Johan Strijdom

Diversity from the beginning: A comparison of Mack and Crossan’s constructs of earliest Christianities (ca 30-70 CE) According to recent propositions by Burton Mack and Dominic Crossan, earliest Christianity was a diverse phenomenon right from its inception. In this article their constructs of this early phase of 'church ’ history (ca 30-70 CE) are compared, so as to identify similarities and differences, advantages and shortcomings. The essay concludes with a proposal on methodological procedure to be followed in the search for earliest forms of Christianities (ca 30-70 CE), as well as some remarks on the meaning of the comparative analysis undertaken by Mack and Crossan.

At van Wyk het my sy boek, Honoris Crux, 'n optekening gemaak van 'n aantal soldate wat alreeds met die Honoris Crux vereer is om so 'n leemte in hierdie Suid-Afrikaanse lektuur te begin vul. Hierdie publikasie was 'n uitgebreide stud ie, want Van Wyk het onderhoude met elkeen van die draers gevoer en om soveel materiaal te verwerk in die bestek van een boek, wil gedoen wees. Die verskillende gebeurtenisse is kort en kragtig behandel en die opskrifte was baie gepas.

The essentialist claim to be autochthons with special political rights within a particular territory has been challenged by historical and anthropological studies that instead emphasise migration, diversity and hybridity. In ancient Athens Euripides' Erechtheus and Ion and the funeral speech in Plato's Menexenos have been taken as representative of the former, whereas Thucydides' view of Athenian achievements has been considered as representative of the latter. In a recent monograph, The perils of belonging: autochthony, citizenship, and exclusion in Africa and Europe (2009), the Dutch anthropologist Peter Geschiere has noted the influence and relevance of this ancient Greek debate not only in contemporary France and the Netherlands, but also in modern Africa. This article elaborates this comparison as exemplary of a critical and constructive dialogue that may be constructed between modern African and ancient Greek thought and practice. In conclusion a comparison of mode...

Violence may be conceptualised in a narrow sense as physical harm done to persons or property, or in a broader sense as the systemic violation of people's rights and dignity or any interference that limits one's potential. Thus, violence can be direct or indirect. It can be structural, cultural or direct. The essays in this volume engage with different theories and concepts of violence, applied mostly to sub-Saharan case studies, to offer diverse perspectives on how religion is instrumentalised for violence or peacebuilding.

A critical examination of the history of theories and uses of concepts such as ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ in the academic study of religion in imperial, colonial and postcolonial contexts is particularly urgent in our time with its demands to decolonise Western models of knowledge production. In Savage Systems (1996) and Empire of Religion (2014), David Chidester has contributed to this project by relating the invention and use of terms such as ‘religion’, ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ by theorists of religion in European imperial metropoles to South African colonial and indigenous contexts. This article intends to take Chidester’s project further by relating Gerardus Van der Leeuw’s phenomenological analysis of ‘primitive mentality’ (particularly in De primitieve mensch en de religie, 1937) to Chidester’s analysis and postcolonial critique of imperial theories of religion. By taking animism and dreams in Chidester’s and Van der Leeuw’s works as example, it is argued that in spite of the l...

Contributing to current initiatives to reassess European theorists of religion from a postcolonial perspective, this article locates Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950) in South Africa at the inauguration of the Voortrekker Monument, problematizing his phenomenological concept of sacred place. On 16 December 1949 Van der Leeuw gave a speech at the inauguration of the Voortrekker Monument to convey the good wishes of the Dutch volk to the Afrikaner volk, celebrating with Afrikaner nationalists their victory over the Zulu king Dingaan more than a century earlier, and sharing the podium with D.F. Malan who had come to power in 1948 introducing more than 
40 years of apartheid in South Africa. The speech is analyzed by relating it to reports that Van der Leeuw wrote on his first visit to South Africa of almost three months in 1947 and his second visit in 1949, as well as pertinent concepts, particularly sacred place, in his phenomenological analyses of religion. By comparing and contrast...

Against the background of the recent proliferation of guides on key concepts for the analysis of issues across religious traditions, this article traces David Chidester’s theoretical elaboration of “colonialism” and “material culture” from an African and South African perspective and his application of these key terms to South African case studies. It is argued that within the current context of demands for a decolonisation of the curriculum these terms need to be foregrounded in rethinking Religious Studies programmes at South African universities. How this transformation of the curriculum may be effected, is illustrated with reference to two introductory courses in Religious Studies at the University of South Africa.

