Afrikaner Calvinism
Encyclopedia
Afrikaner Calvinism is, according to theory, a unique cultural development that combined the Calvinist religion with the political aspirations of the white Afrikaans speaking people of South Africa
.
From 1652 to 1835, settlers primarily from the Netherlands
, and migrant and refugee Calvinist Protestants from Germany
, France
, Scotland
, and elsewhere in Europe
, combined in South Africa to form a distinct people, called the Afrikaner
s. A significant number of the French progenitors of the Afrikaner people were Huguenot
s, who first began to arrive between 1687 and 1691 in flight from the persecution that lasted for one hundred years after the Edict of Nantes
was revoked. Between the end of the 18th century and the end of the 20th century, these people increasingly considered themselves Afrikaner (originally meaning simply "African") rather than European. They spoke their own, indigenous language, called Afrikaans, and were bound together by a form of Calvinist
religion. The Afrikaners negotiated a home-rule arrangement in the four British Colonies 10 years after the Anglo-Boer war and firmly established themselves as the ruling minority in South Africa until international pressure and increasing chaos within South Africa compelled them to dismantle their policies of exclusive control, called Apartheid.
was the first colonial success in South Africa. The key to this success was the establishment of strict rules of trade between the settlement and the native population. No trade or Christian
missionary ventures among the Africans were permitted without the permission of the company administrator. Stealing or shooting cattle was especially forbidden as a cause of inevitable conflict with the natives. The early Europeans were appalled by the appearance and the customs of the Africans, and the completely false report that the natives were cannibals reinforced their motive to avoid unnecessary contact. The Cape was a walled garden, with Africa
on the outside and Europe
within. This strict order minimized conflicts with the Africans during the early settlement period.
Yet, many of the settlers had arrived with a missionary motive. The synthesis of these attitudes of strict avoidance and a missionary conscience resulted in the widespread practice of indenturing the native Khoisan population, and within that master/servant relationship, to teach the Bible
to them in hope that the message would filter back through the servant's family (along with reports of the superiority of European life) and thus bring about conversion.
The farmers who lived outside of the physical walls of the towns had a different arrangement than the townspeople. To them, occupation meant ownership, and ownership implied the right to protect their property. As they settled into the seemingly unoccupied territories surrounding the Cape, they enforced these assumptions of ownership and its rights when the wandering hunters or herding tribes would cross the Fish River into farm territories in search of grazing land or game. Thus, the farms represented an extension beyond the towns of the wall of separation between the white and the black occupants of the land. As in the towns, plantation
slavery
was sometimes seen as a means of evangelism
.
Separation and rules of exchange were opposed very early in the Afrikaner mind to invasion and conquest. And, this anti-imperialism
extended also to the theory of missionary obligation that developed within the Dutch Reformed Church
: the kingdom of God
will grow within the sphere of influence assigned to the church by divine providence, as children are taught the Gospel by their parents and family. If God deems it fitting for the Gospel to be received by the natives, and taught to their children, then this is his glory. Toward that end, Christians have a defining role given them from God, a calling, or covenantal responsibility as God's people, to keep themselves pure in the faith and just in their dealings with the heathen, and to be absolutely unyielding in their protection of what has been legitimately claimed in the name of the Triune God
.
. The things they suffered, and the strong bonds between them that were formed through it all, seemed to confirm this idea at every turn. Their history as a people has a central place in forming the Boer religion. In this way, a distinctive folk character became attached to their Calvinistic beliefs.
