Afrikaner Calvinism (Afrikaans: Afrikaner Calvinisme) is a cultural and religious development among Afrikaners that combined elements of seventeenth-century Calvinist doctrine with a "chosen people" ideology based in the Bible. It had origins in ideas espoused in the Old Testament of the Jews as the chosen people.[1]
A number of modern studies have argued that Boers gathered for the Great Trek inspired by this concept, and they used it to legitimise their subordination of other South African ethnic groups. It is thought to have contributed the religious basis for modern Afrikaner nationalism.[2] Dissenting scholars have asserted that Calvinism did not play a significant role in Afrikaner society until after they suffered the trauma of the Second Boer War. Early settlers dwelt in isolated frontier conditions and lived much closer to pseudo-Christian animist beliefs than organised religion.[3]
Background
White settlement in South Africa is traced to the 1652 arrival of the Dutch East India Company at the Cape of Good Hope, seeking to establish a supply and refreshment station for its ships and crews bound to and from Indonesia.[4][a] From its headquarters in Amsterdam, the Company recruited crew and equipped voyages for the Orient. Most of its Dutch employees were Protestant Calvinists, who were the majority of the population in the region, supplemented by other Protestants: a few Lutheran Germans, and numerous French Huguenot refugees who had fled religious persecution in France.[4][5] Among their Afrikaner descendants, individual religious communities such as the Doppers became known for establishing their own doctrine in rifts with the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church). By the late nineteenth century, the separatist churches of Gereformeerde Kerk had developed in South Africa.[6]
Settlement period
The Dutch settlement of the Cape of Good Hope was the first colonial success in South Africa. The company established strict rules for trade between the settlement and the native population. Only a Company administrator could authorize trade or Christian missionary ventures among the Africans. Settlers were forbidden from stealing or shooting cattle, which were a form of wealth and sustainability for the Africans. The early Europeans were shocked by the differences in the customs, clothing and appearance of the Africans. False rumours that the natives were cannibals reinforced the motive to avoid unnecessary contact. The Cape was a walled garden, with Africa on the outside and Europe within. This strict order minimised conflicts with the Africans during the early settlement period.
But many settlers believed they had arrived with a missionary motive, which included spreading the superiority of European culture. These factors contributed to the settler practice of indenturing the native Khoisan population to serve as workers and servants. Within that master/servant relationship, the Europeans would 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 the European way of life) and thus bring about conversion.
The farmers who lived outside the physical walls of the towns had a different arrangement with natives than did 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 their assumptions about ownership and its rights against the wandering hunters or herding tribes who crossed the Fish River into farm territories. The settlers considered the farms to be an extension beyond the towns of the separation between the white and the black occupants of the land.
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.
Folk religion
This history is essential to understanding the distinctive concept of "calling" that developed among the Afrikaners. These attitudes, adopted very early, went with them through later conflicts, formed in a way that to them, seemed to be obviously crafted by the hand of God Himself. They believed that they were preserved because of God's wisdom and Providence. The suffering which they experienced, and the strong bonds that they formed in response to it, seemed to confirm this idea at every turn. Their history as a people has a central place in the formation of 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 their Lord had shown special grace to them as a particular people.
Nationalism
However, the French Revolution 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 to send its Navy to take care of the possessions of the United East India Company that was in dire financial straits and in which the Stadtholder 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 in 1802. 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 re-captured the Cape of Good Hope on its own, and appointed British administrators there, who were zealous propagators of the Enlightenment. They loosened the trade and labour regulations, speaking of the blacks as those whose untainted natural souls they professed to admire. The British government outlawed slavery in parts of the British Empire in 1833 with enforcement in the Cape Colony in 1834. 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.[1]
A more antithetical message could hardly be imagined, as the British Enlightenment found itself with the Afrikaners for the first time. From the Boer (meaning farmer in Dutch and Afrikaans) point of view, the Enlightenment had resulted in a foreign power ruling over them, imposing alien laws and alien languages, liberated their slaves without compensation, and put the interest of English-speakers over those of the Dutch-speakers. They were exposed to the Enlightenment, and it appeared to them to be a revolution against their God and way of life.[1]
Schism between Boer and Cape 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 British colonies authorities. 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 Hoff 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 (also known as the Transvaal), 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 the 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 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".
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 Netherlands 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 only), he and the Doppers, numbering about 300 adults, among whom was the South African Republic's 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.[7]
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.
