Cultivating ’Black Gold’
Compost politics and Ordered Gardens among Evangelical-Charismatic Christians in South Africa
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.24558Keywords:
Evangelical-Charismatic Christianity, material religion, compost-making, cultivation, South Africa, biblical gardensAbstract
Could God be present in decomposed organic matter? How are projects of making compost influencing Christians’ view and relationship to webs of biological life? Looking at a present-day project of religious education aimed at cultivating regenerative Christian farmers in South Africa, I examine conservative Evangelical-Charismatic Christians’ compostmaking practices. By addressing a Christian pedagogics of mimicking the biotic order revealed in nature, I outline key aims of establishing sensory immersion with compost-making as a core educational tool for (re)ordering how Christians cultivate nature and human-nature relations. Situated in the post-apartheid context of South Africa, the case points to a compost politics centered on immanence where ordering connected to a biblical past enables Christians to engage in a project of transcending social contestations over land use in post-apartheid South Africa.
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