This folk religion
was not articulated in a formal way. It was the experience of the Afrikaners, which they interpreted through their assurance that their absolutely sovereign Creator and Lord had shown special grace to them as a particular people.
brought these habits of thought more self-consciously to the surface. France invaded the Republic of the United Provinces in January 1794, the Stadtholder fled to England and asked the British Government to send the Navy to take care of the possessions of the United East Indies Company that was in dire financial straits and in which he had a huge stake. The British took care of the Cape of Good Hope
in 1795 and handed it back to the Batavian Republic after the Peace of Amiens. For about a year and a half, Enlightenment ideas were promoted by Janssens and De Mist, including changes in church government. In 1806, the British Navy invaded the Cape of Good Hope on its own, and appointed British land administrators there, who were zealous propagators of the Enlightenment. They loosened the trade and labor regulations, speaking of the blacks as 'noble savages' whose untainted natural souls they professed to admire. The British Government outlawed slavery in the British Empire in 1835. They called the blacks equals, and gave them access to the courts in suit against white landowners. And, they professed to believe in their own autonomous Reason
above all else.
A more antithetical message could hardly be imagined, as the English Enlightenment found itself with the Afrikaners for the first time. From the Boer point of view, the Enlightenment invaded their shores, seized their properties, annexed their farms, imposed alien laws, liberated their slaves without compensation, justified these actions by appeal to Reason alone, and claimed in all of this to be more virtuous than their God. They were exposed to the Enlightenment, and it appeared to them to be a revolution against their God and way of life.
went to the Transvaal in 1853, and became a minister in the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk
, which was constituted in 1856, and in 1860 recognised as the State Church of the South African Republic
, separate from the Cape Church.
Meanwhile, back in the Netherlands, the Dutch State church had also been transformed by the Enlightenment, a change represented in the minds of those opposed it, by the loss of any meaningful profession of faith as requisite for adult church members, and the singing of hymns (in addition to psalms) and other innovations in worship and doctrine. In the Netherlands a movement grew in reaction to this perceived dismantlement of Biblical faith. It was called the Afscheiding, in which the Rev. Hendrik de Cock separated himself from the State Church in 1834 in Ulrum, Groningen. There was also a movement called the Reveil
(Awakening), supported by those who did not separate from the State Church, like Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer
, whose writings became known in South Africa. and much later the leader of another schism called thre Doleantie, Abraham Kuyper
, began to become known to the Afrikaners. Highly critical of the Enlightenment, the "revolution" as they called it, the Doleantie in the church had counterparts in education and in politics. The timing of this influence was significant, coming on the crest of a wave of evangelical revival, the Reveil
(Awakening) in the Dutch Reformed Church which had been led in South Africa by the Scottish preacher, Andrew Murray
. The slogan of the Doleantie, which eventually rang with unintended nationalist
nuance for the Afrikaners was, "Separation is Strength".
), he and the Doppers, numbering about 300 adults, among whom was the later President Paul Kruger, broke away from the state church to form the Gereformeerde Kerk in Rustenburg in February 1859. There were thus now three Dutch Reformed Churches in South Africa — the Afrikaner Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk (the Cape Synod), the Boer Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk
, which was the State Church of the South African Republic, and the Boer Gereformeerde Kerk, the smallest of the three, led by Rev. Postma.
The originally contemptuous name, Dopper, may come from the Dutch domp (wick-snuffers) for their opposition to candles and other innovations in worship, perhaps representing their contempt for the Enlightenment; or, Dopper may originate from Dutch dop (and thus drinkers), perhaps on account of their strong opposition to small, individual communion cups.
The separatism
of the Doppers, expressed in the severity of their doctrine, the austere puritanism
of their worship, and even in their distinctive dress and speech, set them in stark contrast to European influence. Nevertheless, the Doppers were symbolic of resistance to all things English in South Africa, and despite their small size and distinctiveness they were culturally sophisticated and disproportionately influential during and after the Great Trek. It was the Dopper church that established Potchefstroom University. It was within this denomination that Paul Kruger
arose.
