‘The church should teach us to do respect’: Voices from rural youth in Mpumalanga, South Africa

HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies

 
 
Field Value
 
Title ‘The church should teach us to do respect’: Voices from rural youth in Mpumalanga, South Africa
 
Creator Landman, Christina Yates, Hannelie
 
Subject — Dullstroom-Emnotweni; Belfast-Siyathuthuka; marginalised youth; embodiment of respect; church in South Africa; rural South Africa
Description During research conducted between December 2013 and November 2017 with young people in Sakhelwe and Emthonjeni, the ‘townships’ of Dullstroom-Emnotweni and Machadodorp in the east of South Africa, the youth themselves placed ‘respect’ on the research agenda as a value to be discussed with their churches. This article therefore focuses on this ‘discussion’. Additional research was conducted with a third research population, that is, with the youth in Siyathuthuka, the ‘township’ of Belfast. The latter is an adjacent town which, because of mining activities, is affluent in comparison with Sakhelwe and Emthonjeni. This article explores definitions and meanings of ‘respect’ as voiced by five young people from Sakhelwe, three from Emthonjeni and seven from Siyathuthuka. These voices are supplemented with voices from the youth expressed in the previous research conducted between 2013 and 2017. After having explored to what extent the youth saw ‘respect’ as a religious value, their voices are retrieved on their expectations of how their churches can influence society towards the youth being respected and respecting. It is explored to what extent the youth, in a poor and marginalised rural community such as Sakhelwe, in comparison to a more affluent semi-urbanised community such as Siyathuthuka, allowed the church to bring a corrective on the dominant discourse amongst the youth that ‘money, sex, violence and political activism bring respect’.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2018-12-06
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — —
Format text/html application/epub+zip application/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/hts.v74i3.5272
 
Source HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies; Vol 74, No 3 (2018); 8 pages 2072-8050 0259-9422
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/5272/12257 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/5272/12256 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/5272/12258 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/5272/12255
 
Coverage — — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2018 Christina Landman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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