Can the Church Mend the Anguish of a Nation?

The question of South Africa looms large. How long can a relative handful of whites rule a nation of blacks and colored?

For the Christian, a second question looms larger: What is the South African church doing to prevent injustice and bloodshed?

Seventy-seven percent of the South African population adhere to Christian denominations. Many of them would say the church, through its actions, seasons and lights the world. They would assert that only the church holds the solution to the civil strife caused by an official government policy of racial discrimination. But what flavor is the South African church adding to the boiling pot of an apartheid-torn society? What light is it shedding on the frantic attempts to dismantle apartheid before bloody revolution destroys the country?

As the world watches South Africa’s struggle, Christians realize the witness of the church may be on the line. Has God allowed an opportunity for the church to demonstrate to the world that the unsolvable can be resolved?

To find out what the church is doing, the Christianity Today Institute sent a team of four researchers to visit Christian leaders, denominational officials, pastors, and active lay Christians in South Africa.

Frederick Hale, currently a visiting professor at Luther Northwestern Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, took one of his two doctorates at the University of South Africa in Pretoria; Irving Hexham, assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Calgary, studied for a year at Potchefstroom University in South Africa; Terry Muck is executive editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY magazine; and Paul Robbins is chief operating officer of Christianity Today, Incorporated.

The research team spent three weeks touring the country, taping over 100 hours of face-to-face conversations. The question was simple: What is the church doing in the face of civil and social unrest?

Like the complexity of the apartheid problem itself, the answers ranged widely in terms of hope and fear, optimism and pessimism, energy and exhaustion. The following report reflects those contrasting attitudes, yet uncovers a common thread: God’s enduring presence in a country on the brink of disaster.

Mention South Africa, and most Americans think of some nameless, televised shantytown. Black South Africans run through the streets—either toward an angry knot of protesting people, or away from helmeted riot police. The surreal crack of rifle fire punctuates the confusion. A human being is killed. “That brings the total number of blacks killed since the South African government instituted a state of emergency two years ago to 2,750,” intones the news reporter.

Sometimes, such frequent reports of horror become cliches. Their repetition desensitizes us. The South African visual cliche, however, has not. Perhaps the image recalls days from our own turbulent sixties—after all, the red clay streets of Soweto are not all that different from the red dirt of Georgia. And the scenes remind us of other blacks and policemen from a time we would like to forget.

The South African cliche has become a spur to action, a single-pointed irritant that keeps stabbing at us to do something. Seeing the same offensive image over and over simplifies the issues: South Africa equals apartheid. Apartheid equals killing. The killing must stop. And while truisms of this sort may galvanize action against injustice, the South African paradox is this: The cliche of apartheid-induced violence has effectively stimulated action in people two continents away, but it has only widened the gap between blacks and whites in South Africa.

Most Americans would agree to this truth: Apartheid is an immoral system of social organization. For those who live in an apartheid-run country, however, that truth bumps up against several nagging realities:

• From a white South African point of view, apartheid has “worked,” economically. The standard of living for white South Africans rivals that of any Westernized, capitalistic culture. And the blacks in South Africa live on a higher economic scale than blacks in other African countries.
• Most South Africans never see and rarely hear about the violence we see on television.
• Disagreement over how to change the apartheid system does not break cleanly along black/white lines but cuts across every demographic line imaginable. It is a situation that confuses foreign visitors who visit South Africa convinced that apartheid is a simple case of black versus white. Coretta Scott King, widow of U.S. civil-rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., recently visited South Africa and came away bewildered by the issue: “It’s far more complex than I initially thought.”

For South Africans, apartheid-created separation and even violence is not a cliche, but a confusing, frightening, and frustrating way of life that seems impossible to solve.

The Complexities

What factors make apartheid so confusing, even for members of South African churches who share Christian concerns for human rights? We asked the faculty of the Cape Evangelical Bible Institute near Cape Town to convene a group of interested Christians, and at that meeting we raised the question, “What should be done about apartheid?” We heard the following:

From a colored (mixed race) lecturer at the institute: “Let’s just get together. We need to integrate this country now.”

From a white Baptist businessman: “We all know that integration by unnatural means will never work. We can’t just bring a busload of blacks from a township 20 miles away to a worship service in our church. We need to change the laws first. Then churches can be integrated naturally.”

From a white Lutheran pastor: “If the laws change, fine. But I’m tired of having guilt laid on me for things the National party did in 1948.I didn’t vote for them then and haven’t voted for them since.”

From a white Anglican pastor: “But surely repentance must be an ongoing thing for all Christians. That’s the way to change things.”

From a colored pastor: “The only thing that can possibly save us is the imminent return of Christ. We need to pray for him to come quickly.”

From a white lecturer at the college: “The Scriptures clearly point out what’s wrong with apartheid. We must teach biblical truth to as many people as we can.”

From a black student: “The government only understands one language: force. We must hurt them in the pocketbook through sanctions.”

Asking South Africans what they think should be done to end apartheid (and the majority of South African Christians—50 percent of the whites and most of the blacks—will at least say it should be done away with) is like asking the American man on the street how to end war. A consensus will never emerge from such a poll.

Similarly, it is almost impossible for the individual South African, black or white, to see how apartheid can be dismantled without enormous cost, both in bloodshed and economic loss. They have lived with, and many have suffered under, this system for almost 40 years. Such a drastic change requires a great deal of momentum.

The Divisions

Consider the following divisions among blacks:

• Young blacks are far more likely than older blacks to favor active resistance. Young black leaders, some calling themselves comrades, control many townships, those government-created reservations on the outskirts of the major cities where blacks who work in urban areas must live. (In South Africa, the black ghettos tend to ring the cities, like human handcuffs, while the exclusive white areas generally are in the cities themselves, the reverse of the American suburban/urban system.)
• Poor blacks regularly chastise their middle-class brethren who join the army, police, government bureaucracy, and business community (not all South African blacks are poor). These “collaborators” face verbal harassment, attacks on their homes and businesses, and in some cases “neck-lacing”: having a tire forced over their heads and shoulders, filled with gasoline, and set on fire.
• Blacks of different tribes, such as the Zulus and Xhosas, frequently disagree on whether their resistance to the white government should be conciliatory or confrontive. Since tribal loyalties are strong, this difference in opinion about strategy can revive centuries-old conflicts clothed in the apartheid issues of the day. There are at least nine major black tribes.

Whites are almost as divided in their solutions to apartheid. One can find Afrikaners (the Dutch-, German-, and French-descended rulers of the country) who agree apartheid must go. They support the current government’s self-proclaimed policy of gradually reducing the restrictive laws that discriminate against nonwhite races. But a growing group of reactionary whites vow to fight for the policies of apartheid. For them, all the old defenses of apartheid still seem valid: the need, indeed desirability, of races to remain separate; the effectiveness of apartheid-inspired economics; and the hopelessness of trying to change things now.

Representative of this group politically is Daan van der Merwe, a member of Parliament for 20 years and a former minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. Until 1982 he belonged to the ruling National party. When it began gradually to reduce some apartheid policies, many Afrikaners and some English-speaking whites felt their interests were being abandoned. They formed the Conservative party (CP) and van der Merwe joined: “Most of the Afrikaners I know are moving our direction. President Botha is going to lose the next election in South Africa. He is doing what he calls broadening the democracy, but most Afrikaners don’t know what he means by that. Whites feel frustration, uncertainty, and doubt about their future as a race. The current government has no respect for the real cultural identities. We think we have a right to survive as a group.”