In this article Crossan’s analysis of violence in the Christian Bible is assessed by means of two overlapping strategies. The first strategy takes seriously the insistence by scholars of comparative religion that the application of theorised key concepts to case studies may throw new light on an issue. By taking David Chidester’s mapping of definitions and theories of the concept of ‘violence’ as a point of reference, Crossan’s conceptualisation of violence in the Bible is assessed. Secondly, Burton Mack’s critical application of Girard’s theory of violence to early Christian myth formations and their legacy in the West is compared with and used to assess Crossan’s analysis. In conclusion, the imperative to reflect further on the ethical question of violence is highlighted.

In an attempt to assist postgraduate students in the production of new knowledge about religion and religions David Chidester (2013:5-7) has offered for more than a decade a compulsory course on critical concepts at the University of Cape Town. In order to produce 'new' or 'original' knowledge in religious studies students are encouraged to 'look at something new in an old way' or to 'look at something old in a new way', but are simultaneously advised that a mere 'looking at' religious phenomena would not produce new knowledge. New knowledge in religious studies, Chidester (2013:6) is convinced, would be produced, when our analyses, arguments, interpretations and explanations are 'theoretically informed and methodologically rigorous'. In this presentation I will take a critical 'look at' Chidester's theoretically informed use of 'the fetish' as a concept that has guided his own search for new knowledge on religion a...

In this article the Baptist is compared with the upper-class/literate millennialists behind the Psalms of Solomon, the Testament of Moses, the Similitudes of 1 Enoch, and the Qumran scrolls on the one hand, and with the lower-class/illiterate millennialist movements in Josephus on the other hand. The argument is developed in constant dialogue with the analyses of John Dominic Crossan. After an initial statement of historical facts about the Baptist, these are compared with the named groups in terms of each one’s (1) criticism of the social-political and religious status quo, (2) depiction of the imagined mediator through whom God was expected to intervene, (3) portrayal of the violent/non-violent intervention of God and the group respectively, and (4) social ethics. It is concluded that John shows closer resemblance to the literate than illiterate millennialists, and should therefore rather be considered as a dissident retainer.

Mark 16:1-8 in the context of a construed Marcan setting The purpose of this article is to construct a context for the Marcan community. Results of previous scholars, who have used redaction critical, literary, and socio-historical methods are synthesized to achieve this aim. Time and place, intra-, inter-, and extra- community relations are in turn considered in theses. Expositions of pro and contra arguments for the theses emphasise the relativity of the proposed construction. In the second part of the article an attempt is made to understand Mark 16:1-8 in the imagined community context.

Abstract: This paper offers a comparative analysis of the ways in which Plato used mythical language in order to convey his views on love and politics. For politics, the myth of the metals in the Republic and of Atlantis in the Timaeus / Critias will be analysed. For love, the function of myths in ...

The article not only accepts the distinction between indigeneity and hybridity as two extreme positions in postcolonial studies, but argues that the former paradigm’s rigid and essentialist definition of identity may contribute to intolerance and violence. Examples of religious nationalism within Buddhist, Hindu and Christian traditions are juxtaposed to illustrate the point, and their relevance for a critique of monolithic Afrocentric views is postulated. In conclusion, the struggle to defend constitutional promises that respect cultural diversity and the promotion of a cosmopolitan education are presented as necessary antidotes to the problem of homogenizing tendencies.

Two recent arguments trace the genealogy of human rights back to either Paul on the one hand or the Stoics on the other. First, Crossan and Reed (2004) suggest that although Paul intended his egalitarian vision and program for Christian communities in the first place, his wish that all humanity should convert to a Christian world of egalitarian justice would logically imply a basic continuity with the ideals of universal human rights. Secondly, the classicist Richard Sorabji (2002) considers whether the concept of human rights is to be found in the Stoic ideas of oikeiosis and natural law. My purpose will be to relate these two archaeological arguments, in the light of recent comparisons between Paul and the Stoics, and to hermeneutically problematize the discourse with reference to Hannah Arendt's perplexities on human rights.

Taking indigeneity and hybridity as opposite theoretical paradigms in the study of religion, this article problematises political discourses and practices that propagate the former view. The post-colonial resurgence of indigeneity is first contextualised with reference to anthropological studies of its political uses in Botswana and Cameroon, and then problematised with reference to its foregrounding in Freedom Park. It is argued that this tendency poses the danger of social fragmentation, discrimination and exclusion in post-colonial African contexts, which is precisely what the South African Constitution and National Policy on Religion and Education intend to prevent.