The new Boer states which arose after the Great Trek needed a comprehensive philosophy upon which to organize a genuinely Boer society. Voortrekker 'Uncle' Paul Kruger, first president of the South African Republic
upon its reacquired independence after the brief British annexation, adopted the Calvinstic principles in its political form, and formulated the Boer cultural mandate based on the Afrikaner Calvinist conviction that the South Africans had a special calling from God, not unlike the people of Israel in the Bible. The Doppers waged an intellectual war against outlander culture which was flooding into the South African Republic through the mass settlements of foreign squatters lured by gold and diamonds. To the Afrikaner mind, the British represented imperialism, viciousness, outlander oppression, covetousness, envy, and unbelief. When the Anglo-Boer war broke out, Paul Kruger's idealized version of Afrikaner history forged the Afrikaners into a united and formidable force. The Afrikaner's Boer War experience, including the death of 29 000 woman and children in concentration camps, and the wholesale destruction of homesteads, reinforced their laager mentality, so as to preserve themselves and their way of life against the British Empire.
and relinquished control to democratic elections, a small, anonymous group of young intellectuals called the Afrikaner Broederbond
, formed in the years following the Second Anglo-Boer War to discuss strategies for addressing the overwhelming social problem of poor whites and other Afrikaner interests. By the account of Irving Hexham
, according to Klaus Venter and Hendrick Stoker who were themselves disgruntled members of the secret organization, in 1927 the Broederbond moved to Potchefstroom University, asking that the school would take over leadership of the then-struggling group. That year, the Broederbond formally adopted the Calvinist philosophy based on the work of Abraham Kuyper. The Broederbond believed, with deep-rooted conviction, that what their past had provided them through the interpretation of faith was a model of anti-imperialism, self-discipline and responsibility, which in the end would preserve justice for all — blacks, coloured, and whites — against Communist
deceit. These strategies that arose from the Broederbond were directly responsible for the establishment of apartheid, in 1948.
However some who had been members of the organization before 1927 preferred the philosophy of Fichte, and other versions of European Nationalism
. A Fascist
, social Darwinist
agenda in sympathy with Hitler
arose among some whites in South Africa during the Second World War
, which became an unwelcome ally in support of these policies. The Calvinist party within the Broederbond tried to distance itself from this movement, with very limited success because of the secrecy of the organization, their later confessed complete misunderstanding of the real ambitions of non-Afrikaners and blindness to the agony of 'Coloureds' and 'Blacks' under apartheid, and the extreme unpopularity of the apartheid policies in the eyes of non-Afrikaners. The anti-Calvinist nationalists, led by H.F. Verwoerd
, overcame the Calvinists in 1950 and used the Broederbond to advance his own political ambitions. International pressures mounted, increasingly isolating the Afrikaners and identifying their policies with the worst kind of godless oppression; but this was a long time in producing a crisis of conscience — or at least, it did not for some time produce sufficient energy to dismantle the complex social system that had been founded upon apartheid.
After the Sharpeville massacre
in 1960, under enormous international pressure, the Broederbond began a slow and quiet re-examination of their policy proposals. And yet no significant changes took place to reform the apartheid system until the Soweto
riots in 1976. Some time after this, the Broederbond declared apartheid an irreformable failure and began work to dismantle it. The conviction had finally become established, although not universally that, if the Afrikaner people, language and religion were to survive, they must take the initiative to emerge from the laager, and invite South Africa in. The Broederbond (dropping the policy of secrecy and with the new name Afrikanerbond) began proposing initiatives for land reform and the reversal of apartheid.
Although Afrikaner and Boer Calvinism was united during much of the 20th century, recently it has become increasingly clear that these are two separate forms of Calvinism.
(NGK) into a period of change. While remaining confessionally Calvinist, the religious character of the church is now less cohesive and more difficult to assess. Having been thoroughly conflated with apartheid, historic Calvinism appears to have fallen out of favour. Liberation theology
, which embraces the Enlightenment idea of Revolution
, has gained a foothold in some quarters, and appears to have advocates both the left and right ends of the political spectrum. American-style evangelicalism and Arminianism
also appear to have made inroads, which with its more individualistic emphasis has less potential for a full-scale civil religion. Certainly the old synthesis of revealed and natural theology
is largely repudiated; officially at least. But, the folk religion of the Afrikaners is not dead. Some scholars and revisionist historians are attempting to draw lines of distinction between Calvinism per se, the history of the Afrikaners, and the civil religion of the apartheid regime in particular.
