Belonging, Blackness and African Initiated Christianity from a Student Perspective: Implications for Proudly South African Universities

This qualitative study focuses on the impact of religious faith on the sense and politics of belonging amongst Black undergraduate students from a selected African Initiated Church at the University of Johannesburg. The findings are based on focus group and individual interviews conducted with a total of nine students who belong to the Nazareth Baptist Church (NBC), which was established in the early 1900s in a context marked by resistance towards colonial Christianity and whiteness. The findings reveal that, on the one hand, research participants view their faith as integral to gaining access to the university and succeeding in the university setting. On the other hand, their faith also frequently renders them the ‘other’ on campus, be it through a personal/communal choice of self-exclusion or through feelings of out-of-placeness in relation to the broader campus community. Against the backdrop of the debates on the westernised university (informed and shaped by Eurocentric ways of being) and a South African university (informed and shaped by the diverse ways of being in South Africa – and globally), the study highlights the importance of universities in South Africa not only valuing diversity but finding ways to engage the diverse student body as equals in co-creating a South African university. In this context, inviting religious student groups into the conversation without an aim of converting them to the faith of the university is a critical step towards becoming and being a South African university.