I'm not too competent about the Anglican church of SA. But here are my impressions. Maybe its relative conservatism has something to do with the fact that there are many Anglo-Catholics within its jurisdiction. But then, the SA anglican church is regarded as one of the more "tolerant" anglican branches in Africa as a whole.
And there's also the SA church-of-England which is like the Evangelist belt in US. It's separate from the Anglican one but exhibits a significant influence too.
However, the influence of the Church on people's perceptions and mentality, no matter of which ethnic community of SA they are, has never been too profound. And here's the big difference with US, which was not clearly a secular state as was South Africa. There are many reasons. The local traditions are always altered through the specific prism of each ethnic community. Even the famous Desmond Tutu (who won the Nobel peace prize) has not contributed much to the Church to become a dominant factor in social life, like the case was in Canada until a couple of decades ago. Probably because people had other, far more urgent problems to deal with at that time ;-)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2007-12-18 07:11 pm (UTC)And there's also the SA church-of-England which is like the Evangelist belt in US. It's separate from the Anglican one but exhibits a significant influence too.
However, the influence of the Church on people's perceptions and mentality, no matter of which ethnic community of SA they are, has never been too profound. And here's the big difference with US, which was not clearly a secular state as was South Africa. There are many reasons. The local traditions are always altered through the specific prism of each ethnic community. Even the famous Desmond Tutu (who won the Nobel peace prize) has not contributed much to the Church to become a dominant factor in social life, like the case was in Canada until a couple of decades ago. Probably because people had other, far more urgent problems to deal with at that time ;-)