Beyond the question of survival, conservative South African whites genuinely see no wrongdoing on their part. The closest most will come to admitting some kind of culpability is to say they did not do enough to promote black economic and cultural development in the fifties and sixties. But even then they hedge. Van der Merwe exemplifies this when he says, “The Afrikaners have never dominated the business community. The British are more responsible for whatever economic exploitation was done of blacks.”

Yet the growing political strength of conservative whites is real. Although many of the political party leaders, such as van der Merwe, would not advocate unprovoked violence against blacks, they are certainly in favor of defending their interests by using force even more extensive than the current government uses. Political science professor P. J. J. S. Potgieter sees the fringes of this group (represented by the radical African Resistance Movement) creating more interracial violence: “The real danger is increased white resistance, … white vigilantes shooting black people, driving through black areas and throwing bombs, sending warnings to blacks that they won’t give up their places of power easily.”

Separation

From a distance, the injustices of apartheid offend our sense of justice and fair play. Are there not significant numbers of decent whites willing to work against the problem? The problem is, they do not see it—both literally and figuratively. Physically, apartheid has effectively kept the races separate. It is quite possible to visit South Africa, tour the major metropolitan areas of Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban, and never realize anything unusual is happening. It is also quite possible to take excursions along the major highway systems to smaller towns such as Rustenburg, Potchefstroom, Stellenbosch, and Pietermaritzburg and still not see the problems. Unless one makes a special effort to visit townships such as Mamelodi and Soweto, homelands such as Zululand and Bophutatswana, and the leaders from all the churches and ethnic groups, it is quite possible to come away from brief visits to South Africa and think the problem is blown way out of proportion.

It is equally possible to live in South Africa and think the same thing. Such isolation should not surprise us. Upon returning to America, one of our group asked his Sunday school class of suburban Chicagoans how many of them had ever been to the ghettos of Chicago. Fewer than 25 percent had. The question was not raised to point up their lack of concern but to show how our living habits are patterned and restricted. In South Africa, where residential areas have long been set up specifically to separate the races, the problem is even worse.

One South African Dutch Reformed minister told of a phone call he received from a parishioner whose black servant had died suddenly.

“Have you notified the servant’s relatives?” asked the minister.

“I don’t know where he lived,” replied the parishioner.

“Then check with the government registration office.”

“But we don’t know his name. We only knew him by his first name.”

“How long did he work for you?”

“Thirty years.”

This depersonalization of the blacks is exacerbated by the governmental restrictions on the news media. Until two years ago it was possible to report on riots and disturbances in black townships. When the government realized, however, the impression this was leaving on world opinion, it put severe limitations on news coverage of South African internal affairs. It is currently illegal for news agencies to be near disturbances or to report, by name, people arrested by the government for antiapartheid offenses. News agencies must comply with these restrictions or face the possibility of losing their reporters’ visas.

The problem is even worse for South African news media. Only a small percentage of problems in the townships are reported in the media, and then in little detail. Consequently, it is possible for long-time residents to say, “I don’t think it’s as bad as you Americans make it out to be.”

The Complexity For The Church

For South African churches, the problem is both simple and complex. To the majority of South Africans who find apartheid morally objectionable, the church clearly has a prophetic role: It must speak out against the injustices and work to dismantle the system.

However, up close it again gets complicated. We met with a group of five black pastors of churches of varying sizes. One of the men characterized the agony of trying to minister to divided congregations:

“We are standing between the church and the politicians. We stand for a message of reconciliation, but many people accuse us of being sellouts. They don’t appreciate a message of reconcilation. The younger ones especially want a message of revolution. But they are young politicians, and we are ministers of the gospel.”

The minister continued: “As a minister, you cannot side with any organization whatsoever. Groups in my church come to me and ask me to conduct a funeral. I go, sympathetic, wanting to preach reconciliation. But it ends up that I am identified with the political agenda of the group at the funeral. Another group asks to use the church building for a meeting. I must say no, or the police will consider us accomplices; but when I say no, the group considers me a traitor. They are politicians and I am a minister, but they don’t see the difference.

“But my resolve to stay out of politics and preach reconciliation is severely tested sometimes. Three weeks ago a 66-year-old woman from our church was shot by a policeman for no reason at all. Our church mourned for a long time. But I was asking myself, Am I really a pastor if I shut up while my members are being killed?”

Ironically, many of the whites behind the weapons are also church members. How did the body of Christ become so divided?

The Church’S Historical Role

When representatives of the Dutch East India Company planted their Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, it began a Christian tradition of separation. Later in the seventeenth century, Huguenot refugees from Catholic France settled at the Cape and were assimilated into the Dutch Reformed Church, or Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk (NG Kerk).

Other denominations were initially forbidden, but in 1779 the numerous German Lutherans in the colony were allowed to construct a chapel. Owing to intermarriage and general assimilation, much of the German element joined the Huguenot strain in the Calvinist, Dutch-dominated culture that eventually became Afrikanerdom. Originally responsible to the mother church in the Netherlands, the NG Kerk at the Cape became autonomous in 1824, and 35 years later it began educating its own clergymen at Stellenbosch near Cape Town.

In the 1850s, Afrikaners who had migrated from the Cape to the Transvaal formed two smaller Dutch-dominated denominations: the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk (NH Kerk) and the Gereformeerde Kerk. This triad of church bodies remains today the religious cornerstone of Afrikanerdom, and is most often referred to as the Dutch Reformed Church.

When the British gained control of the Cape early in the nineteenth century, immigrants added not only Anglicans, but also Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, and Roman Catholics to the denominational constellation. The discovery of diamonds and gold (1870s and 1880s) brought even more forms of Christianity along with the prospectors and seekers of instant wealth. After the turn of the century, various kinds of Pentecostalism and sects on the periphery of Protestantism became the final chips in the kaleidoscope of South African white Christianity.

Ironically, nineteenth-century evangelistic efforts created an integrated church. What do you do with all the coloreds who got saved? In 1829, the synod of the NG Kerk decreed that Communion was to be administered “simultaneously to all members without distinction of color or origin.” The Lord’s Table was thus temporarily more unified than society. However, given the general social segregation of the races and the European attitude of cultural superiority, these early attempts to integrate the church did not remain unchallenged.

By 1857, the synod conveniently handled the problem of coloreds and whites worshiping together. While emphasizing the scriptural desirability of racially integrated congregations, it allowed, in a frequently quoted proviso, that “where this measure, as a result of the weakness of some, impedes the furtherance of the cause of Christ among the heathen, the congregation from the heathen … shall enjoy its Christian privileges in a separate building or institution.” By 1881, a separate Dutch Reformed denomination was created for the coloreds. With more than 500,000 members, this Sendingkerk, or Missionary Church, became one of the largest denominations in South Africa.

By contrast, the missions of the Dutch Reformed churches to blacks yielded separate congregations from the outset. This was inescapable because of linguistic differences, a factor that had not set apart the coloreds (who spoke Dutch and later Afrikaans) from their white confessional fellows. Called the NG Kerk in Afrika, the black Dutch Reformed body numbers over 1,100,000 adherents and relies heavily on the white parent body. It is less critical of the white church than is the colored Sendingkerk.

The two smaller Afrikaner denominations, the NH Kerk and the Gereformeerde Kerk, have also conducted missionary work among nonwhites. They, too, have branches for those believers who do not belong to the Afrikaner volk. Indeed, Article III of the former denomination’s constitution expressly bars nonwhites from membership in the main body, ostensibly on the grounds that Matthew 28:19 (“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”) mandates separate churches for the individual nations, or ethnic groups. Again, confessional similarity is subordinated to racial and cultural differences.

