ABSTRACT
In the post-apartheid era, Afrikaners experienced a religious discontinuity, or rupture, that caused drastic changes in the worldviews and practices of NGK (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk) congregants. These changes made their worldviews more accommodating toward new religious ideas, with the lines of ordentlikheid (respectability, decency), which marked the internal hierarchies among Afrikaners and functioned as racial and cultural boundaries, growing more porous. This chapter examines new charismatic and Pentecostal churches in Stellenbosch, describing how, after initially being rejected as “not proper”, they were admitted within the boundaries of ordentlikheid. The new churches were perceived in a dual light, as mediating multiculturalism while simultaneously threatening racial and moral boundaries. The mounting concerns and moral panics about the changes in the town's religious field made visible the flexibility and resilience of the lines of ordentlikheid. Despite the rupture in the religious field, Afrikaners' cultural recognition of their traditions remained strong, while their sense of moral continuity and social order continued to guide them. This chapter examines the post-apartheid religious transformation and its consequences using ethnographic examples from the author's fieldwork among Stellenbosch Afrikaners.
