Power and faith: how ‘colour blind’ evangelism brings submission back to Africa
On a TikTok video she made, Pontsho Pilane holds a South African Christian magazine called Joy! The cover shows the face of Erica Kirk, the widow of extreme right-wing evangelical influencer Charlie Kirk, who was recently killed in the US. In the photo, Erica smiles enrapturedly, her blonde hair cascading against a blue background. “Look how her gaze is turned upward to the heavens, and how a little gold cloud advertises ‘biblical values’,” Pilane says, explaining how the entire visual is “designed to pull us in.”
Pilane knows what she is talking about, having spent nearly a decade within a born-again Christian environment herself. At 19 in 2009, emerging from a painful past both personally and as part of South Africa’s traumatised Black community, she joined an evangelical, multicoloured ‘rainbow’ mega-church, unnamed and referred to as The Family in her recently published book Power and Faith.
In the book, Pilane explains that this had seemed the right choice at the time because the church was “multiracial like the country” and appealed to her longing for a safe space beyond the pain of the past. “But they brainwash you into right-wing Christian nationalism.” Power and Faith exposes the insidious strain of ‘Charlie Kirk’ evangelism that entrenches the submission of the poor and is actively exported from the US to the African continent.
EG: Your book starts with the dismay that preceded you leaving the church. You realised that the church would not support its Black student members who were fighting for equal access to education at the time, in 2016. They even seemed to criticise you for raising the inequality between disadvantaged black and privileged white students. The pastor asked: ‘Are you Black or are you Christian?’
The pastor asked, “Are you Black or are you Christian?”
PP: I had found myself drawn to this church because it seemed so close to the rainbow-nation idea of South Africa. It projected a sense of ‘we are beyond apartheid; we are now all equal and welcome’. But after that discussion, I realised that the church was not about tackling racism or any of our other social ills. In the country, that promise was already failing; it had become about Black people swallowing their pain for the larger project of the rainbow nation — or, rather, the bastardised rainbow nation. My disappointment with the country coincided with the shock of realising that the same thing was happening in the church.
Self-sacrifice
EG: But surely a rainbow nation is not something one simply gets; it is an ideal to work towards?
PP: Just that the ‘working towards’ was not happening. As Black members of the church, we were required to self-sacrifice while the wrongs we were experiencing went unspoken. I was working in our church youth groups with young people like me, who were being excluded from tertiary education because we could not afford it. We were expected to work for the church, travel up and down by bus, and never mention our problems, while white student church members drove their own cars and had not a financial care in the world. I realised that racism, patriarchy, sexism, capitalism, exploitation, and homophobia were not going to be addressed here, just as they were not being addressed in the country. To see that in what I had thought was a safe space, a place where the Bible says all are welcome, was a lot to take in.
EG: You tried to raise the issue.
PP: I went on Facebook to critique the church’s #colourblind campaign, which had begun in the middle of the student protests. That campaign urged us to proclaim everywhere that God loves all colours, that God doesn’t see colour. We were instructed to stay away from “politics” and choose prayer instead. I watched Black pastors and congregants trying to be “good Blacks”, who had supposedly transcended the “flesh” of race… I criticised this, arguing that colourblindness was in fact racist and unjust. A little later, I received a call from my youth pastor, Thabo, demanding that I answer one question: was I Black or was I Christian? I tried to say I was both, but that was clearly not acceptable.
They were saying that God does not see colour
EG: Did you discuss this with the other church youth leaders?
PP: These conversations remained on the surface. That level, I realised later, was just designed to prop up the machinery of such a mega-church. I then reached out to the main pastor via Facebook. This was the only way, since you don’t get to speak to him; he is an idol, only ever seen on stage. I received a reply, either from him or from someone on his staff, saying that yes, we must stand against injustice: peacefully, together, white and Black. But there was nothing to suggest that the church intended to take our concerns seriously. That was when I knew I had to leave.
Conservative messaging
EG: There are many churches that are apolitical or conservative. In your book, you mention having to cover yourself from head to toe in the traditional church your family attended. You also describe how pregnant girls were called to the altar to be ‘shamed’. How is that different from The Family?