While the Afrikaner denominations were institutionalizing segregation within themselves, the Anglophone churches were also pursuing missionary work and, to a limited extent, advocating the legal equality of the races. But they, too, have always been composed of whites holding attitudes leading to racial separation. Until very recently, multiracial worship was a rare phenomenon among them, and it is still far from common. “In this respect,” notes Prof. Charles Villa-Vicencio, a Methodist theologian at the University of Cape Town, “the English-speaking churches are almost as racially divided as the Afrikaans Reformed churches.” This seemed not to bother Anglophone parishioners any more than it did most Afrikaners. Until well into the twentieth century, missionaries complained frequently about white settlers’ opposition to evangelism. This hostility led to the formation of separate churches for indigenous converts and settlers.

De facto segregated churches could hardly be expected to raise a prophetic voice against segregation. Churchmen rarely protested against the restriction of blacks to “locations” at that time, or the implementation of the “pass” system that, until this year, regulated the movement of black migratory labor. Whether by commission or omission, practically all the white churches contributed to the institutionalization of racial segregation long before “apartheid” became a political rallying cry during the 1940s.

In the wake of massive black urbanization during World War II, the Afrikaner-dominated National party adopted apartheid as the key plank of its platform. The result? It was rewarded with a watershed victory in the parliamentary elections of 1948 and has been in power without interruption for 38 years. As critics have often pointed out, the Afrikaner denominations began as early as 1932 to lobby for increased racial legislation. In 1948 Die Kerkbode, the periodical of the NG Kerk, could boast that “as a church we have always worked intentionally for the separation of the races. In this respect, apartheid can justifiably be called a church policy.”

Until quite recently, many NG and NH theologians vigorously defended this position and repeatedly attempted to bolster it with biblical proof texts. Among their favorites were the scattering of peoples from the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 and Paul’s sermon to the Athenians in Acts 17, in which he declared that God had “made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.”

Theological Underpinnings Of Apartheid

Popular wisdom suggests apartheid is Dutch Calvinism run wild. Calvinists did influence apartheid, but that influence is usually exaggerated. In a book called The New Faces of Africa, University of South Africa (UNISA) professor David Bosch discusses the “Calvinist paradigm,” and refutes the view that Calvinism alone forms the ideological underpinnings of apartheid. Bosch maintains that Calvinism was not the primary factor in early Akrikaner religious/political convictions.

During the Afrikaners’ political struggles for power with the British in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, they needed an ideological framework to support the nationalistic loyalties of their people. Calvinist theology, with its doctrine of election, adapted easily to Afrikaner nationalism. Abraham Kuyper’s Dutch Calvinist revival, with its slogan, “In Isolation Lies Our Strength,” helped renew an interest in Calvinism in the Netherlands; on South African soil, Kuyper’s ideas were adapted to local circumstances. In the face of British chauvinism, the Afrikaners identified themselves as a chosen people, justifying their status as a separate ethnic group in power.

Although the process of self-identification took many years, one incident welded incipient Afrikaner nationalism with the idea of a divine destiny. When the British gained control of the Cape Town area, the Afrikaners undertook the “Great Trek,” a mass migration inland and northeast. It was a very difficult journey, but created a sense of unity and solidarity that they were a people in the process of creating their own destiny. Prior to a major battle near the end of the trek, the Afrikaners vowed to build a church if God granted victory over the 10,000-strong Zulu army. With only 500 men, Andreis Pretorius defeated the Zulus in the Battle of Blood River.

The covenant of Blood River sealed Afrikaner history with the Old Testament image of a chosen people. Afrikaners began to view their history as sacred. As F. A. van Jaarsveld notes in The Awakening of Afrikaner Nationalism, Afrikaners began to refer to themselves as “a medium … in God’s hand” to prevent robbery, murder, and violence, and to promote “Christian civilization.”

Specific biblical support for apartheid gradually grew in the thirties through the fifties. In addition to the passages already cited, an elaborate religious/political parallel between the Afrikaner and Israel was developed by such people as the Afrikaner poet Totius (J. D. DuToit), who referred to Afrikanerdom as another Israel. His poetry was read by many thousands of school-children, fixing in the minds of several generations the divinely chosen character of their nation. Theology in South Africa fell from its reign as the queen of the sciences to serving as the handmaiden of politics.

Although few modern proponents of apartheid feel comfortable with much of this self-serving use of Scripture, the residue among Afrikaner nationalists remains strong. Even when specific passages are not marshaled to support apartheid, many Afrikaners do not see it as incompatible with the teachings of Scripture. Many still see their role as a favored race unchanged. Thus, a great deal of fundamental theological retraining needs to be done to demonstrate apartheid’s heretical nature.

Few prominent Afrikaner theologians still express support of apartheid, though until recently, many have not explicitly disavowed it. In 1982, both the NG Kerk and the NH Kerk were suspended from membership in the World Alliance of Reformed Churches for “not only accepting, but also justifying the apartheid system by misusing the Gospel and the Reformed confession.…” The NH Kerk subsequently withdrew from the WARC. The NG Kerk reversed its position at its October 1986 synod, though that action still allows local churches to remain segregated if they so choose.

What The Churches Are Doing

As vigorously as the two largest Dutch Reformed denominations championed apartheid in the forties and fifties, so some churches today—both DRC and others—hack away at the roots of racism. Some action comes from denominational bodies. More, though, comes from individuals and Parachurch organizations dedicated to eradicating apartheid.

Foes of apartheid use either theological arguments, interpersonal techniques, political tactics, or combinations of all three. Likewise, unusual alliances of different denominations, disparate ethnic groups, and a variety of theological viewpoints join hands for the common fight. The ideological revolution against an archaic form of social organization has mobilized the church into bands of justice seekers with a common goal: the establishment of a new social system in South Africa.

The strategies. Theologians and ethicists are attacking on several different fronts. Some, like Klaus Nürnberger, a theologian and professor of social ethics at the University of South Africa (UNISA), call for retraining the South Africans’ views of social relationships. The need for reconciliation is clear, he says, but moving too quickly toward trying to reconcile black and white is putting the cart before the horse: “If you look closely at the social structure of the country, you have two distinct levels: people of privilege (the whites) and people of no privilege (the blacks). The relationship between the two groups is vertical. That is, the people of privilege can only look down on blacks or despise them. The people of no privilege have only two choices also: they can either be submissive or rebellious. Biblical relationships like love, forgiveness, and honor, however, require a horizontal relationship between people. Before true reconciliation can take place, we must build these people up so they’re in a horizontal relationship. Then they can reconcile.”

Other South African theologians focus on relating the kingdom of God to the South African situation. They would like to see Christians place their hope in God rather than in a new government or cultural order. Prof. B. J. van der Walt, director of the Institute for Reformational Studies at Potchefstroom University, characterizes this approach. In addition to scholarly publication and classes at the university, the institute holds conferences for pastors and laymen with this purpose: “We encourage a broader vision of the kingdom so that people see how the Bible and faith in God relate to everyday living. First we show the relevance of the kingdom of God to South Africa today. Second, we show the relevance of this kingdom for integration. It is a kind of missionary effort to show people that their religion is not for churches only, but has relevance for all society. We are trying to combat apartheid of the mind as well as apartheid of races.”

