Bibliography: p. 229-245. / This thesis defines conversion as a process of change management. Individuals and groups mobilise resources and formulate strategies for individual identity and group formation. Strategies are also formulated to manage the process of change for members. In the research done among two churches, one conventionally classified as African indigenous and the other classified as mainline, two models of conversion emerged, the crisis model at St John's and the growth model at the Reformed Presbyterian Church (RPCSA). In the crisis model individuals join the group because of some crisis in their lives, e.g., illness or misfortune. The healing practices and rituals serve to manage and mediate the crisis for individuals. Healing is at the heart of the recruitment strategy at St John's and other African Indigenous Churches (AICs). It is through hearing about the efficacy of the healing powers of the leader that people are attracted to the church. On the other hand, the growth model as represented by the RPCSA, is about organic growth and development where new members are mostly recruited among the children of members. Children are groomed from baptism through Sunday school and confirmation classes to membership in full communion. For them conversion is a process of growth and development, where they keep on learning all the time about their faith and who they are. In scholarship the AICs have always been treated ethnographically while, on the other hand, the mainline churches have been treated historically. However, this thesis is a comparative study of the AIC and a mainline church with a special emphasis on their conceptions of conversion. The two churches are both African and Christian. They each draw from both these resources for self-definition. Christianity has become part of the South African religious landscape. None of the members in the two churches consider it as an alien or foreign religion but they consider it as an indigenous one. The two models mobilise resources and formulate strategies for self-definition and what it means to be human in a hostile environment.

Bibliography: leaves 333-354. / This thesis engages a multi-disciplinary theoretical approach to identifying, analysing, and interpreting discourse relating to the feminine and the maternal found at the intersection of psychoanalysis, feminism, and religion. The study explores embodiment, gender, and the sacred as expressed in symbolic representations of the mother and the institution of motherhood in patriarchy. I have therefore drawn on Freudian and post-Freudian theories, gender analysis, feminist critical analysis, and classical Hindu goddess myth to discern ways in which sacred images of the mother serve to reinforce the oppression of women on the one hand and can be transformed to provide empowering symbols for women's lived reality on the other. Theory of sacred space is also employed, particularly with regard to the human production of the sacred through the contested politics of sacred space.

Bibliography: p. 265-281. / The aim of this dissertation is to recover the significance of the humanity of Christ for our redemption. This involves exploring ways in which the issue of Christ's humanity has been dealt with in the past, identifying both shortcomings of previous Christological models and elements that can be retrieved for a contemporary paradigm.

This thesis puts forward the argument that the efficacy of ideas that have an impact on human subjects, causing them to act or behave in particular, noticeable ways, such as religion and ideology, is a product of the process of the necessary social labour involved in the production, circulation, exchange and consumption of symbolic property. Symbolic property is itself a product of the set-apart sacred, which is a basic, primary, socially constructed category that is strategically deployed in systems for the appropriation, expropriation, ownership, control and management of all property, whether material or symbolic. Socially effective ideas are expressed symbolically, whether they are signs of material, or real objects, or of imaginary things. It is further argued that to better comprehend these systems for managing the symbolic property, a critique of the political economy of the set-apart sacred must be developed. In developing this argument a literature review was conducted, primarily of structuralist and Marxist social theory, but also of key texts in the study of religion, political economy and of social theory more generally general. In the course of this review arguments to defend this hypothesis are developed and the critique of these arguments and the theory behind them also developed. Ideology, the fetish and money, three crucial categories of the set-apart sacred, are considered in terms of their function within the political economy of the sacred. Conclusions reached include the argument that religion as a category needs to be set aside and the set-apart sacred utilized as a pivotal concept in the study of religion, politics and the economy. Historical materialism, it is also concluded, has many flaws and weaknesses; including idealism, economism and a productivist bias, that make it essential to re-think and to re-materialise the methodology. The product of this work is a unique conversation between two schools of though often thought to stand in opposition to one another, namely, Durkheimian social theory and Marxist historical materialism. In the course of this argument, a materialist definition and theory of the setapart sacred is developed and a re-materialised historical materialist methodology is also proposed. These two theoretical premises are utilised to consider how systems for managing the set-apart sacred function.

Bibliography: leaves 223-241. / This thesis explores the role of multicultural counselling in nation-building in South Africa, using Islamic counselling and psychotherapy as a research case study. It merges a number of seemingly disparate disciplines in an innovative analysis of post-Apartheid social reconstruction. Culture, counselling, politics and religion converge and embrace areas of enquiry like Islam, diversity and identity studies, religio-cultural healing, gender studies, democracy, and human and social transformation.