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
.
From 1652 to 1835, settlers primarily from the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, and migrant and refugee Calvinist Protestants from Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, and elsewhere in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, combined in South Africa to form a distinct people, called the Afrikaner
Afrikaner
Afrikaners are an ethnic group in Southern Africa descended from almost equal numbers of Dutch, French and German settlers whose native tongue is Afrikaans: a Germanic language which derives primarily from 17th century Dutch, and a variety of other languages.-Related ethno-linguistic groups:The...
s. A significant number of the French progenitors of the Afrikaner people were Huguenot
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...
s, who first began to arrive between 1687 and 1691 in flight from the persecution that lasted for one hundred years after the Edict of Nantes
Edict of Nantes
The Edict of Nantes, issued on 13 April 1598, by Henry IV of France, granted the Calvinist Protestants of France substantial rights in a nation still considered essentially Catholic. In the Edict, Henry aimed primarily to promote civil unity...
was revoked. Between the end of the 18th century and the end of the 20th century, these people increasingly considered themselves Afrikaner (originally meaning simply "African") rather than European. They spoke their own, indigenous language, called Afrikaans, and were bound together by a form of Calvinist
Calvinism
Calvinism is a Protestant theological system and an approach to the Christian life...
religion. The Afrikaners negotiated a home-rule arrangement in the four British Colonies 10 years after the Anglo-Boer war and firmly established themselves as the ruling minority in South Africa until international pressure and increasing chaos within South Africa compelled them to dismantle their policies of exclusive control, called Apartheid.
Settlement period
The Dutch settlement of the Cape of Good HopeCape of Good Hope
The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa.There is a misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, because it was once believed to be the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In fact, the...
was the first colonial success in South Africa. The key to this success was the establishment of strict rules of trade between the settlement and the native population. No trade or Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
missionary ventures among the Africans were permitted without the permission of the company administrator. Stealing or shooting cattle was especially forbidden as a cause of inevitable conflict with the natives. The early Europeans were appalled by the appearance and the customs of the Africans, and the completely false report that the natives were cannibals reinforced their motive to avoid unnecessary contact. The Cape was a walled garden, with Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
on the outside and Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
within. This strict order minimized conflicts with the Africans during the early settlement period.
Yet, many of the settlers had arrived with a missionary motive. The synthesis of these attitudes of strict avoidance and a missionary conscience resulted in the widespread practice of indenturing the native Khoisan population, and within that master/servant relationship, to teach the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
to them in hope that the message would filter back through the servant's family (along with reports of the superiority of European life) and thus bring about conversion.
The farmers who lived outside of the physical walls of the towns had a different arrangement than the townspeople. To them, occupation meant ownership, and ownership implied the right to protect their property. As they settled into the seemingly unoccupied territories surrounding the Cape, they enforced these assumptions of ownership and its rights when the wandering hunters or herding tribes would cross the Fish River into farm territories in search of grazing land or game. Thus, the farms represented an extension beyond the towns of the wall of separation between the white and the black occupants of the land. As in the towns, plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
was sometimes seen as a means of evangelism
Evangelism
Evangelism refers to the practice of relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs. The term is often used in reference to Christianity....
.
Separation and rules of exchange were opposed very early in the Afrikaner mind to invasion and conquest. And, this anti-imperialism
Anti-imperialism
Anti-imperialism, strictly speaking, is a term that may be applied to a movement opposed to any form of colonialism or imperialism. Anti-imperialism includes opposition to wars of conquest, particularly of non-contiguous territory or people with a different language or culture; it also includes...
extended also to the theory of missionary obligation that developed within the Dutch Reformed Church
Dutch Reformed Church
The Dutch Reformed Church was a Reformed Christian denomination in the Netherlands. It existed from the 1570s to 2004, the year it merged with the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands to form the Protestant Church in the...