Prof. J. A. Heyns, a systematic theologian at the University of Pretoria and a prominent minister in the NG Kerk, still sees hope for working through the traditional institutions of church and denomination. He is currently helping to rework a denominationally published booklet called Human Relations in the Light of Scripture, a biblical corrective to apartheid-inspired racial hatred. He says, “We must not overlook the power of the pulpit to change people’s minds. Sunday to Sunday we have thousands of people sitting in our pews. We must liberate our people from our own history and ideological fixation of being a privileged people in this country.

“What does it mean to be created in the image of God? Does that mean some races are and some aren’t? Of course not. It means that human beings, irrespective of race, are created in the image of God. Our people need to hear that over and over.”

A key scriptural passage needing special attention is Romans 13. Many South African Christians, both in the Dutch Reformed churches, and other conservative Protestant churches, have never been able to dislodge themselves from a traditional, limited understanding of the passage—that one submits uncritically to the government. The result, says Michael Cassidy, president of Africa Enterprise, is that “in the areas of socio-political concern and insight, evangelicals are Johnny-come-latelies. We are probably where evangelicals in the United States were 30 or 40 years ago.” Cassidy advocates regularly teaching a more comprehensive understanding of Romans 13, so that evangelicals can confidently challenge the injustices of apartheid without losing the biblical sense of supporting the government.

The Activists

Antiapartheid activists believe you can not only lead a horse to water, but that you can make him drink if you apply the right kind of pressure. For them, the agenda calls for relentless pushing and pulling until South Africa drinks deeply from the well of racial equality.

Although these activists do not denigrate the careful theological work needed to counter the heresy of apartheid, they have little patience for it. Why write fire prevention rules in a building already on fire? Likewise, they do not minimize the interpersonal training needed to seed the grassy meadow of friendship and love.

But when it comes right down to it, they have little tolerance for slowness and trust building in a country where breaking promises has become a political art.

We met with 25 black seminary students at Marang Lutheran Seminary near Bophutatswana, a recently created independent homeland within the borders of South Africa. The government has created these “nations” (which no other country in the world recognizes as nations) so that the millions of blacks within them cease to be a financial drain on the economy (and perhaps so they have no hope of becoming a future voting bloc in South African politics).

We asked a simple question: What would you like to say to the people of America? After a moment or two of silence, they began to speak. Their comments were full of hostility toward America, President Reagan, and U.S. policies toward South Africa. “Reagan is just a cowboy who somehow has become president of the world’s most powerful country. He can’t imagine what it’s like for us here.”

Their recommendation: sanctions (which have since been imposed by the U.S.). “We know we will suffer. But we are suffering now. It could not be much worse.” They spoke with feeling and eloquence. Their logic was sometimes thin, but the intensity of their feeling never flagged.

That feeling characterizes many blacks in South African churches. They sense the time for talk is past. It is time for action, something the government will understand. Some have only recently come to this conviction.

Charles Villa-Vicencio followed this route. After starting out as a good Afrikaner child, “God got hold” of him, and his perspectives changed. He undertook theological training at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, then went overseas to study at Yale and Drew. He returned to pastor several churches in Cape Town. “Eventually I passed over a divide that exists in the institutional church in South Africa. The divide is this: when you finally come to believe that obedience to Jesus Christ means being on the side of the poor, the oppressed, the widows, the marginalized people of society. That is my belief, but that is not every church member’s belief, and that is what divides the church.”

From his current post as professor of religious studies at the University of Cape Town, Villa-Vicencio sees part of his actions as reducing the time gap inherent in a conservative church: “The church always lags behind the needs of society. The African National Congress is where the action is; the church is way behind what it is doing. The black churches are closer, perhaps only a year or two behind. Most white churches are five or ten years behind. Many will never catch up.

“Christians in this country are being compelled to reassess their own identity as Christians. What are my fundamental loyalties? What are my fundamental values as a Christian? Property? Wealth? Culture? Or is it something else? It is truly taking up the cross and following Christ. It’s out of that situation and decision that my theology has begun to grow and emerge.”

What is the shape that theology has taken for Villa-Vicencio and others like him? For one thing, it has meant the production of several important documents calling for reform. Like all such statements, most of these efforts are quickly forgotten. A recent one, the Kairos Document, seems to have grabbed the attention of the church more than most, even though many who signed it recognize its weaknesses. The document challenges the church to stand up to what its drafters see as an immoral government: “A church that takes its responsibilities seriously [toward the moral illegitimacy of the apartheid regime] will sometimes have to confront and disobey the State in order to obey God.” Using the Greek word kairos, meaning a special moment of truth, the document calls for immediate action.

This treatise was produced in Soweto, the strife-torn black township southwest of Johannesburg. Though it is the work of theologians, church leaders, and ordinary Christians, many Christians opposed to apartheid did not sign it, citing language that advocates physical force.

Notably absent from the signatories was Archbishop Desmond Tutu, for many years associated in various roles with the South Africa Council of Churches (SACC). Under the leadership of Tutu and others, the SACC has worked hard to walk a fine line between the radical fringe of the church calling for violence and the more moderate, nonviolent core of the activists.

The SACC is one of the most frequently quoted organizations in South Africa. When the “church’s position” in South Africa is sought, Desmond Tutu is the willing and quotable voice most often heard. Some have questioned whether he indeed represents the majority of South African Christians. Obviously, he does not speak for the Afrikans-dominated white denominations. Nor is he the voice of tribal Christian religions like the Zion Christian movements. Neither Tutu nor the SACC represents the Pentecostal or Baptist churches. But the SACC does represent those in the Methodist, Anglican, Lutheran, and other churches. And this is an active group in South Africa.

Peter Storey, pastor of the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg and past-president of the SACC, outlined the latter’s program as he saw it: “First, proclaim the Christian doctrine of man and show its incompatibility with apartheid; second, bind up the broken; third, the church must live the alternative to apartheid in its community life; fourth, develop Christian strategies to actually bring about change.

“This is where most Christians differ. Some feel violence is an acceptable strategy; I don’t, and I would say the majority don’t. Others, a growing group, favor more economic strategies, such as sanctions and divestment. I would say our church, the Methodist church, is moving strongly in that direction. We’ve explored everything else and nothing happens. The only thing that has shifted the South African government has been pressure.”

The communist threat. Charges of being sympathetic to communism fly around the most visible leaders of the SACC. Most observers agree they are ill-founded charges, but because the rhetoric and strategies used by the SACC often overlap some of the same ones used by the political Left, the charges remain.

It does not help that the banned African National Congress (ANC), which many think the SACC tacitly endorses, reportedly operates on a high-octane mixture of communist idealists and black South African nationalists who are indifferent to communism. The fear of communism usually lurks on the edges of destabilized social settings, fueled by Lenin’s famous comment to revolutionaries: “We will find our most fertile group by bringing Marxism through the religious sector of any country because religious men are easily bluffed and will accept almost anything if it is clothed in religious terminology.”

Yet the Christian commitment of the activists in South African churches is apparent. Their willingness to act forthrightly, sometimes flying in the face of civil law, reveals a church that is unafraid of pursuing justice. And while we may not like the willingness of some to use force, we can understand it. We visited Mamelodi, a township outside Pretoria. The overwhelming impression of this township and others is not necessarily that of poverty. The townships are indeed poor, made up of largely substandard housing. But the dominating impression is hopelessness. Residents of townships must live there—either that or return to equally bleak homelands. The option of force seems tempting indeed when a caged look stares heavily from the faces of South African blacks.

The Reconcilers

Facts are facts: South African blacks have few political rights. They want more. Blacks vastly outnumber whites in South Africa. Inevitably, blacks will get their rights. The question is not whether they will get them, but how and when.

