Kingdom Come: The Politics of Faith and Freedom in Segregationist South Africa and Beyond

Abstract

In this review, I engage Tshepo Chéry’s Kingdom Come: The Politics of Faith and Freedom in Segregationist South Africa and Beyond as a powerful and necessary intervention in the fields of African religious history and postcolonial political thought. I highlight how Chéry reframes South African liberation history by centering African Christian actors, especially Black clergy and African-initiated churches, not as passive inheritors of Western theology but as architects of a distinctly African theology of resistance. I draw attention to her compelling argument that religious belief, far from being a colonial residue, served as a generative site for political imagination, anti-colonial struggle, and the redefinition of identity. In tracing spiritual insurgency well before formal apartheid resistance, Chéry challenges secular teleologies and opens space for a richer understanding of the theological dimensions of African nationalism. I also underscore her attention to gender, particularly the overlooked roles of African women in shaping prophetic and communal life. Through this review, I aim to foreground the book’s methodological depth, emotional resonance, and its contribution to rethinking the place of theology in African and diasporic freedom movements. Kingdom Come, I argue, is an essential text for scholars of religion, African history, and liberation politics.