David Chidester: Wild Religion: Tracking the Sacred in South Africa

David Chidester’s Wild Religion focuses on religious diversity and South Africa ‘‘from the advent of democracy in 1994 to the euphoria of the Football World Cup in 2010’’ (viii). It is not a conventionally defined description of particular faith communities or sacred rituals but rather an attempt to describe in a well-informed story-telling anecdotal way how ritual and the sacred are used (and misused) ‘‘for negotiating a human identity’’ in times of transition. Thus it is ‘‘wild’’ religion, a reaction to a new and ‘‘wild’’ world that throws both punches and surprises. The ‘‘sacred’’ is then used to either vent frustration and anger—thus disruptive of social order, or it can be used in a way to deal with it, to pacify and interpret it, to recreate social order. It is ‘‘a hybrid of order and chaos’’ (4). Wild Religion is a sociological study of religion in an extremely interesting time and place written in an original, scholarly and entertaining way focusing on a truly diverse and multicultural society in transition. However, it discusses the phenomena with examples from all over the world and from various times in history. It never gets dull but it often made me wonder if all of this is really an accurate and a just rendering of reality. One can prove your point that the religious scenario is actually constant chaos by simply telling and quoting enough (well documented!) stories. It truly is a bit wild, like the hair raising stories about hair (5–10)! But I guess that is the point that the author wants to make, it is a messy chaos even though one can find a basic logic that helps one to understand the constant fluctuations. What exactly this basic logic is becomes clear and is well articulated in the final chapter. After critiquing systematic descriptions of the religious system of the Amazulu and the highly respected and often quoted work of John Mbiti, the author concludes that such ‘‘utopian’’ religious systems simply never existed (192). He continues (192):