“Your time is taken up with getting people to be saved by Jesus”
Firstly, the conservative messaging in the Family was more veiled, at least initially. More importantly, in traditional churches, you have a life within your real-world community, and you have the privilege of time to socialise within the wider society. In evangelical-type churches, however, much of your time is consumed by the belief that people need to be saved by Jesus. In the rural North West, where my family comes from, one woman was ‘saved’ by such a church and then started her own section in her yard, attempting to replicate the mega-church model. This sparked a significant community dispute.
EG: Those are the evangelical churches of the poor.
PP:Yes, in the poorer versions, they get a lot of bad press because they make a spectacle out of extreme acts, like eating grass or spraying yourself with insecticide to drive out demons. South African politicians have expressed serious concern about these practices, often veering into xenophobic remarks, such as, “these are scam artists from other African countries.” But the Western or US-inspired ‘civilised’ mega-churches may be just as problematic, or even worse, because they enthral you with far more sophisticated performances. It’s show and lighting, it’s so well-oiled. The sermons are meticulously designed, and the whole presentation resembles a concert. It feels like a night out. You get the sense you’re missing out if you’re not part of the club.
EG: And they save you.
PP: That’s another hook. The whole set-up is to bring up an emotional, visceral reaction. There is a crescendo at the end of the sermon. The drumming goes up. The lights are dimmed. The pastor's voice will always go softer, hoarser. So there is a manufacturing of an environment that enables vulnerability for someone to walk to the altar and surrender.
Prosperity gospel
EG: Many people will feel vulnerable, because there is so much pain, especially within the Black community.
PP: Yes. And if you pair that with a very Christian upbringing, which most of us have, you are primed to believe that the church, as an extension of God, will save you. And then you follow the prosperity gospel they teach: your ‘saving’ now means that you must work. Your faithfulness, your commitment, your serving, your tithing — giving the church one-tenth of your income — your giving of your time: all these things, you are told, will make you healthier, wealthier, happier. As a 19-year-old, you hear older people testify, “I’ve been in the church for 10 years; this is what God has provided.” The environment really lends itself to capitalist understandings of reward.
EG: And if you don’t get rewarded, you are doing something wrong.
PP: Yes. You need to be more faithful. And that demands more and more of your time — at one point, I was working for the church six days a week while also being a full-time student. You really lose contact with society.
EG: When you say you are pushed to recruit more and more members to be “saved”, it sounds like a pyramid scheme.
PP: It is a pyramid scheme! The point is not what happens in the outside world, but what is funnelled back into the church. Pastor Thabo — the same pastor who once asked me whether I was Black or Christian — may be Black himself, but he has reached the top. He has benefited from the system; he is complicit.
The church is a pyramid scheme
EG: What do the whites in the church get out of it?
PP: Redemption. From being in community with so many Black people, you earn the good white label. You have transcended the shame of whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa.
EG:The South African Constitution is strong on Black empowerment, women’s rights, abortion rights, and so on. Yet many in political leadership seem remarkably tolerant of churches like The Family. Is South Africa, perhaps, more conservative beneath that Constitution than it appears? You note in your book that, even before The Family, the government remained silent on the US-led ‘Global Gag Rule’, which prevented NGOs from even discussing abortion. You also describe how government services engage with communities largely through faith-based organisations.
PP: There are two different things. Even in our NGO work, when we need a venue in a community, we ask the church, simply because sometimes there is no other community hall. And also, where do people already gather? In church. I have no problem with that as long as no nefarious agendas are being pushed. But when that power is unchecked, a foothold for bad faith can develop. And I feel the government is not checking it. We have a Cultural, Religious and Linguistic (CRL) Rights Commission that has raised concerns about instances of exploitation of churchgoers, but its focus often remains on poor Black sects. Yet we should also, if not more so, be attending to the rise of US-inspired evangelical Christian nationalism. Their influence is growing. We already see traditional churches beginning to adopt some of these charismatic tactics, with lights and music shows, because the evangelical machineries are drawing the youth away from them.
Unchecked influence
EG: Won’t this unchecked influence eventually come back to haunt the government? In your book, the senior pastor initially insists that the faithful must submit to worldly authorities — even to the notoriously corrupt Jacob Zuma at the time — but the church shifts its stance once the government begins implementing measures to curb the spread of COVID.