One staunch band of Christians does not deny the logic of this frequently voiced argument. Yet, instead of spending their time arguing the likelihood of bloody revolution, this branch of the church preaches the power of the Holy Spirit to change people’s lives. It is almost as if they have taken to heart Tertullian’s phrase, “I believe because it is impossible.”

They attack the impossible from widely divergent settings:

Piet Meiring, pastor of the Lynnwood Ridge Dutch Reformed Church in Pretoria, commented on the loveliness of all South African peoples and he believes deeply in the effectiveness of simply getting them together: “Our major problem is not hateful, spiteful people, but people of different races who simply don’t know one another.”

David Bosch, professor of missiology at the University of South Africa, warned us not to discount the power of the supernatural: “Humanly speaking, I don’t see any hope of ever persuading the majority of Afrikaners to change. But a Christian should never believe in nonconversion. The Holy Spirit can change lives. It has happened, and it is happening.”

Denis Hurley, Roman Catholic archbishop of Durban, talked about the power of prayer to change things: ‘ “I’d like to see plenty of great prayer that brings people of all races together.”

Michael Cassidy, founder of Africa Enterprise, and one of the principal spokespersons for evangelicals in South Africa, said: “We need the intervention of God. Unless the Lord intervenes, we are going to lose the day here.”

The operative word for this part of the church is reconciliation, and they preach the concept as if the past can be forgiven, the present sanctified, and the future made whole.The program. Although the power of reconciliation is available to all, it lies unused by most. To encourage its use, the reconcilers say, we must show people that it works. They offered practical suggestions:

In the church. Integrating worship services is a start. Few churches have written laws against blacks and coloreds attending, but fewer still have actually integrated their worship services. Social and economic barriers make integration difficult, but that has not stopped many from trying.

Piet Meiring has had limited success in his congregation, in spite of practical limitations. “In our community, nonwhites are servants of the whites, and they feel awkward worshiping with their employers. We must break through that. One step would be to reunite our Dutch Reformed denomination into one body for whites, blacks, coloreds, and Indians. Then at least the structure would not discourage integrated worship.”

One-on-one meetings. Most whites have little meaningful personal contact with blacks, socially or otherwise. A major project in uniting the country is simply providing a venue for personal interchange where the word “black” comes to equal “person.”

The goal is to move blacks and whites into mutual circles, then guide the inevitable interchange and impact. As one pastor said, “You can’t take 20 million blacks into your heart, but you can take one or two or three.”

Some churches match black couples with white couples and arrange dinner dates in each other’s homes. Africa Enterprise sponsors weekend retreats that bring blacks and whites together. It often takes arm twisting and cajoling to get them together. But once they meet, the results surprise the participants. Says David Richardson, of Africa Enterprise, “Sharing cups of coffee, meals, and rooms, and interacting in classes and seminars creates an almost miraculous effect. Suddenly, there is nothing between you and this quite foreign being. Gone is the newspaper bias, the television slant, the state rhetoric about the mutual advantage of separation. In its place a black or white becomes a real person, a brother or sister in Christ, perhaps even a friend.”

Training church leaders. For reconciliation to become a reality, current church leaders must believe the Holy Spirit can change attitudes. Thus, strategies for retraining these leaders are crucial. Africa Enterprise has sponsored three such events in the past years: the Pan African Christian Leadership Assembly (PACLA) held in Nairobi in 1976; the South African Christian Leadership Assembly (SACLA), in 1979; and last year’s National Initiative for Reconciliation (NIR). The NIR called South African Christians to form teams to travel for 15 days in some part of the country, working to reconcile black and white through prayer, fellowship, and one-on-one encouragement.

Similar conferences have been called with good success by other groups: last April the Dutch Reformed Church (NG Kerk) held a Rally of Christians in Pretoria, attended by 9,000 people.

Prayer. National days of prayer coordinate the thoughts and hopes of millions. Some churches have taken up the practice of holding daily prayer meetings. Day after day people come to pray—often at predawn meetings—for the country and its leaders, both religious and civil.

The problem. If South Africa’s Christian activists are accused of being too political, the reconcilers are viewed as being not political enough. One official of a reconciling group put it this way: “Conservative white theology in this country has always taught that the role of the church is to stay out of politics. Thus, some black Christians in the country aren’t sure that a white conservative Christian group can really help them with their political agenda.

“We have avoided the radicals’ calls to violence, but we very much see the apartheid issue as one the church must face, political or not. So we are involved, not as politicians, but as seekers of justice. Fortunately, by and large the blacks have seen our commitment to dismantling apartheid and have joined us.”

The prognosis. The reconcilers believe the Holy Spirit can change things in their country. Many have committed their lives to that belief. David Bosch has worked faithfully in his academic career championing the rights of blacks in the face of an unfair system.

Bucking that system for all those years has been rough for Bosch. The temptation to bail out nags, and at times dominates the thinking of even the most committed. Thus, a year ago when a prestigious American university called and offered a faculty appointment, the kairos of decision had come for David and Annemarie Bosch. “It seemed as if God was offering us a way out. But prayer and reflection said differently. We decided not to accept. It was a stupid decision, but the right one, because one way or another, this is where God has put us. And here we will work, hoping against hope that a sufficient number of whites will strain against the odds and make enough difference to avoid a total disaster.

“It’s not heroic, by any means. It is simply a matter of obedience.”

Future Leadership

Recent research in the DRC gives reason to be uneasy about the future. The study, related to us by a DRC pastor, showed that nearly every congregation can be subdivided into three distinct parts. One part is conservative and prefers the status quo. A second segment is progressive, open to the possibility of reform. The last group is undecided. They end up going the direction the leader takes them. This means that the leadership is usually crucial in determining the direction of the churches—and will become even more so in the future. Yet young white leaders continue to be trained in institutions not involved in antiapartheid activities.

The leadership is equally important for blacks. Although pastors still exert a moderating influence, much of the leadership has passed to a younger generation. Young blacks already control many townships. At 16, 17, and 18 years of age, tomorrow’s leaders are already in place—and most appear to be growing steadily more radical.

The lack of suitable training facilities for blacks complicates the problem. Apartheid not only divides races, it creates substandard and disjointed training programs. If apartheid were dismantled tomorrow, many doubt the black community would have the trained cadre of upper-level and middle managers to cope with a free society.

Consequently, many of the groups we interviewed are trying to meet the challenge of leadership training. Theological colleges are working hard to train young blacks and whites in the multiracial settings of an ideal South Africa. But government controls on multiracial residences and other rights are immense hurdles to overcome. If the church is unable to provide solid leadership training, any gains won through reform or revolution will quickly be lost in the aftermath.

Plea For Unity

At least two perspectives on the church in South Africa are possible. From the United States we see only escalating cycles of violence and suppression, and we ask, “Why doesn’t the church do something?”

From inside South Africa, we see church leaders hammering away on dozens of different fronts. Each exciting church activity makes the first question moot, and raises a second: “Why aren’t these activities making more of a difference?” The proper answer, of course, is that God has his own timetable for bringing justice to South Africa. We accept that, as do the South African church leaders that we interviewed.

But God expects us to leave no stone unturned in making his church the positive force that he intends it to be. So the question must be asked daily: What more can we do to maximize the church’s antiapartheid efforts? The answer we kept hearing from South African church leaders themselves was a plea for church unity, a unity that will guard against apartheid within the church.

