Cultivating ’Black Gold’: Compost politics and Ordered Gardens among Evangelical-Charismatic Christians in South Africa

Could God be present in decomposed organic matter? How are projects of making compost influencing Christians’ view and relationship to webs of biological life? Looking at a present-day project of religious education aimed at cultivating regenerative Christian farmers in South Africa, I examine conservative Evangelical-Charismatic Christians’ compostmaking practices. By addressing a Christian pedagogics of mimicking the biotic order revealed in nature, I outline key aims of establishing sensory immersion with compost-making as a core educational tool for (re)ordering how Christians cultivate nature and human-nature relations. Situated in the post-apartheid context of South Africa, the case points to a compost politics centered on immanence where ordering connected to a biblical past enables Christians to engage in a project of transcending social contestations over land use in post-apartheid South Africa.