Die doel van hierdie bydrae is om te besin oor die begrip vernuwing in die menswetenskappe in die algemeen en die vergelykende bestudering van religie en religiee in die besonder. Religie verwys hier na die generiese kategorie (genus) en religiee na die spesies van die genus. Die sosioloog Emile Durkheim se definisie van religie word aangepas deur nie net die funksie van heilige geloofsoortuigings en praktyke om ’n groep aanhangers saam te bind, te beklemtoon nie, maar ook deur die konflikpotensiaal daarvan om asimmetriese magsverhoudinge van kolonialisme, klas, geslag en ras te skep en in stand te hou, te beklemtoon. Die artikel bespreek nie net die kwessie van die betekenis van vernuwing nie, maar stel veral maniere voor wat vernuwende insigte moontlik kan maak in ’n akademiese veld wat mense en religie as ’n invloedryke krag in ons wereld bestudeer. Die hipotese is dat nuwe insigte in die menswetenskappe en religiewetenskap moontlik gemaak kan word deur geteoretiseerde konsepte v...

Why did the ancient Greeks and Romans find fault with anger? Why did they so insistently advocate the reining in or the elimination of angry emotions? Rather than offering a mere analysis of arguments presented in our primary texts, Harris' study undertakes to provide an answer from a social-anthropological perspective, taking due cognisance of the groups whose interests were served by the discourse of anger control in Greco-Roman antiquity. Most importantly, he demonstrates the relevance of his historical enquiry by relating it to discussions on the subject in our contemporary culture.

In analysing ‘sociality’ (the formation of inclusive or exclusionary collective identities), ‘materiality’ (the desire for material objects, sensory experiences and gendered bodily performances of rituals) and ‘exchange’ (communist or capitalist economic exchanges in rituals of gift-giving and expenditure) as three aspects of religion within local and global contexts, David Chidester has used the social theories of Durkheim, Bataille, WEB Du Bois, Weber, Marx- Adorno-Horkheimer, Benjamin and others. The purpose of this paper will be to assess what we have gained from Chidester’s use of social categories such as ‘sociality’ and ‘exchange’ to analyse unconventional or ‘wild’ forms of religion in post-apartheid South Africa within a global context. On the basis of his sociological analysis of Freedom Park and the 2010 FIFA World Cup as forms of ‘wild religion’, I will in conclusion argue for the legitimacy and relevance of using etic vis-a-vis emic categories to afford a critical under...

In this article recent criticisms of Paul are summarised under the headings of ethnicity (Mack), social class (Theissen), gender (Wire) and homoeroticism (Nissinen). Horsley's positive appraisal of Paul's anti-imperial stance is also surveyed. These views ...

Let me begin with two legends from ancient Greece. When the Greek mathematician Archimedes was taking a bath, he suddenly realized that he could calculate the volume of his body. Subtracting the volume of the water without him in the bath from the volume of the water with him in the bath would equal the volume of his body. Excited by the discovery, it is said, he jumped out of the bath, and ran naked through the streets, shouting heureka, ‘I have found (it)!’.

The article not only accepts the distinction between indigeneity and hybridity as two extreme positions in postcolonial studies, but argues that the former paradigm's rigid and essentialist definition of identity may contribute to intolerance and violence. Examples of religious ...

I am grateful to both those preceding scholars for their articles and for allowing me the privilege of a reply. It is also a special pleasure to recall their hospitality and generosity at the University of South Africa during the seminar on which these papers mere first presented. My reply takes up those topics in my title, the first two from Pieter Craffert, the latter two from Johan Strijdom.

The aim of this article is to challenge Crossan in two related fronts. First, concerning 'story': did ancient authors consciously reflect on the distinction between fact and fiction, history and myth, literal and metaphorical? Could they view myths as made-up tales about divine intervention ? Further, could they question the reality of divine intervention as such, or were these questions introduced only much later by the Enlightenment and then illegitimately projected onto antiquity, as Crossan holds? My answer refers to the evidence in Thucydides, the Hippocratic corpus and the Gnostics, but focuses especially on Plato's conscious manipulation of the myths of Atlantis and the metals. I also respond to Crossan's understanding of the Platonist Celsus. Secondly, concerning 'ideology': if jesus'message and program were about systemic justice as distributive egalitarianism, about non-violent but provocative protest against violent and oppressive imperialism, how do his vision and life then relate to ancient and modern views on and practices of social justice? My objection is that whereas Crossan correctly emphasizes the concern for a just society in the Jewish and Near Eastern traditions, he underestimates the contribution of Greco-Roman paganism (except for the Cynics) in this regard. By means of a cursory discussion of Hesiod, Solon, and Socrates, and a more elaborate treatment of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics (eg, Musonius Rufus and Seneca) I indicate just how important such a nuanced comparison is.