PP: During the COVID lockdowns, they launched campaigns such as “Open up the Churches.” For them, the bottom line seemed to be that the church must not be weakened. With people no longer attending, the church was losing its grip on them.
EG: People were getting de-brainwashed?
PP: Yes. I know when COVID happened, and people were not in church 3 to 5 days a week, quite a few people I knew said ‘hold on’, - why am I spending so much time in church anyway? Why am I giving so much money to the church?
EG: Is that why we see some of the conspiracy-driven fear-mongering? Does that fear make you retreat completely into the fold?
People are pushed to the extreme Christian Nationalist agenda
PP: Absolutely. When I was so preoccupied with church work in that way, I didn’t have time for anything else. This is where the danger lies. For example, the fact that an Afrikaner preacher, Heinz Winckler (1), has now started a local version of Charlie Kirk’s organisation, Turning Point SA, will not immediately cause overt harm. Winckler won’t at once claim that Black women lack the capacity to think, the kind of explicitly racist statements that Charlie Kirk made. Instead, he will frame issues as “corruption is a problem,” “children are not being protected,” or “universities have become immoral.” He will speak at length about moral values, family values, and marriage values. The harm, however, lies in the daily exposure of ordinary South Africans who attend these churches week in and week out. They are gradually immersed in ideologies that steer them toward the extreme. And that extreme, ultimately, is the right-wing Christian Nationalist agenda.
Whitewashing
EG: There seems to be one such agenda in the West and another in Africa. If I look at the evangelical right wing in the US, or even in Europe, their imagery centres on blond, blue-eyed families and babies. Very often, these Western-based right-wing groups oppose migrants, or even any Black people, residing in the West. In Africa, however, they mobilise Black people around the same family values, urging them, as you note in your book, to multiply and have many children as well.
PP: What I see in South Africa is that, as Black people in that church, we are being deracialized. The question I was asked, “Are you Black or are you Christian?” shows that it's almost as if they are trying to create a new race.
EG: Are they whitewashing you?
PP Yes! It is whitewashing. Because there is no assimilation into Blackness in right-wing evangelical ideology. There is an assimilation of Black people into whiteness through the abdication of Blackness. We are now colourblind.
EG: Which is a problem
PP: Because it means you don’t see me.
The Christian veil covers powerful interests
EG: And you must stay in your place in a white-led, male-led hierarchy that is not questioned. But how does it play out in other African countries, where everyone is Black?
PP: They market conservative values. They succeed in getting all these homophobic bills and laws tabled in Uganda, Ghana, and Nigeria. The Pan-African Conference on Family Values was hosted in Kenya in May (2). A lot of prominent African politicians and government officials attended that conference, where US evangelical leader Sharon Slater spoke. We also had a leader of a right-wing organisation based in Poland speaking, sharing tactics on “how we reversed abortion rights in Poland; this is what you guys can do here.”
EG: So you have these white speakers and leaders welcomed by African politicians.
PP: We need an understanding of the common thread in all of this — this purported Christian belief over our other consciousness. Over any other difference. The Christian belief becomes the binder. That is premised on conservative ideas of what society should be.
EG: The (Ugandan president) Museveni’s of this world would also like that. He would prefer that people not talk about his regime.
PP: Exactly. That is why the book is called Power and Faith. Because there is political power involved. They get money from these Western entities as a way to stay in power, to exert power. The Christian veil covers powerful interests.
EG: I remember Museveni’s wife talking about how short skirts are responsible for the problems in society, not bad governance.
PP: Power and faith. There is none without the other. But you know… I have lots of Christian friends who are progressive, who come up to me and say, “But what should we do?” And I’m like, “You need to fight for your Jesus.”
EG: The real one.
PP: Yes, the real one.
- Heinz Winckler and his wife run the evangelical Love Key Church, from which Alette Winckler also promotes a ‘Christian’ diet, including the sale of specialised products “to equip and empower individuals with biblical truth, natural tools, and education to support the body’s God-designed ability to heal.”
- An Al Jazeera op-ed on the same conference lambasted the event’s espoused ‘traditional African family values’ as part of “conservative social agendas rooted in colonial and missionary legacies.” ZAM has reported on a Dutch lobbyist’s involvement in the same campaigns in Africa.
Pontsho Pilane works for the Soul City Institute for Social Justice.
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