Diversity makes this task difficult. Ethnic, theological, historical, and interpersonal forces contribute to a South African ecclesiastical scene as complex as any on earth. Apartheid has accentuated that complexity by encouraging differences to remain differences.

“What we have in South Africa is the setting for a Greek tragedy,” said David Bosch. “The actors may each oppose apartheid. But all are caught inescapably in webs of their own little worlds and prejudices. They can’t do anything about it. As with all tragedies, you know it must end in disaster.”

This division within the antiapartheid camp surfaced with the question of sanctions (now moot as a result of recent congressional action). Some argued that the government only understands the language of force. Unless financial pressure threatens economic health, reforms will never come. Others said sanctions are futile and would bring too much suffering. They cited the Institute for International Economics study that showed only a 40 percent chance of success through sanctions.

Such disagreement in the church can only please proapartheid forces. They use every opportunity to encourage and exploit such divisions. But even when the politicos are not informed enough to recognize and exploit differences, the church itself cannot completely rise above them. The Kairos Document and the National Initiative for Reconciliation movement are a case in point. Authors of Kairos accused the reconcilers of promoting “cheap grace.” The result: instead of two groups attacking two parts of the same problem, the groups end up criticizing each other. Can the church avoid that costly leakage of energy in a time of acute crisis?

The answer, of course, is no. The fact of diversity is simply not enough of an excuse for the church not to pool its efforts and act.

Voices from a Troubled Land

“He Didn’t Notice the Color of My Skin”

Eddie Mhlanga’s story has three angles: the heritage of being a Xhosa (South Africa’s second-largest black tribe), the pilgrimage of being a Christian, and the perseverance in becoming a physician. The convergence of these angles make his story a textbook case of what is good and bad about South Africa.

Mhlanga comes from a poor homelands family. His first contact with white people came through foreign missionaries who offered education, medical care, occasional employment, and the gospel. They were good people who faithfully practiced all the virtues and vices of colonial missions. Mhlanga recalls how his benefactors prayerfully led him to Christ and then refused to pay more than 25 cents for 30 days of work in their garden.

Eddie Mhlanga flourished in mission schools. The faculty encouraged him as he achieved both in and out of the classroom. But he grew increasingly uncomfortable with the discrepancies between what was taught and what was practiced by his white patrons. He remembers the occasion of the all-school musical. The first performance was scheduled for “family,” the parents and friends of the students. The second was reserved for Afrikaner families who farmed the area. Family night was a great success as students “played and sang their hearts out,” dressed in well-pressed clothes and carefully polished shoes. Parents and teachers crowded around the students offering congratulations while sharing refreshments each family had purchased from nearby tables. The next night students were told the second concert was to be performed in bare feet. Personal humiliation turned to anger when the students saw affluent Afrikaner families served free refreshments—the same refreshments their parents had paid for the night before. After prayerful thought, Eddie and his classmates protested this blatant discrimination. Their missionary educators responded harshly and swiftly. Eddie and his friends were charged with insubordination, labeled as agitators, and expelled from the school.

At least one white missionary stood out from the rest. Mhlanga remembers him only as Dr. Howard, a medical missionary from Germany. He took a personal interest in Eddie, arranging for him to continue his education and do odd jobs around the hospital. More than anything else, Dr. Howard did not discriminate. “He didn’t seem to notice the color of my skin and treated me like a member of his own family.” Eddie’s fondest memory is sitting at the doctor’s table among family members and invited guests as they celebrated his sixteenth birthday. “No joy was ever sweeter than the joy of being accepted as an equal,” he recalls.

Mhlanga made it through university and medical school with Dr. Howard’s generous assistance. While his academic prowess impressed everyone, his Christian testimony was constantly challenged by fellow medical students committed to the black consciousness movement. They kept asking why a Christian country forced black students to live in a cramped, former army barracks next to an oil refinery, while their white counterparts lived in spacious, on-campus facilities. When Mhlanga sought answers from a local black minister, he was warned not to ask too many questions and to stay out of politics. The church is to spread the gospel, not resist the laws of the land, they told him. Rather than argue, Mhlanga invited his colleagues to a weekly meeting of the Student Christian Fellowship where they could share their frustrations and pray for one another. Many of them found Christ through his efforts.

Currently, Mhlanga serves as a staff physician at the University of Natal hospital. He and his wife and young daughter live in a small apartment between the barracks and the refinery. A fully licensed medical doctor, he commands the admiration of his colleagues and patients—both black and white. But too often he is reminded that he is a black Xhosa living in a nation where discrimination is public policy. About a year ago, Eddie started toward his boyhood home to visit his parents. Along the way, police were checking passbooks, a registration document the law required all blacks to carry until very recently. Eddie always kept his passbook scrupulously up to date, but had written some scriptural references on the last page. When his turn came for inspection, Eddie politely answered the officer’s questions: Yes, he was headed upcountry to visit his parents; yes, he was a licensed physician working at the University of Natal hospital; yes, it was his handwriting on the last page. He attempted to explain why he had written in the passbook, knowing the officer probably believed his explanation. Security officers are usually chosen from Afrikaner young men who have been raised in church.

“Did anyone give you permission to write on this page?” asked the officer. When Eddie admitted he had no such permission, the officer arrested him. He was transported to a local jail where he spent the weekend behind bars, unable to inform anyone of his whereabouts. He applied for a new passbook—requiring another fee—and was released to return to the university hospital.

Despite such encounters, Mhlanga feels remarkably positive about the forces that have shaped his life. Knowing Christ has liberated him from bitterness and given him faith in the future. Professional achievement has given him status and position in the black community. But he quickly points out, “God hasn’t called me to be successful, only faithful.” Being Xhosa challenges him to work for the liberation of his black brothers and sisters.

Eddie Mhlanga has hope—and is part of the reason to hope—for South Africa.

Voices from a Troubled Land

“I’ve Become Pretty Pessimistic”

Dr. Elaine Botha is a determined, hardworking Afrikaner. She loves her country and is fiercely loyal to it. Like so many Afrikaners, she was born into an undistinguished family and spent her early years in government-subsidized housing. Through academic achievement and borrowed money, she earned numerous degrees and made her way to the prestigious position of university professor.

Botha understands discrimination—not the racial kind, but the discrimination that comes from being a single, professional woman in a male-dominated society. When she pointed out that, with two doctorates, she received one-third the salary of a younger man with an undergraduate degree, the principal of the university told her, “Look, you have 15 years to prove whether you can find a husband; if you haven’t found one by then we’ll consider giving you equal pay as a bona fide breadwinner.”

A committed Christian, Botha serves her local church (a Dutch Reformed NG church) and various community organizations. Recently she helped launch a regional chapter of the National Initiative for Reconciliation (see page 17-I). Currently, the chapter is trying to help 150 rural blacks with legal aid, housing, education, and employment.

Following a discussion with several university colleagues, which she hosted, Botha shared her own views on the issues gripping South Africa:

On the government: Last night as I watched one of our cabinet ministers on TV I felt irritation, the feeling I often experience with people who take absolute positions. He could not admit he was wrong or that the government is pursuing a policy that isn’t working. He believes he’s right, absolutely right, and the only wrong people are we little folk trying to scratch out a living. If I, a white woman, feel this way, what must a black person feel who has spent his life saying, “Yes, Boss”?

On social structure: We’re very authoritarian over here. People in positions of subordination have very little say; even worse, they are regarded as not having the ability to say anything. At times, my own feelings as an “emancipated woman” in an authoritarian society have become so incensed I can understand why black people throw stones. There’s no other way to get your message across to people who regard their positions as God given. Polite, civilized methods like talking and writing letters don’t work. It seems there is only one way to break through this authoritarian structure, and that’s with some sort of physical or psychological violence.