The Paris School, with leading scholars Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, has made an indelible contribution to the understanding of the social uses of ancient Greek myths within their original historical contexts. This article argues, in line with ...

The cognitive linguist George Lakoff has argued that in the human brain two concepts of the family are mapped onto two contrasting political concepts, which reveal two kinds of systemic morality: a hierarchical, strict and disciplining father morality of conservatives on the one hand, and an egalitarian, nurturing parent morality of progressives or liberals on the other. Taking Lakoff’s thesis as point of departure, I offer a critical comparison of social-political uses of the concept of “home” in the early Roman Empire and Pauline Christianity. For this case study I engage primarily with the work of John Dominic Crossan, a prominent scholar of early Christianity within its Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts. Although “home” does not constitute the focus of his analysis, a close reading of his oeuvre does allow us to identify and highlight this as a crucial theme in his work. The focus will be on the patriarchal home under Greco-Roman imperial conditions as model of the imperial system...

In this article, it is argued that a postcolonial critique of the colonial study of religion should not preclude a critique of indigenous African religion itself. The latter may be developed from a human rights perspective and a critique of exclusionary views of indigeneity. The argument is illustrated by means of specific case studies.

In this article the Baptist is compared with the upper-class/literate millennialists behind the Psalms of Solomon, the Testament of Moses, the Similitudes of 1 Enoch, and the Qumran scrolls on the one hand, and with the lower-class/illiterate millennialist movements in Josephus on the other hand. The argument is developed in constant dialogue with the analyses of John Dominic Crossan. After an initial statement of historical facts about the Baptist, these are compared with the named groups in terms of each one's (1) criticism of the social-political and religious status quo, (2) depiction of the imagined mediator through whom God was expected to intervene, (3) portrayal of the violent/non-violent intervention of God and the group respectively, and (4) social ethics. It is concluded that John shows closer resemblance to the literate than illiterate millennialists, and should therefore rather be considered as a dissident retainer.

Contributing to current initiatives to reassess European theorists of religion
from a postcolonial perspective, this article locates Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950) within South Africa at the inauguration of the Voortrekker Monument, problematizing his phenomenological concept of sacred place. On 16 December 1949 Van der Leeuw gave a speech at the inauguration of the Voortrekker Monument to convey the good wishes of the Dutch volk to the Afrikaner volk, celebrating with Afrikaner nationalists their victory over the Zulu king Dingaan more than a century earlier, and sharing the podium with D.F. Malan who had come to power in 1948 introducing more than 40 years of apartheid in South Africa. The speech is analyzed by relating it to reports that Van der Leeuw wrote on his first visit to South Africa of almost three months in 1947 and his second visit in 1949, as well as pertinent concepts, particularly sacred place, in his phenomenological analyses of religion. By comparing and contrasting Van der Leeuw’s concept of sacred place with David Chidester’s critical concept of sacred place, focusing on the Voortrekker Monument as case study, I will offer a critique of Van der Leeuw’s concept of sacred place from a postcolonial perspective and South African location.

The purpose of this article is to illustrate and assess Chidester’s use of the ‘senses’ as an analytical term in his study of religion. Under ‘senses’ Chidester includes not only the five conventional senses of Aristotle, but also analyzes metaphorical uses of the senses in religious discourse, the visions and dreams of mystics and shamans, and eventually new media as extensions of the human senses. Chidester’s analysis of the senses in European Christian discourses on the one hand, and in colonial and postcolonial African indigenous religion and imperial religious studies on the other hand, is compared and assessed. Although he does not offer a systematic comparison of these case studies, I argue that his analysis lends itself to an explicit comparison of the senses as material aspects of religion and show how his contextualized and historically nuanced analysis of the senses in religion and religious studies informs a critical study of religion. Since critical assumes judgment, values need to be explicated in terms of critical theories, which in my view need further elaboration.

