Playing the Waiting Game: The Changing Nature of Companionate Marriage at a Small Pentecostal Charismatic Church in Pretoria, South Africa

Abstract

This article focuses on the ways in which a group of mostly gay, Afrikaans-speaking Christians interpret, appropriate, and deploy the institution of marriage at a small Pentecostal Charismatic Church in Pretoria. In so doing, it demonstrates that research into the relationship between Christianity and same-sex relationships in Africa needs to focus not only on moral panic and homophobia, but also on how Christianity creates agentive spaces for claiming sexual responsibility and constructing virtuous personhood. Through three life histories, it illustrates how a group of gay Afrikaans-speaking Pentecostals use the institution of marriage to broadcast outward respectability, reconfigure kinship, and refashion community. However, it also speaks to the frustration of this cultural ideal and the ways in which ‘waiting’ works to mitigate such frustrations.