On the role of women in South Africa: Afrikaner women see their role as being submissive, subordinate, and obedient. In a society so conscious of Scripture, they have been taught that this is biblical. What it comes down to is that women are so accustomed to the idea of men taking leadership they never learn to think for themselves. They don’t know how to contribute to the social changes that must come. This is compounded by the fact that white women have inadequate recourse to law. Black women have practically none. In one of the most legally sophisticated societies of the Western world, our laws hardly recognize a black woman as human. It’s pitiful, a situation that must be reformed.

On women being involved: On the whole, I don’t think Afrikaner women understand the implications of apartheid or think much about it. We have produced a woman in blinders. However, once our women do become aware of the problem, they get involved on a grassroots level. I know a woman who saw the need for feeding a few black children. Because of her energy and enthusiasm, this program now feeds thousands of children. She just did it. She didn’t spend months developing plans and policies, she just got busy and fed hungry children.

On the future: I have a sinking feeling that the future role of the church will be to pick up the pieces. Positions are hardening. Whites are becoming more arrogant and blacks are becoming more militant. On the human level, I’ve become pretty pessimistic. Even now, white vigilantes are driving through the streets shooting blacks. Churches are becoming more divided. Take the educational issue: Do you think Christian whites are going to open the doors of their schools to blacks when they firmly believe the standards of education will drop? Not the kind of white people I know. It will probably take another generation to work things out. I hope we can keep the country stable until then.

On reconciliation: The time has come for us to take God seriously and seek out what the Scripture means when it says, “See how much they love one another.” This is the only way to reconciliation. We don’t need another statement or paper or covenant. We’ve had enough of that. It’s time to reach out to each other, even though it won’t be easy or simple. I’ve found that as soon as you stop talking and start doing, like our regional initiative is trying to do, you generate a lot of mistrust and suspicion—often from other Christians. But it is the only way. I remember David Bosch (prominent South African theologian) saying that South Africa’s hope is in the hands of the people of the Cross, God’s alternative society. He said we are called to extend our arms and grasp opposing people and bring them together, knowing full well we, like the crucified Christ, may be tom apart in the process.

Voices from a Troubled Land

“What Am I Doing Here?”

Dr. Gerrie Lubbe looks like a Pennsylvania Dutch farmer. Short, stocky, and big-shouldered, he could be easily mistaken for one of his ancestors, the stereotypic Afrikaner who trekked the veldt seeking a home far from English landlords. Visual images deceive; Lubbe (pronounced Lu-bay) is a professor of religious studies at the University of South Africa, a university of some 60,000 students. But for him, teaching pays the bills. His first love is parish ministry, a love that has taken him down a most unusual road for one whose lineage dates back to the settlers of 1600.

Newly ordained in 1969 by the white Dutch Reformed Church, Lubbe and his young wife accepted an invitation to pastor a congregation of the black—predominantly Asian—Reformed Church in Africa (RCA) in the Johannesburg suburb of Lenasia. As a white missionary in the RCA, Lubbe was responsible to an Asian mission church, yet he was paid a generous salary by the white church. He plunged deeply into parish ministry and, to identify more totally with his congregation, requested that his church membership and ordination credentials be transferred from the white church to the black branch of the church, the RCA.

Lubbe’s ministry gifts brought growth and vitality to the 200-member congregation and elevated him to leadership positions among his denominational peers. Following the 1976 Soweto riots, the South African Council of Churches singled him out to draft a theological response to the crisis. In his statement, Lubbe charged that God was by-passing the institutional church for failing to confront an unjust society. Further, he asserted, God was raising up prophets among striking miners and school-boycotting children.

His comments infuriated white denominational officials, prompting them to demand an accounting before the mission board. Lubbe refused, arguing that his membership and credentials in the RCA made him accountable only to the black branch of the denomination. However, he and his church council invited the white church to meet with them and discuss their differences. The church never responded.

Still, a deeper problem troubled Lubbe. Although he was no longer a member of the white church, he relied upon them for his salary and for funds necessary to run his church. This led many blacks to view the church as a “government church.”

Even more troubling to Lubbe was the matter of principle. “How can you accept the financial help from those with whom you so clearly disagree?” he asked himself. The answer came clearly. The young pastor went to his local elders and asked them to “free me of denominational money.” They decided to go it alone. Lubbe resigned his ordination, and told the DRC they could stop supporting the church with their money. Eventually the white church accepted his resignation but then pressured black church officials to strike his name from their pastoral roster. Even today, the church is officially listed as “without a pastor.”

Without external aid, Lubbe’s congregation was unable to support Lubbe, his wife, and their three small children. Though employment opportunities were meager, he finally found a job as a security guard. For eight hours a day he checked people in and out of a large Johannesburg office block. It was a hard time for the Lubbes. Crossing sharply drawn political lines involved more than economic risks. Even extended family members became distant and limited their conversation to sports, weather, and occasional jokes about Bishop Tutu.

One Friday afternoon as he walked back to his security station, the thought occurred to him, “What on earth are you doing here? Why aren’t you in your study preparing for Sunday’s ministry?” And then as though a voice from heaven spoke, he thought, “But I’m free; my flock and I are free.” He went to his church’s elders, who called a congregational meeting and reviewed the situation with the people. They explained that to have a full-time pastor would require sacrificial financial support, making their church only one of a few self-supporting mission churches. More important, the members would need to shoulder increased responsibility for ministry.

From this meeting, someone coined a phrase that instantly caught on with the congregation: “If the pastor becomes a worker, the workers must become pastors.” Within a week of Lubbe’s denominational defrocking, the church decided they could provide the necessary financial support. At the close of the meeting, the elders called the Lubbe family to the front of the church, and the people surrounded them in an unprecedented demonstration of solidarity. As they embraced Lubbe and his family, they said, “We support you; we will never let you perish.”

The church has been true to its promise. Since the decision to forgo white financial support, the congregation has experienced slow but significant growth. Moreover, the predominantly Asian congregation decided to include their African servants in the worship services. The church now holds regular services in both English and the African language Sesotho.

Two years after quitting his job as a security guard, Lubbe was offered an academic post at the University of South Africa. His academic work in Islam, a major force among South African blacks, provides yet another opportunity to minister.

Lubbe is no longer a lonely prophetic voice. Others are calling the church to repentance. But he is not optimistic about the future of South Africa. He sees a “long, drawn-out scene of ugliness for 20 to 30 years.” He feels that all racial groups—blacks, Indians, coloreds, and whites—face a catastrophe greater than the trauma of Zimbabwe. Regardless of what happens, Lubbe and the church he pastors plan to help “the displaced, the disabled, the deposed, and the defrocked” through the trouble of the times.

Voices from a Troubled Land

“Politics Is a Hard World”

To some, he is a highly admired person. To others, he is a contributor to the political system that holds South Africa hostage. The object of these opposing views is the Reverend Ernst van der Walt, pastor of the 750-member Dutch Reformed church in Rondebosch, a beautifully landscaped suburb of Cape Town. During the six months of the year Parliament is in Cape Toepherds several ministers of government and their families, including State President P. W. Botha.

Van der Walt is a handsome, well-dressed man in his forties. He looks relaxed in any setting—conversing with cabinet members or pouring tea for visiting journalists. A pastor at heart, he takes his task (though not himself) seriously. While appropriately cautious about his unique relationship with powerful people, van der Walt responded to our questions with openness:

What’s it like to be the president’s pastor?