A critical examination of the history of theories and uses of concepts such as ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ in the academic study of religion in imperial, colonial and postcolonial contexts is particularly urgent in our time with its demands to decolonise Western models of knowledge production. In Savage Systems (1996) and Empire of Religion (2014), David Chidester has
contributed to this project by relating the invention and use of terms such as ‘religion’, ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ by theorists of religion in European imperial metropoles to South African colonial and indigenous contexts. This article intends to take Chidester’s project further by relating Gerardus Van der Leeuw’s phenomenological analysis of ‘primitive mentality’ (particularly in De primitieve mensch en de religie, 1937) to Chidester’s analysis and postcolonial critique of imperial theories of religion. By taking animism and dreams in Chidester’s and Van der Leeuw’s works as example, it is argued that in spite of the latter’s decontextualised use of ethnological material, a fundamental shift occurred in the judgement of ‘primitive’ religion from Tylor’s evolutionary to Van der Leeuw’s phenomenological
analysis, which is contrary to claims according to which modern theories are unanimously denigratory of indigenous religions.

Against the background of the recent proliferation of guides on key concepts for the analysis of issues across religious traditions, this article traces David Chidester’s theoretical elaboration of “colonialism” and “material culture” from an African and South African perspective and his application of these key terms to South African case studies. It is argued that within the current context of demands for a decolonisation of the curriculum these terms need to be foregrounded in rethinking Religious Studies programmes at South African universities. How this transformation of the curriculum may be effected, is illustrated with reference to two introductory courses in Religious Studies at the University of South Africa.

In this article Crossan’s analysis of violence in the Christian Bible is assessed by means of two overlapping strategies. The first strategy takes seriously the insistence by scholars of comparative religion that the application of theorised key concepts to case studies may throw new light on an issue. By taking David Chidester’s mapping of definitions and theories of the concept of ‘violence’ as a point of reference, Crossan’s conceptualisation of violence in the Bible is assessed. Secondly, Burton Mack’s critical application of Girard’s theory of violence to early Christian myth formations and their legacy in the West is compared with and used to assess Crossan’s analysis. In conclusion, the imperative to reflect further on the ethical question of violence is highlighted.

Prof Labuschagne (acting vice-principal: research, postgraduate studies, innovation and commercialisation), Dr Zawada (deputy executive dean: CHS), Prof Kistner (respondent), colleagues, family, friends and guests Let me begin with two legends from ancient Greece. When the Greek mathematician Archimedes was taking a bath, he suddenly realized that he could calculate the volume of his body. Subtracting the volume of the water without him in the bath from the volume of the water with him in the bath would equal the volume of his body. Excited by the discovery, it is said, he jumped out of the bath, and ran naked through the streets, shouting heureka, 'I have found (it)!'. Second story: When the Greek hero of technology, Daedalus, invented wings of wax for his son Icarus, Greek myth tells us, Icarus flew too close to the sun, his wings of wax melted, and he fell to his death. If the first story captures the 'wow' feeling of the scientific innovator, the second warns of the ambiguity of technological inventions. Taking 'innovation' as the theme of my lecture, we may wonder about its meaning and how to bring it about. It is a term that seems to be everywhere, but one that is often not given content and reflection. A quick search for recent literature on the term indicates a focus on technological inventions that can be patented to make money. Tonight I would, however, like to turn to human beings. The question before us is this: How may we produce new knowledge about human beings in the Human and Social Sciences? More specifically, how may we at a university produce new knowledge about what we name 'religion' and 'religions'? Without denying the importance of money to create the space for academics to conduct innovative research on human beings and having been given this opportunity for almost thirty years, I will use this occasion to reflect on and share with you what I have learned on this theme and question. My intellectual journey started at the University of Pretoria, where I came to focus on ancient Greek linguistics. The refrain from Prof Jannie Louw was that we were not going to study language the old way, but were going to do it in a new way. If the old way analysed the history of words, the new one examined language as it appears to us at a given moment. It is like a chess game. The old approach would try to understand the game by tracing its history, the new one focuses on the relationships between the pieces as they stand at a given moment on the chessboard. What this meant in practice was that we spent most of our time, applying this innovative insight to Greek texts by drawing intricate lines to make explicit the relationships between words, sentences and bigger units. But there was more to this new approach of 'discourse analysis', which had to do with the analysis of concepts. If according to the old theory the meaning of a word could be derived from its original meaning, the new approach to semantics revealed the folly of etymological arguments. Indeed, how valid is it to claim that the word 'nice' derives from the Latin nescio ('I don't know')? Would that indicate that a nice person is actually an ignorant one?

