Sacred Heritage and the Politics of Similarity

Abstract

The sacred is not static, for even in a religious context notions of what is sacred evolve and change. Sacred objects can be desacralised and even resacralised with new meanings, while new forms of the sacred can be derived from secular forms. This paper examines an ambivalent dimension in the formation of the sacred, in which similarities in attributes and symbolic representations can become the source of conflict when they appear to have been appropriated and alienated. I suggest that differentiation and conflict among people can arise as much from claims made to distinctiveness based on differences, as from disputes over cultural commonalities or shared symbolism, especially in situations where powerful external forces are at work in promoting integration. Drawing upon field studies of a church museum at Pella in Namaqualand, of the Griqua cultural centre at Ratelgat near Vanrhynsdorp, and of the anthropological exhibition in the Iziko South African Museum, I argue that the concept of “inculturation†being used by the universalist Christian churches as a way of indigenising their versions of Christianity in Africa and throughout the world, is vital to an understanding of the politics of similarity and its effects on museum practice in portraying cultural and religious diversity in South Africa.