1 Corruption and the Role of Religion in Public Life (With a new Postscript, 2017) James R Cochrane University of Cape Town Author’s note: This piece was originally written for and published by the Public Services Commission of South Africa in 1999 (reference below). Almost 20 years later I have updated what I wrote then, mostly in footnotes, partly by means of a postscript, at a time when corruption is entrenched at the highest levels. Previously frowned upon in public, thanks to complicit actors in many sectors including government, corruption is now close to being normalized. Original published in: Stan Sangweni & Daryl Balia (eds), Fighting Corruption: South African Perspectives, Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 1999, 41-57. - Left hand margin numbers signal footnotes with updated comments on the original. The role of religion in public life is contested territory, sometimes to the point of a desire to separate the two things entirely. This is particularly the case where a society opts for a political system that accepts a plurality of religions and privileges none. Modern democracies are like that, and ours is no exception as it develops and grows. Yet—notwithstanding the long popularity of secularism—the problems that arise when religion is treated merely as obscurantist, retrograde, archaic or, at best, something for persons in their interior lives rather than something of significance in the public sphere, have in recent times become more evident. For example, one country keen to see a separation between religion and the state and thus between religion and public institutions has been the USA. Its constitution is radical in this respect, as most people will know. Nonetheless, it is precisely here that a positive flood of literature has emerged since the nineties from perspectives that are intrinsically religious as groups of all kinds try to unpack and reshape polity and practice where it is failing. For much is seen to be failing as the classical institutions of civil society erode in the face of market forces and multiple “publics,” 1 and as health, welfare and educational systems are increasingly deprived of public monies. We are in a different context in South Africa, to be sure. We have a different history and a different demographic make-up. We have different opportunities too. How then do we make the most of them? To what extent is religion a problem to be sidelined or side-stepped in public life? To what extent is it a potential to be harnessed and developed? The Idiosyncratic Character of a Public Religion Religion, it is often said—in both colloquial discourse and in formal debates in our public institutions—should stick to what it knows best and leave both politics and economics to those whose business that is. From some religious quarters this sentiment would also receive support on the grounds that religion should not get its hands dirty in the compromises and corruptions of political and economic life. 1 This plurality of publics is often discussed in terms of so-called “culture wars” that have both undermined the “traditional” American white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) ethos and torpedoed the classic American notion of the “melting pot” nation. Division is now a hallmark of US politics. 1