Boer Republics which arose after the Great Trek needed a comprehensive philosophy upon which to organise a puritanical Boer society. Paul Kruger, first president of the South African Republic upon its reacquired independence after the brief British annexation, adopted the Calvinistic principles in its political form, and formulated a cultural mandate based on the Voortrekkers' conviction that they had a special calling from God, not unlike the people of Israel in the Bible. The Doppers waged an intellectual war against the perceived influx of uitlander culture which was flooding into the Transvaal through the mass settlements of foreign immigrants lured by gold and diamonds.
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 Africa 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 organisation, 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.[citation needed]
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.
Radical changes
The reversal of apartheid has cast the Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk (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 attempts to reconcile Christianity with the Marxist doctrine of class struggle, has gained a foothold in some quarters, and appears to have advocates on both the left and right ends of the political spectrum.[citation needed] 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 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.
In 1985, 92% of Afrikaners were members of Reformed Churches. By late 2013, this figure had dropped to 40%, while actual weekly church attendance of Reformed Churches is estimated to be around 25%.[8]
Boers are the descendants of the proto Afrikaans-speaking Free Burghers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. From 1652 to 1795, the Dutch East India Company controlled Dutch Cape Colony, but the United Kingdom incorporated it into the British Empire in 1806. The name of the group is derived from Trekboer then later "boer", which means "farmer" in Dutch and Afrikaans.
Abraham Kuyper was the Prime Minister of the Netherlands between 1901 and 1905, an influential neo-Calvinist pastor and a journalist. He established the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, which upon its foundation became the second largest Reformed denomination in the country behind the state-supported Dutch Reformed Church.
The Dutch Reformed Church was the largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands from the onset of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until 1930. It was the traditional denomination of the Dutch royal family and the foremost Protestant denomination until 2004, the year it helped found and merged into the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. It was the larger of the two major Reformed denominations, after the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands was founded in 1892. It spread to the United States, South Africa, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Brazil, and various other world regions through Dutch colonization. Allegiance to the Dutch Reformed Church was a common feature among Dutch immigrant communities around the world and became a crucial part of Afrikaner nationalism in South Africa.
The Afrikaner Broederbond (AB) or simply the Broederbond was an exclusively Afrikaner Calvinist and male secret society in South Africa dedicated to the advancement of the Afrikaner people. It was founded by H. J. Klopper, H. W. van der Merwe, D. H. C. du Plessis and the Rev. Jozua Naudé in 1918 as Jong Zuid Afrika until 1920, when it was renamed the Broederbond. Its influence within South African political and social life came to a climax with the 1948-1994 rule of the white supremacist National Party and its policy of apartheid, which was largely developed and implemented by Broederbond members. Between 1948 and 1994, many prominent figures of Afrikaner political, cultural, and religious life, including every leader of the South African government, were members of the Afrikaner Broederbond.
Cape Dutch, also commonly known as Cape Afrikaners, were a historic socioeconomic class of Afrikaners who lived in the Western Cape during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The terms have been evoked to describe an affluent, educated section of the Cape Colony's Afrikaner population which did not participate in the Great Trek or the subsequent founding of the Boer republics. Today, the Cape Dutch are credited with helping shape and promote a unique Afrikaner cultural identity through their formation of civic associations such as the Afrikaner Bond, and promotion of the Afrikaans language.
Christiaan Frederick Beyers Naudé was a South African Afrikaner Calvinist Dominee, theologian and the leading Afrikaner anti-apartheid activist. He was known simply as Beyers Naudé, or more colloquially, Oom Bey.
The Covenant is a historical novel by American author James A. Michener, published in 1980.
The Dutch Reformed Church is a Reformed Christian denomination in South Africa. It also has a presence in neighbouring countries, such as Namibia, Eswatini, and parts of Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia. In 2013 it claimed 1.1 million members and 1,602 ordained ministers in 1,158 congregations.
Irving R. Hexham is an English-Canadian academic who has published twenty-three books and numerous articles, chapters, and book reviews. Currently, he is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, married to Karla Poewe who is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Calgary, and the father of two children. He holds dual British and Canadian citizenship.
Dirk Van der Hoff was minister of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk, one of the Dutch Reformed Churches in South Africa.