: the kingdom of God
Kingdom of God
The Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven is a foundational concept in the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.The term "Kingdom of God" is found in all four canonical gospels and in the Pauline epistles...
will grow within the sphere of influence assigned to the church by divine providence, as children are taught the Gospel by their parents and family. If God deems it fitting for the Gospel to be received by the natives, and taught to their children, then this is his glory. Toward that end, Christians have a defining role given them from God, a calling, or covenantal responsibility as God's people, to keep themselves pure in the faith and just in their dealings with the heathen, and to be absolutely unyielding in their protection of what has been legitimately claimed in the name of the Triune God
Trinity
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three divine persons : the Father, the Son , and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct yet coexist in unity, and are co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial . Put another way, the three persons of the Trinity are of one being...
.
Folk religion
This history is essential to understanding the distinctive concept of "calling" that developed among the Afrikaners. These attitudes, very early adopted, went with them through later conflicts, formed in a way that seemed to them obviously crafted by the hand of God Himself. They believed themselves preserved by God's own wisdom and ProvidenceDivine providence
In Christian theology, divine providence, or simply providence, is God's activity in the world. " Providence" is also used as a title of God exercising His providence, and then the word are usually capitalized...
. The things they suffered, and the strong bonds between them that were formed through it all, seemed to confirm this idea at every turn. Their history as a people has a central place in forming the Boer religion. In this way, a distinctive folk character became attached to their Calvinistic beliefs.
This folk religion
Folk religion
Folk religion consists of ethnic or regional religious customs under the umbrella of an organized religion, but outside of official doctrine and practices...
was not articulated in a formal way. It was the experience of the Afrikaners, which they interpreted through their assurance that their absolutely sovereign Creator and Lord had shown special grace to them as a particular people.
Nationalism
However, the French RevolutionFrench Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
brought these habits of thought more self-consciously to the surface. France invaded the Republic of the United Provinces in January 1794, the Stadtholder fled to England and asked the British Government to send the Navy to take care of the possessions of the United East Indies Company that was in dire financial straits and in which he had a huge stake. The British took care of the Cape of Good Hope
Cape of Good Hope
The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa.There is a misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, because it was once believed to be the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In fact, the...
in 1795 and handed it back to the Batavian Republic after the Peace of Amiens. For about a year and a half, Enlightenment ideas were promoted by Janssens and De Mist, including changes in church government. In 1806, the British Navy invaded the Cape of Good Hope on its own, and appointed British land administrators there, who were zealous propagators of the Enlightenment. They loosened the trade and labor regulations, speaking of the blacks as 'noble savages' whose untainted natural souls they professed to admire. The British Government outlawed slavery in the British Empire in 1835. They called the blacks equals, and gave them access to the courts in suit against white landowners. And, they professed to believe in their own autonomous Reason
Reason
Reason is a term that refers to the capacity human beings have to make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, and to change or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, ...
above all else.
A more antithetical message could hardly be imagined, as the English Enlightenment found itself with the Afrikaners for the first time. From the Boer point of view, the Enlightenment invaded their shores, seized their properties, annexed their farms, imposed alien laws, liberated their slaves without compensation, justified these actions by appeal to Reason alone, and claimed in all of this to be more virtuous than their God. They were exposed to the Enlightenment, and it appeared to them to be a revolution against their God and way of life.
Separation of Boer and Afrikaner Calvinists
During the Great Trek, many people, mostly from the eastern part of the Cape Colony, went north, to areas not under control of the government of the British Crown Colony. Because the Cape Dutch Reformed Church was seen by the trekkers as being an agent of the Cape government, they also did not trust its ministers and emissaries, seeing them as attempts by the Cape government to regain political control. There were also religious divisions among the trekkers themselves. A minister from the Netherlands, Dirk Van der HoffDirk Van der Hoff
Dirk Van der Hoff was minister of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk, one of the Dutch Reformed Churches in South Africa.-Early life:...
went to the Transvaal in 1853, and became a minister in the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk
Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk
The Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk is one of the Three Sister Churches in South Africa. It was the state church of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek.The theology is in the Calvinist tradition-External Links:...
