From its jazz to its cuisine to its
people, we’ve seen that Capetownian culture is built on the blending of many
distinct cultures and histories, and you can pretty much find any experience
you’re looking for within walking distance of our guesthouse. This has been
especially true in our few Sunday ventures out to various local churches. Our first
Sunday here we stuck together and attended the Sivuyile National Baptist Church
in the Guguletu township, a primarily Xhosa service. I’ve been to a number of
Baptist churches in my day, and this was quite a different experience than any
of my previous encounters. As I look back, what sticks out most is the music;
they sang and swayed and beat their Bibles, dancing up and down the aisles to
songs they all mainly knew by heart. They even sang a new song Vernon taught
them and an older hymn in English for us. This church also had a sense of deep community—the
children were running around and the older kids were watching after the younger
ones, everyone greeted warmly as they walked in, and they even had candy to
offer to some of the more adventurous in our group. It seemed like service was
a free-form all-day affair and the only place to find someone on a Sunday
morning (and afternoon, maybe even evening), and the congregation seemed to
like it that way. I would be interested to see if this service was typical of
most smaller township churches; perhaps we will have the chance to visit
another before we head back to the states.
The next Sunday a few of us
attended St. George’s Cathedral, a historic Anglican church in the center of
downtown Capetown. I can hardly imagine a starker contrast. This was a highly liturgical
(mainly Latin) service complete with a 20 page booklet of lyrics and call-and-response
cues. The 40 piece choir sang semi-familiar old hymns and the Reverend
carefully blessed communion and led confession. While this service was all in
English, they offered Xhosa and Afrikkans translations. Despite all the
formality, the Reverend delivered a sermon about social action and the parishioners
around us were extremely friendly (one, oddly enough, even told us dated a girl
from St. Louis). Music and scripture were key parts of this service as well,
but in a quite different way than the week before at the Guguletu church.
This past Sunday we attended a
Zimbabwean Catholic mass, which was almost a blend of both previous
services. After
a taxi in the rain and first thinking that we had missed the mass
entirely, we
were excited that a service was even taking place. The music was all in
Shona
and sounded similar to the Guguletu music, with flutes and drums and
careful
harmonies. The service was a very typical Catholic mass though (I was
told by
our Catholic housemates), despite being long because of the singing, and
was
mainly in English. Occasionally, the crowd would respond to the priest
in Shona and our housemates who knew the format of a mass would respond
in
English, and this blend easily became my favorite part of the whole
service. It was
fascinating to think that while the 3 churches I had attended in
Capetown were
all worshiping in different ways, Catholic churches across the globe
were
worshiping in a similar way worldwide on that given Sunday.
Going back over each service in my
head they are clearly distinct, but (in perhaps the most important ways) are also
strikingly similar. Each was inviting and glad to have visitors, each shared a commitment
to worshiping God and bringing the congregation into that worship, and each
brought a message to the congregations about how to live out faith in daily
life in South Africa. Ultimately, despite denominational boundaries, I’ve
learned that churches in Capetown wrestle with similar issues and seem to
provide a place for people to come in their own way (and generally in their own
language) to worship, even though it looks completely different depending on
where you walk in on a Sunday morning.
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