Afrikaner nationalism is an ethnic nationalistic political ideology created by Afrikaners residing in Southern Africa during the Victorian era. The ideology was developed in response to the significant events in Afrikaner history such as the Great Trek, the First and Second Boer Wars and the resulting anti-British sentiment and Anti-communism that developed among Afrikaners and opposition to South Africa's entry into World War I.
Johan Adam Heyns (1928–1994) was an Afrikaner Calvinist theologian and moderator of the general synod of the Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk (NGK) in South Africa. He was assassinated at his home in Waterkloof Ridge, Pretoria.
Protestantism in South Africa accounted for 73.2% of the population in 2010. Approximately 81% of South Africans are Christian and 5 out of 6 Christians are Protestant. Later censuses do not ask for citizens’ religious affiliations. Estimates in 2017 suggested that 62.5% of the population are Protestant.
The Dutch Reformed Church in Africa is a Reformed Christian denomination based in South Africa. It also has congregations in Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Along with the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) and the Reformed Churches in South Africa, the NHKA is one of the three Dutch Reformed sister churches of South Africa. The NHKA retains the old Nomenclature Nederduitsch, the word originally referring to the Dutch language. The word refers to the Low Saxon language today. The Dutch language remained the official language of the church until 1933 when the church started functioning almost exclusively in Afrikaans.
The 1886 Dutch Reformed Church split, also known as the Doleantie, was the name of a prominent schism in the Dutch Reformed Church that took place in 1886 and was led by a renowned minister, Abraham Kuyper. The Doleantie was not the first schism in the Dutch Reformed Church. Another schism, the Secession of 1834 (Afscheiding van 1834), had led to the formation of the Christian Reformed Church in the Netherlands.
Albertus (Albert) Stephanus Geyser was a South African cleric, scholar and anti-apartheid theologian. Geyser became an outcast in the white Afrikaner community because of his theological opposition to apartheid and to the Broederbond, the secret male Calvinist organisation that covertly steered South African politics during the apartheid era. He obtained master's and doctoral degrees cum laude, specializing in Greek and Latin. At the age of 27 he was appointed lecturer, and a year later, professor in the Theological Faculty of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk at the University of Pretoria. Geyser contributed to the first annotated edition (1953–1958) of the Bible in Afrikaans, founded the Christian Institute, and was the first South African to be elected as a member of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas.
The Reformed Churches in Namibia is a confessional Reformed church in Namibia. Reformed people come from Angola to Namibia in 1929. The Dorslandtrekkers were mostly Reformed people who had settled in Angola but later moved to Namibia. The Dorslandtrekkers were originally from Transvaal, South Africa, and migrated northwestward starting in 1874 in two large and one smaller group, starting the Humpata Reformed Church under the Rev. Jan Lion Cachet. Later in 1930 3 congregations were established. More farmers came and the church grew. Missionary work was started in 1969 under the Bushmans of the Gobabis region, Botswana. It has 2,757 members and 14 congregations, and adheres to the Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed, Heidelberg Catechism, Belgic Confession and the Canons of Dort.There's no women ordination. Official languages are Afrikaans, Bushman, Gobabis-Kung.
Lodewicus Johannes du Plessis (1897-1968) was a South African academic, alternative Afrikaner political philosopher, and Calvinist.
Jozua Francois Naudé was a South African pastor, school founder and co-founder of the Afrikaner Broederbond.
The Grootfontein Reformed Church is a congregation affiliated with the Reformed Churches in South Africa (GKSA) and located in Grootfontein, Namibia. It was officially founded on May 29, 1943, and celebrated its 75th anniversary the weekend of May 26–27, 2018.
References
Online sources
Oosthuizen, Jean (12 January 2014). "Krisis kom vir leë kerke". Johannesburg: Rapport (Netwerk 24 Nuus). Archived from the original on 12 January 2014. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
Du Toit, André (1985). "Puritans in Africa? Afrikaner "Calvinism" and Kuyperian Neo-Calvinism in Late Nineteenth-Century South Africa". Comparative Studies in Society and History. 27 (2): 209–240. doi:10.1017/S0010417500011336. ISSN0010-4175. S2CID145566439.
Greaves, Adrian (2013). The Tribe that Washed its Spears: The Zulus at War. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military. ISBN978-1629145136.
Hexham, Irving; Poewe, Karla (1997). Elphick, Richard; Davenport, Rodney (eds.). Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social, and Cultural History. Claremont: David Philip. ISBN978-0520209398.
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