FarGo · 'Farming God's Way': Cultivation and religious practice in contemporary South Africa

With this project, I will to study how religious agents engage with every-day challenges connected to food security, environmental decline and climate change. Via ethnographic methods, I will examine religious attitudes to environmental concerns through the case of Pentecostal Christian farming in South Africa. By investigating Pentecostal Christians’ methods of combining biblical principles and secular management approaches, I aim to provide a unique analysis of how Christian farming shapes religious practices that strive for social and ecological sustainability. Situated against a dichotomy between man and nature in Christians traditions historically, the proposed project will generate novel theoretical insights into how religious agents’ relationship to materiality today is manifested. Moreover, the project will demonstrate how the interplay between Christianity and farming produce novel social relationships in the intersection of religion, gender and race. As a religious scholar in the intersection of theology and social science, I understand how religious ideas and practices relate to identity-making, culture and social interactions. I have studied Pentecostal Christianity in Eastern Africa, so I have a robust and field-tested methodological and theoretical framework for investigation of Christian farming in South Africa. The Centre of African Studies at UCPH will be the perfect setting for this project due to its expertise on the material aspects of religion as well as climate and environmental changes. At this centre, I will have the opportunity to improve both my professional maturity and interdisciplinary skills. In addition, the fellowship will allow me to develop transferable skills in relation to project management, administration and teaching—skills that will enhance my career prospects within, as well as outside, academia.