ABSTRACT
The chapter offers an ethnographic examination of Pentecostal-charismatic ethics and political subjectivity in post-apartheid South Africa. Drawing from the story of a pastor from the township of Khayelitsha in Cape Town, the chapter shows how an analysis of modernity and citizenship are central concepts for understanding contemporary South African Pentecostalism. In fact, South African Pentecostalism seems both to contest the more progressive politics of post-apartheid modernity – highlighted in notions of gender equality and sexual freedom – while endorsing particular notions of personhood and subjectivity. The chapter concludes that between the boundaries of social movements and Christianity, new repertories begin to emerge around the aesthetics and representations of personhood shaping the contemporary South African society.
