While the developed world becomes increasingly secular, South Africa remains a remarkably religious society. Almost 85% of the population believes in a deity, the overwhelming majority (80%) being Christians, and we have a long if not always honourable tradition of invoking His blessing as justification for our actions.

Even the most vehement critic of religion would, on balance, probably conclude that SA’s various faiths have contributed more than they have detracted from the country’s social good. Prior to 1994, when a new democratic African National Congress government started to impement – with very mixed results – structured social upliftment programmes, rural development and poor support was mostly courtesy of the churches and a handful of NGOs, often themselves faith-based in organisation or membership.

The English-language churches were a crucial locus of resistance to apartheid and, eventually, also large sections of Afrikaner Calvinism saw the error of their ways. Historically, the country has been shaped for the good by some towering religious figures, like Bishop John Colenso, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Reverend Beyers Naude, while Mahatma Gandhi – whose philosophy of passive resistance was fired in the crucible of segregationist, Natal colonial society – determined the course of a much wider world.

But, on the other hand, apartheid would never have grown into the monster it did, were it not for the succour it received in its formative years from especially the Afrikaner churches, who assidiously misinterpreted the Bible to justify its iniquities. It is a tradition that flourishes elsewhere. Protestant fundamentalists in the United States are eager to twist the Gospel in support of their government’s political agenda, as of course do Muslim fundamentalists with the Quran.

Then there is the problematic Christian propensity to view almost any government as a legitimate instrument of God, demanding obedience. Were it not for the submissive emphasis of large African faiths like the Zionist Christian Church on “rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”, the National Party government would not have survived long. Nor, for that matter, would the regime of Robert Mugabe survive in Zimbabwe, an even more devoutly Christian country than SA.

This pliability when it comes to bending the knee to authority was on display when a delegation of religious leaders of all faiths met with President Thabo Mbeki some time back about rampant criminal violence. When they raised with him their concerns over a national police commissioner with apparent links to organised crime gangs and the man’s unabashed friendship with drug barons, Mbeki swatted them down genially.

They should just take his word on it, he declared paternalistically. It would in due course become clear why it was crucial to keep the current commissioner. The religious leaders meekly acquiesced. Needless to say, Mbeki’s reasoning, if there is any, to this day remains as unfathomable to the ordinary SA citizen as does the mystery of transubstantiation to a non-Catholic. Both are leaps of faith.

A new book by Martin Prozesky, moral philosopher and head of the Unilever Ethics Centre at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, argues for a more robust, individual response – rather than an automatic faith-based response – to such matters of conscience. Although Prozesky concedes the importance of faith-based morality, he identifies a move towards an ethics of conscience, as the world increasingly outgrows what he felicitously calls “adolescent moralities” that rely on unquestioning obedience.

A major impetus for the change is the spread of democracy, “the most significant political reality of our time”. Because of democracy – and the new information order – for the first time it is possible for geographically separate individuals to develop similar, global visions of how the world should be and then to unite in achieving their goals.

There is support for Prozesky’s argument, for example in the way that civil society groups and ordinary individuals have pushed the issue of global warming issue to the top of the developed world’s political agenda. However, given our own home-grown instinct for compliance, it is likely to take considerably longer before something like Jackie Selebi’s or Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s suitability for public office is forced to the top our own government’s list of priorities.

Professor Martin Prozesky’s Conscience: Ethical Intelligence for Global Wellbeing, is published by the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.

Jaundiced Eye column, 22 September 2007