ACADEMIA Letters African Independent Churches and social capital formation Cas Wepener, Stellenbosch University Ignatius Swart, University of the Western Cape Studying religious rituals, almost as lenses, assisted an international research team to better observe and understand social capital formation in congregations at grassroots level in South Africa. This task could be considered as pertinent in a societal context where high forms of religiosity, especially in more traditional contexts, are matched by ongoing challenges of en- demic poverty and achieving inclusive social and economic development. By linking rituals and social capital formation from a conceptual and empirical interest, the research team con- sequently tried to shed light on the role of religious rituals in social capital formation. This was done through ethnographic style feld work in selected African Independent Church (AIC) congregations in South Africa in combination with interdisciplinary theoretical refection. From a most basic understanding, the notion of social capital has been associated with the norms and networks that enable people to act collectively. This has furthermore led to the need for more complex understandings whereby social science researchers have found much value in diferentiating between diferent types, levels or dimensions of social capital under the conceptual rubric of bonding, bridging and linking social capital. In so far as the plight of the poor or poor communities are concerned, the argument developed is that the poor or poor communities are in need of all three forms of social capital in order to progress along the continuum of economic development and social inclusion. In this sense bonding social capital pertains to the intra-community ties within a particular social group, bridging social capital to the extra-community connections the same social group are able to foster, and linking social capital to the ability of that social group to connect with institutions or people in power. Some development experts have referred to social capital in the past as the missing link in social and economic development. This was our foci – by studying the rituals, to discover what Academia Letters, December 2021 Corresponding Author: Cas Wepener, CWEPENER@SUN.AC.ZA Citation: Wepener, C., Swart, I. (2021). African Independent Churches and social capital formation. Academia Letters, Article 4332. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4332. 1 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0