ABSTRACT
South Africa’s struggle against apartheid was counter-instinctive in resistance and transition. It can test, retrospectively, whether covenantal pluralism can be relevant for today’s world, characterized not so much by the absence of democracy and rights, but by their perversion at the service of populist agendas. We are still on a journey towards a more perfect understanding of covenantal pluralism, but can identify some cornerstones, and elements of a toolkit for cross-cultural religious literacy. This chapter endeavors to discern from the anti-apartheid struggle such lessons that could today help realize covenantal pluralism. In doing so, it identifies three seminal moments that constitute a rupture—i.e., a moment of awareness, action, and acceleration—for the faith communities, and also society, that laid a strong foundation for religion to contribute to a South Africa that became home to all races and religions, where they could embrace pluralism. A moment of rupture was needed to ring the alarm bell, to activate the victims, to disturb the complacent and the beneficiaries, to threaten the status quo, to reimagine the alternative, to demonstrate our mutual inter-dependence, and to accelerate the momentum for change. Believers always desire rapture (i.e., delivery), but often without its precondition: Rupture.