, which was constituted in 1856, and in 1860 recognised as the State Church of the South African Republic
South African Republic
The South African Republic , often informally known as the Transvaal Republic, was an independent Boer-ruled country in Southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century. Not to be confused with the present-day Republic of South Africa, it occupied the area later known as the South African...
, separate from the Cape Church.
Meanwhile, back in the Netherlands, the Dutch State church had also been transformed by the Enlightenment, a change represented in the minds of those opposed it, by the loss of any meaningful profession of faith as requisite for adult church members, and the singing of hymns (in addition to psalms) and other innovations in worship and doctrine. In the Netherlands a movement grew in reaction to this perceived dismantlement of Biblical faith. It was called the Afscheiding, in which the Rev. Hendrik de Cock separated himself from the State Church in 1834 in Ulrum, Groningen. There was also a movement called the Reveil
Réveil
Réveil was a 1814 revival movement within the Swiss Reformed Church of Western Switzerland and Southern France .The supporters were also called pejoratively momiers. The movement was initially under the influence of Barbara von Krüdener and later British Methodists and members of Free Church of...
(Awakening), supported by those who did not separate from the State Church, like Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer
Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer
Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer , Dutch politician and historian, was born at Voorburg, near the Hague.-Overview:...
, whose writings became known in South Africa. and much later the leader of another schism called thre Doleantie, Abraham Kuyper
Abraham Kuyper
Abraham Kuijper generally known as Abraham Kuyper, was a Dutch politician, journalist, statesman and theologian...
, began to become known to the Afrikaners. Highly critical of the Enlightenment, the "revolution" as they called it, the Doleantie in the church had counterparts in education and in politics. The timing of this influence was significant, coming on the crest of a wave of evangelical revival, the Reveil
Réveil
Réveil was a 1814 revival movement within the Swiss Reformed Church of Western Switzerland and Southern France .The supporters were also called pejoratively momiers. The movement was initially under the influence of Barbara von Krüdener and later British Methodists and members of Free Church of...
(Awakening) in the Dutch Reformed Church which had been led in South Africa by the Scottish preacher, Andrew Murray
Andrew Murray (minister)
Andrew Murray was a South African writer, teacher, and Christian pastor. Murray considered missions to be "the chief end of the church."- Early life and education :...
. The slogan of the Doleantie, which eventually rang with unintended nationalist
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
nuance for the Afrikaners was, "Separation is Strength".
Doppers
In the South African Dutch Reformed Church in Transvaal, the more conservative party (known as Doppers) were opposed to singing some hymns in church. They asked the Afgescheiden Gereformeerde Kerk in the Netherland to provide them with a minister. The Rev. Dirk Postma came from Zwolle to the South African Republic in 1858, and was accepted as a minister of the Hervormde Kerk, but on learning that he and his congregation could be required to sing hymns (rather than the Psalms onlyExclusive psalmody
Exclusive psalmody is the particular worship practice of several small Protestant denominations worldwide which use a metrical version of the Book of Psalms from the Bible as the only manual of songs that may be sung in their services...
), he and the Doppers, numbering about 300 adults, among whom was the later President Paul Kruger, broke away from the state church to form the Gereformeerde Kerk in Rustenburg in February 1859. There were thus now three Dutch Reformed Churches in South Africa — the Afrikaner Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk (the Cape Synod), the Boer Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk
Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk
The Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk is one of the Three Sister Churches in South Africa. It was the state church of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek.The theology is in the Calvinist tradition-External Links:...
, which was the State Church of the South African Republic, and the Boer Gereformeerde Kerk, the smallest of the three, led by Rev. Postma.
The originally contemptuous name, Dopper, may come from the Dutch domp (wick-snuffers) for their opposition to candles and other innovations in worship, perhaps representing their contempt for the Enlightenment; or, Dopper may originate from Dutch dop (and thus drinkers), perhaps on account of their strong opposition to small, individual communion cups.
