Abstract:
The influence of religious discourses and institutions in South Africa,
as elsewhere, diminishes because of structural secularisation. Social
secularisation as another form of secularisation compromises the
'necessity’ for religion in modern day social culture. Humanistic Western
Individualism is the dominant social meaning system (also in South Africa)
best associated with this process. Th e actualisation of its priorities (personal
freedom, privacy, emancipation of the self, freedom of choice and to strive
for personal affluence) plays a significant role in the lives of the Dutch
Reformed Church’s congregants. Social secularisation liberates people from
ecclesiastical doctrine as regulatory for personal life and reason and marks
the growing indifference to the official church. Th is leads to a legitimacy
crisis concerning established religious meaning systems. Ironically religion
doesn’t disappear altogether because of secularisation. It does however,
transposes traditional forms of collective religion because the sustainment
of religion as phenomenon depends increasingly on religiosities in the
private sphere. Consequently, the proliferation of different personal,
religious beliefs and practices also increases religious pluralism within the
Dutch Reformed Church, challenging its reformed identity.
