researchers should arrive at the same representations. Researchers therefore have to strive to eliminate subjectivity (bias and “observation errors”) and to maintain objectivity. For a long time human science researchers tried to emulate this scientific model of the natural sciences with its perceived objectivity.2 Knowledge could only be credible to the extent that the researcher’s influence is eliminated.3

Human Rights: A Channel for Salvation?

In the light of many severe social-economic and health problems many South Africans today experience a situation of helplessness and despair. In the face of these problems we ask whether there is a better solution than leaving the country and starting a new life elsewhere. If Christianity still has anything to say regarding these social-economic problems it must be the belief in salvation - salvation from a situation of helplessness and despair. The belief in salvation should appeal to and inspire people and therefore trigger change-oriented action. But does it happen in practice? To gain insight into this question we did empirical research among two groups of youths: a group of grade 11 students at some private (Catholic and Anglican) schools, and a group of grade 11 students at Afrikaans-medium public schools whom we investigated in a comprehensive survey research project, about their belief in Gods salvation in the past, present and future, as well as in his salvation in both their personal relations and local and global communities. The question is whether this belief has an effect on their human rights culture, which theoretically can be positive or negative, or lead to no effect at all. The conclusion of this research is that their belief in divine salvation has a non-exclusive, differentiated positive effect. The effect is non-exclusive, because other religious factors like an open type of religious socialisation, ritual praxis and church participation, and more especially non-religious factors like gender, home language, political and cultural orientations also have an effect, sometimes even a stronger effect. The effect is differentiated, because only their belief in Gods salvation in their personal life and their own communities has a positive effect on their human rights attitudes, whereas the other modes of Gods salvific activity have a clearly ambivalent (positive/negative) effect or even no effect at all.