The separatism
Separatism
Separatism is the advocacy of a state of cultural, ethnic, tribal, religious, racial, governmental or gender separation from the larger group. While it often refers to full political secession, separatist groups may seek nothing more than greater autonomy...
of the Doppers, expressed in the severity of their doctrine, the austere puritanism
Religious fanaticism
Religious fanaticism is fanaticism related to a person's, or a group's, devotion to a religion. However, religious fanaticism is a subjective evaluation defined by the culture context that is performing the evaluation. What constitutes fanaticism in another's behavior or belief is determined by the...
of their worship, and even in their distinctive dress and speech, set them in stark contrast to European influence. Nevertheless, the Doppers were symbolic of resistance to all things English in South Africa, and despite their small size and distinctiveness they were culturally sophisticated and disproportionately influential during and after the Great Trek. It was the Dopper church that established Potchefstroom University. It was within this denomination that Paul Kruger
Paul Kruger
Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger , better known as Paul Kruger and affectionately known as Uncle Paul was State President of the South African Republic...
arose.
The new Boer states which arose after the Great Trek needed a comprehensive philosophy upon which to organize a genuinely Boer society. Voortrekker 'Uncle' Paul Kruger, first president of the South African Republic
South African Republic
The South African Republic , often informally known as the Transvaal Republic, was an independent Boer-ruled country in Southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century. Not to be confused with the present-day Republic of South Africa, it occupied the area later known as the South African...
upon its reacquired independence after the brief British annexation, adopted the Calvinstic principles in its political form, and formulated the Boer cultural mandate based on the Afrikaner Calvinist conviction that the South Africans had a special calling from God, not unlike the people of Israel in the Bible. The Doppers waged an intellectual war against outlander culture which was flooding into the South African Republic through the mass settlements of foreign squatters lured by gold and diamonds. To the Afrikaner mind, the British represented imperialism, viciousness, outlander oppression, covetousness, envy, and unbelief. When the Anglo-Boer war broke out, Paul Kruger's idealized version of Afrikaner history forged the Afrikaners into a united and formidable force. The Afrikaner's Boer War experience, including the death of 29 000 woman and children in concentration camps, and the wholesale destruction of homesteads, reinforced their laager mentality, so as to preserve themselves and their way of life against the British Empire.
Afrikaner Broederbond
The Boer Wars had left many of the Afrikaners utterly destitute. The ruined farmers were seen in the hundreds, following the war, lining the highways selling produce by the basket. After the four South African colonies united politically into the Union of South AfricaUnion of South Africa
The Union of South Africa is the historic predecessor to the present-day Republic of South Africa. It came into being on 31 May 1910 with the unification of the previously separate colonies of the Cape, Natal, Transvaal and the Orange Free State...
and relinquished control to democratic elections, a small, anonymous group of young intellectuals called the Afrikaner Broederbond
Afrikaner Broederbond
The Afrikaner Broederbond or Broederbond was a secret, exclusively male and Afrikaner Calvinist organization in South Africa dedicated to the advancement of Afrikaner interests. It was founded by HJ Klopper, HW van der Merwe, DHC du Plessis and Rev...
, formed in the years following the Second Anglo-Boer War to discuss strategies for addressing the overwhelming social problem of poor whites and other Afrikaner interests. By the account of Irving Hexham
Irving Hexham
Irving Hexham is a Canadian academic and writer who has published twenty-three books and numerous articles, chapters, and book reviews in respected academic journals. Currently, he is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, married to Dr...
, according to Klaus Venter and Hendrick Stoker who were themselves disgruntled members of the secret organization, in 1927 the Broederbond moved to Potchefstroom University, asking that the school would take over leadership of the then-struggling group. That year, the Broederbond formally adopted the Calvinist philosophy based on the work of Abraham Kuyper. The Broederbond believed, with deep-rooted conviction, that what their past had provided them through the interpretation of faith was a model of anti-imperialism, self-discipline and responsibility, which in the end would preserve justice for all — blacks, coloured, and whites — against Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
deceit. These strategies that arose from the Broederbond were directly responsible for the establishment of apartheid, in 1948.