Theologies as dangerous human constructs: Burton Mack's evaluation of early Christian myths After an introductory explication of the social approach to myths/theologies and a consideration of the ethical urgency for such a humanistic strategy, this article offers a systematic survey of Burton Mack's incisive criticism of early Christian mythology and its influence on Western (specifically American) civilization. His cynical reading, which claims to take its cue from deconstruction, is assessed under three headings (which are inevitably interrelated): (1) The evangelical meaning of Jesus' death: the victimization of Jews; (2) The apocalyptic myth as social nightmare: the collusion of innocence and power, and (3) From diverse origins to reduced end product and back: the decanoniza-tion of the Christian Bible as ethical necessity. As a programmatic suggestion of how Mack's contribution can be taken further, the essay concludes by juxtaposing Mack's myth criticism with that of a selection of scholars (Crossan, Voltaire) and Polish poets (Zagajewski, Szymborska), whose points of view may serve not only to corroborate, but especially, to critically refine Mack's perspective.

In analysing ‘sociality’ (the formation of inclusive or exclusionary collective
identities), ‘materiality’ (the desire for material objects, sensory experiences
and gendered bodily performances of rituals) and ‘exchange’ (communist or
capitalist economic exchanges in rituals of gift-giving and expenditure) as
three aspects of religion within local and global contexts, David Chidester has
used the social theories of Durkheim, Bataille, WEB Du Bois, Weber, Marx-
Adorno-Horkheimer, Benjamin and others. The purpose of this paper will be
to assess what we have gained from Chidester’s use of social categories such
as ‘sociality’ and ‘exchange’ to analyse unconventional or ‘wild’ forms of
religion in post-apartheid South Africa within a global context. On the basis
of his sociological analysis of Freedom Park and the 2010 FIFA World Cup
as forms of ‘wild religion’, I will in conclusion argue for the legitimacy and
relevance of using etic vis-à-vis emic categories to afford a critical
understanding of African religious realities within a global context.

When Philostratus is visiting a friend in Naples—or so the writer wants us to believe in the foreword to Imagines (1.4. 23ff)—and he discovers a portico near his friend's house which opens to the West and looks out over the Tyrrhenian sea, he is surprised mainly by the ...

1991 MA (Greek) (cum laude) University of Pretoria 1998 DD (New Testament) (distinction mark) University of Pretoria MA dissertation 'n Semiotiese model vir die verstaan van 'n antieke Griekse teks met die Brief aan Filemon as illustrasie [A semiotic model for understanding an ancient Greek text with the Letter to Philemon as illustration]. MA dissertation: University of Pretoria. Study leader: JP Louw Doctoral thesis An evaluation of John Dominic Crossan's construct of the historical Jesus: The Baptist as test case. DD thesis: University of Pretoria. Study leader: AG van Aarde 2. LANGUAGES STUDIED Modern languages Afrikaans, English, German, Dutch, French (intermediate), Italian (intermediate), Portuguese (basic), Mandarin Chinese (basic)

Abstract
Theorizing and applying key concepts in the analysis of case studies across religious traditions have since the turn of the millennium become increasingly salient in the academic study and teaching of religion(s) at universities. This paper engages with two terms, ‘colonialism’ and ‘material culture’, that David Chidester has theoretically elaborated and applied with specific reference to South African contexts. In conceptualizing ‘colonialism’ Chidester has examined not only the use of religion by colonists and the complicity of imperial theorists of religion to justify imperial expansionism and economic exploitation, but also creative responses by the colonized. The challenge of a postcolonial study of religion is to critically deal with this colonial legacy. In conceptualizing ‘material culture’ Chidester focuses on the necessary mediation of religion through objects and the senses. Instead of mere description, Chidester offers a nuanced historical and critical analysis of their political and economic functions and meanings. Of particular relevance to the South African context is his critical investigation of the notion of fetishism and shamanic dreaming.  The paper argues, in light of the current demands for the decolonization of curricula, that these terms need to be foregrounded in rethinking Religious Studies programmes at South African universities, and shows how these terms are facilitating the transformation of the Religious Studies curriculum at the University of South Africa.