Reading Scripture in a Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

While the Bible continues to fund the religious imagination of the community of faith, the church has often been found guilty of reading the Bible oppressively. Such readings emerge because of a general ignorance of the layered traditions that reflect diverse social locations, and a complex transmission and interpretive history. This essay is particularly concerned with reading practices which both remains faithful to ancient biblical contexts, as well as to how gender identity, as a fluid construct, is continually negotiated in post-apartheid South Africa. By employing postcolonial optics, this paper hopes to re-imagine gendered identity in a post-apartheid South Africa.