However some who had been members of the organization before 1927 preferred the philosophy of Fichte, and other versions of European Nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
. A Fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
, social Darwinist
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...
agenda in sympathy with Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
arose among some whites in South Africa during the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, which became an unwelcome ally in support of these policies. The Calvinist party within the Broederbond tried to distance itself from this movement, with very limited success because of the secrecy of the organization, their later confessed complete misunderstanding of the real ambitions of non-Afrikaners and blindness to the agony of 'Coloureds' and 'Blacks' under apartheid, and the extreme unpopularity of the apartheid policies in the eyes of non-Afrikaners. The anti-Calvinist nationalists, led by H.F. Verwoerd
Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd
Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd , commonly identified as H.F. Verwoerd, was Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966...
, overcame the Calvinists in 1950 and used the Broederbond to advance his own political ambitions. International pressures mounted, increasingly isolating the Afrikaners and identifying their policies with the worst kind of godless oppression; but this was a long time in producing a crisis of conscience — or at least, it did not for some time produce sufficient energy to dismantle the complex social system that had been founded upon apartheid.
After the Sharpeville massacre
Sharpeville massacre
The Sharpeville Massacre occurred on 21 March 1960, at the police station in the South African township of Sharpeville in the Transvaal . After a day of demonstrations, at which a crowd of black protesters far outnumbered the police, the South African police opened fire on the crowd, killing 69...
in 1960, under enormous international pressure, the Broederbond began a slow and quiet re-examination of their policy proposals. And yet no significant changes took place to reform the apartheid system until the Soweto
Soweto
Soweto is a lower-class-populated urban area of the city of Johannesburg in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for South Western Townships...
riots in 1976. Some time after this, the Broederbond declared apartheid an irreformable failure and began work to dismantle it. The conviction had finally become established, although not universally that, if the Afrikaner people, language and religion were to survive, they must take the initiative to emerge from the laager, and invite South Africa in. The Broederbond (dropping the policy of secrecy and with the new name Afrikanerbond) began proposing initiatives for land reform and the reversal of apartheid.
Although Afrikaner and Boer Calvinism was united during much of the 20th century, recently it has become increasingly clear that these are two separate forms of Calvinism.
Radical changes
The reversal of apartheid has cast the Nederduits Gereformeerde KerkNederduits Gereformeerde Kerk
The Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk is a Reformed Christian denomination in South Africa. It also has a presence in neighboring countries, such as Namibia, Swaziland, and parts of Botswana and Zimbabwe...
(NGK) into a period of change. While remaining confessionally Calvinist, the religious character of the church is now less cohesive and more difficult to assess. Having been thoroughly conflated with apartheid, historic Calvinism appears to have fallen out of favour. Liberation theology
Liberation theology
Liberation theology is a Christian movement in political theology which interprets the teachings of Jesus Christ in terms of a liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions...
, which embraces the Enlightenment idea of Revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
, has gained a foothold in some quarters, and appears to have advocates both the left and right ends of the political spectrum. American-style evangelicalism and Arminianism
Arminianism
Arminianism is a school of soteriological thought within Protestant Christianity based on the theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius and his historic followers, the Remonstrants...
also appear to have made inroads, which with its more individualistic emphasis has less potential for a full-scale civil religion. Certainly the old synthesis of revealed and natural theology
Natural theology
Natural theology is a branch of theology based on reason and ordinary experience. Thus it is distinguished from revealed theology which is based on scripture and religious experiences of various kinds; and also from transcendental theology, theology from a priori reasoning.Marcus Terentius Varro ...
is largely repudiated; officially at least. But, the folk religion of the Afrikaners is not dead. Some scholars and revisionist historians are attempting to draw lines of distinction between Calvinism per se, the history of the Afrikaners, and the civil religion of the apartheid regime in particular.