Book Review: <i>Faith and the Fragility of Justice: Responses to Gender-Based Violence in South Africa</i> , By Meredith Whitnah Faith and the Fragility of Justice: Responses to Gender-Based Violence in South Africa. By WhitnahMeredith. Newark, NJ:Ru

In Faith and the Fragility of Justice: Responses to Gender-Based Violence in South Africa, Meredith Whitnah offers a nuanced sociological and theological analysis of how three Christian nongovernmental organizations in South Africa have engaged with questions of justice across two defining eras: apartheid and the early decades of democracy.Whitnah contends that their theological convictions intersected with their social positioning to shape how they act.She conceptualizes this dynamic as "theological cultures": patterns of intersecting beliefs and social positioning that shape an organization's responses to social issues.The book's central thesis is that religious beliefs are fundamental to institutional processes that either sustain or challenge inequality and violence.In this sense, the pursuit of justice by faith-based organizations is shaped not only by their racial composition, gender dynamics, or institutional histories but also by their particular theological claims.This framing enables Whitnah to interrogate a critical puzzle: why did organizations that were active in resisting racial injustice under apartheid show such varied-and at times limited-engagement with gender-based violence (GBV) and gender injustice in the democratic era?The study spans the late 1970s through 2004, a period that encompasses the intensification of resistance to apartheid, the democratic transition of the 1990s, and the first decade of postapartheid governance.Whitnah focuses on three South African Protestant Christian organizations: the South African Council of Churches, the Pietermaritzburg Agency for Christian Social Awareness, and African Enterprise.All three organizations were multiracial, ecumenical, and explicitly opposed to apartheid, yet they developed markedly different responses to GBV.