Bibliography: leaves 297-317. / This dissertation is an ideological and exegetical analysis of the role of the imperial decrees of Persia in Ezra- Nehemiah (hereafter E-N). The imperial decrees, to date, have not been considered to play any significant role in both the compilation and the interpretation of E-N because they have been analysed, almost exclusively, in terms of their literary form and character and not in terms of their political-ideological function within the E-N narrative. Consequently, an alternative approach to the E-N text seemed necessary. This study develops a literary- ideological methodological paradigm which has its primary interest in the ideological character and function of a text; a mode of reading the text which gives expression to the nexus of political ideology and religio-cultural (i.e. theological) concerns within a single narrative complex, such as E-N. Thus, matters relative to politics, power, and ideology, and the manner in which they are imprinted on the production of a text, become extremely important. The application of this methodology to E-N yields two conclusions which need special mention. One conclusion is that the imperial decrees, on a literary-structural level, function as the organising centre for the tri-partite narrative design of E-N. In fact, this work demonstrates that the imperial decrees, not only drive the literary production of E-N, but also provide the narrative its ideological cohesion. The second conclusion of this study is that the imperial decrees, more than any other aspect of E-N, facilitates an adequate decoding of the political and conflict discourse inherent in E-N. By refocusing E-N research toward an appreciation of the centrality of the decrees, the dissertation brings into focus, rather sharply, the symbiotic relationship between official Persian colonial documents on the one hand, and the religio-cultural text of E- N, on the other, by demonstrating that there exists a dialectical relationship between the imperial decrees, and the E-N narrative in which they are set. The religio-cultural text, E-N, lends religio-cultural legitimacy to the political decrees of the colonial empire, Persia, while the imperial decrees in turn provide political, military and economic authority and legitimacy to the Golah-led reconstruction of post-Babylonian Palestine. Such a symbiotic relationship illustrates the ideological collusion of the E-N text with Persian colonial ideology. Finally, this study, by virtue of its focus on the role of the imperial decrees in E-N, lays the necessary foundation for further and more in depth exegetical analyses of the E-N literature in terms of an appreciation for those forces (e.g. political, ideological, religious, economic, cultural) which impact its literary production in the context of Persian colonial domination.

Includes bibliographical references. / In this study, I examine the methodological foundations of neo-modernist thought in Indonesia, focussing, in particular, on the thought of the contemporary Islamic intellectual, Abdurrahman Wahid. In discussing this newly established form of Islamic thinking, I analyse the contentious issue of the relation between state and organized religion within the context of pre- and post-independence Indonesia. Abdurrahman argues, through the articulation of a socio-cultural approach, that the antagonistic relationship between state and Islam can be overcome. By focussing on this controversial question and the methodology of Indonesian neo-modernist thinking, I examine the potential of Abdurrahman's religio-political thought to address the current predicament of the Muslim community in Indonesia. Abdurrahman's approach, which both attempts to reconcile the relationship between state and Islam and reinterpret Islamic teachings within the context of modern challenges, is, however, incapable of producing a genuine reconstruction of contemporary Islamic thought. In illustrating this assertion, I employ the historicist understanding of the Islamic heritage - al-Turath - in an attempt to contribute towards the development of an Islamic awakening discourse. I demonstrate that historical analyses can unearth the epistemological and ideological contents of the Islamic legacy, which has shaped the consciousness of the modern Muslim mind. It is concluded that the recovery of the greatness of Islamic civilization can only be achieved through a historicist understanding of the epistemological structure of the Islamic heritage.

While many scholars have used classical rhetoric for the interpretation of 1 Corinthians, others have proposed alternate methods for the same purpose. The problem with these methods is that they are not based on a closer reading of Paul, rather they are based on different flavors of the rhetorical system and sociological theories. My own approach to this problem is to look at the text of 1 Corinthians with an eye for methodology. A careful analysis of the 1 Corinthian passages yields Paul's rhetorical methods that are different to the classical rhetoric and modern scholars' attempts to find new rhetorical methods. The rhetoric in 1 Corinthians is unique because in every significant issue Paul addresses, he uses a Christ centered response. As such, it calls for a recognition of a Christ centered rhetoric, thus the name Christ Rhetoric. This rhetoric is used often enough in 1 Corinthians to be formalized into a rhetorical/interpretive methodology with its own structure, topoi, and argumentative methods. This resultant methodology is then applied to 1 Corinthians 15:1-34 as a case study.

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The growth of independent churches has long been a source for social and religious research in Southern African countries. The swell of such churches is said to be equal to the spread of fire across dry grassland. Lately, Pentecostalism in Africa has reached proportions that inevitably lead to questions about why there is such a need for conservative fundamentalist congregations, where the members tend to identify with subordination to a strong and powerful leader. This study explores the link between submission and supremacy in the “ingroup”versus “out-group” controversy. The study examines how a particular Pentecostal church in Cape Town is creating a space for their members to belong and to relate. My questions pivot around how dynamics play out between the leaders and the members of this group, and how crucial aspects of their identity, personal and collective, are formed within the community and their particular faith. This project shows how African Pentecostals are negotiating a way to resist the modern world and invent a way to live lives where spirituality is the starting point for everything and for everyone. Further, the study demonstrates how the embodiment of servant hood and godliness serves as an important reference point for these people in their attempt to bridge the dissonance between the secular and the sacred. It is argued that the opposition of good and evil is the common ground for negotiating their theology and that all aspects of their lives are centred on this dualistic worldview. The study also examines the importance of ritualised group activity and interaction, as well as demonstrating how the motifs of salvation, as opposed to damnation, are used to unify the group. It further shows how ideology is reproduced through a militant language that pushes people into a battle between dark and light forces in everything that is happening and everything they do in life.