It’s different. I’m challenged by the opportunity to offer spiritual guidance during this time of political upheaval. I see my role as teaching biblical truth and providing spiritual support for all the members of my congregation.

Are you ever drawn into politics?

Occasionally, but only in a behind-the-scenes way.

Would you give us an example?

A few weeks ago, I was approached by the KwaZulu government (one of the black homelands) about helping to bring President Botha and Chief Buthelezi together, something for which our Afrikaner people have been praying. Soon I will be meeting with Chief Buthelezi’s spiritual mentor to lay some groundwork that could be helpful to both men. I don’t aspire to political involvement; these opportunities come because I’m the president’s pastor.

What kind of man is President Botha?

He’s someone I hold in high esteem. Like everyone else, he has his plus and minus points. Intellectually, he’s brilliant. He uses humor effectively. Politics is a hard world, and after 50 years he isn’t known for being soft. But there aren’t many in South African politics who have achieved as much. He attends church regularly and confesses to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I believe Mr. Botha’s relationship with Christ is a very real one. Recently, it stirred me to see him stand at our special service and offer a spontaneous prayer for the needs of the country. I know he suffers the agony of being misunderstood by people here at home as well as abroad, but I suppose that’s inevitable. He painfully realizes what so few comprehend: our problems are too complex to be solved with simplistic formulas.

Are there vastly different political points of view in your congregation?

Oh, yes!

Then how do you exercise your prophetic responsibility?

I feel I must preach biblical truth, not political programs. If the Scripture conflicts with someone’s political program there will be tension. For example, a member of the Conservative party, a former minister, is on our church board. When the board discussed a racial issue, he and I found ourselves on opposite sides of the question. We never did agree. When the vote was taken, I voted yes and he voted no. My pastoral responsibilities require me to be true to the Scripture. So far, I haven’t gotten in hot water with my people over political issues.

Please give an example of a biblical truth that overlaps political issues and how you would handle it.

A question that keeps surfacing in our congregation is, “What does the Bible say about the different races?” My first problem with this question is that the Bible doesn’t say much about race. Race is not a significant biblical term. Second, those who have tried to develop a theology of race mistakenly base it on the Old Testament concept that God’s people are forbidden to mix with the surrounding nations. The third problem I have is with the desire to link Afrikaner history with Old Testament Israel. I believe Old Testament Israel can only teach us something about the body of Christ. It doesn’t address racial or ethnic matters. Therefore, we shouldn’t use Israel as justification for discriminating against another race. The irony is, Afrikaners are mixed peoples themselves. If we pushed the analogy of Israel to its extreme, we would be living in sin ourselves, because we are an amalgamation of the Dutch, English, German, and French. Fortunately, more and more Christians understand that we don’t have any biblical foundation for keeping the races apart. My people are starting to realize that the principle of righteousness requires us to see people as individuals and treat them accordingly. They are becoming more open to biblical truth, which makes me acutely aware of the responsibility I carry as their pastor.

How do you feel about the future of the Dutch Reformed Church?

There’s a coming generation of pastors who are rethinking biblical interpretation and application. They are far more committed to direct application of Scripture than to long debates over the implications of Scripture. The danger we face is moving faster than our people. As church leaders, we could be many kilometers down the road, but we would lose our people in the process. Our people must take this journey with us, and only the Holy Spirit can help us make this happen.

Voices from a Troubled Land

“Their Anger Blinds Them”

South African born and Cambridge educated, Michael Cassidy caught a vision for African evangelism while attending a Billy Graham crusade. The vision grew when, as a student at Fuller Theological Seminary, he toured Africa, studying its people, meeting its leaders, and preparing for a postseminary evangelism ministry he named Africa Enterprise.

The embryonic ministry escalated rapidly with the addition of Festo Kivengere, a highly respected East African religious leader. The occasion was a city-wide crusade in Nairobi, Kenya. Cassidy asked Kivengere, whom he had just met, to join him for the crusade, and Kivengere accepted. It birthed a new kind of African evangelism, joining “white, self-conscious South Africans and black, independent East Africans in a most unlikely (what many called impossible) team relationship.”

Since 1970, Africa Enterprise has impacted the continent: integrated teams have held crusades in most major cities; a Pan African Christian Leadership Assembly of 800 leaders created a “Cape Town to Cairo” network of Christian leaders; a South African Christian Leadership Assembly brought 6,000 local black and white leaders together to “find lasting answers for our society”; a 150-acre Christian Leadership Training Centre has been established near Pietermaritzburg.

But Cassidy’s greatest challenge looms ahead. Last September he launched the National Initiative for Reconciliation (NIR), an effort to break the political, social, and religious gridlock paralyzing South Africa. Like other Africa Enterprise initiatives, the NIR began as a gathering of 400 South African church leaders committed to calling the nation to repentance and reconciliation. In the past 14 months, rapidly multiplying regional chapters have been taking this message to the South African church and society through five programs: (1) a monthly day of prayer and fasting; (2) a pulpit exchange between black and white churches; (3) a home visitation exchange between black and white families; (4) provision for the physical needs of black township churches; and (5) lobbying of local universities to open their doors to black undergraduates.

In the spacious, breezy dining room of a house he built himself, Cassidy talked about the massive task facing the NIR. He shared these insights:

Government reforms: The government’s initiatives are all too late. They carry very little political or moral weight with the blacks. If these reforms had been implemented five years ago, they would have given the government a great moral advantage. Now every reform is seen by blacks as a concession coming from an ever-weakening political base. Instead of stemming the tide of revolution, the government is actually accelerating it.

The failure of the white church: White evangelicals, including Dutch Reformed Christians, are locked into a nineteenth-century mindset. They teach that to support apartheid, right up to telling people how to vote on election day, is working out Romans 13; it is being subject to the state as God’s servant for good. The idea that the state might see itself as an autonomous political power without regard for the good of all its citizens has not crossed the average evangelical’s mind.

A selective black gospel: Many black churches are in danger of abandoning certain dimensions of the biblical gospel-truths like loving your enemy, forgiving your enemy. Their anger blinds them to truths that point to nonviolence, the way of the Cross, the way of Jesus. Biblical truth becomes increasingly more important as everything else becomes more polarized and confusing. We must stand together as the body of Christ, regardless of what may come, and keep our theological head straight during the process.

Right-wing backlash: A lot of Afrikaners are starting to talk as though civil war is on the way. They say they are not going to let blacks pressure them into a situation that becomes more and more chaotic. This may be 80 percent bravado and posturing, but we need to realize that an angry right-wing backlash is under way, and its focus is the black townships. This country cannot be saved without the help of the Dutch Reformed Church, the Christians of South Africa’s history. Their influence over the right wing is the only hope of moderating the backlash.

Hope for a nation: I think God is speaking to the church through Isaiah 51 where he says, “Awake, awake! Clothe yourself with strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in days gone by, as in generations of old” (NIV). This is a great call to break through the walls of complacency. Last week I was in a white, suburban church near Cape Town. At the closing service, with 1,500 in the sanctuary and an overflow crowd watching on closed-circuit television, I said, “I’m going to challenge you to take to your hearts the colored and black townships around you. I am calling you to join a task force from this church to stand in the gap for God, because he’s saying, ‘Whom will I send? Who will go for us?’ And you need to say, ‘Here am I, send me.’ ” At the end of my sermon I gave a public call, and about 70 people came forward to be commissioned. So maybe, even at this eleventh hour, people are getting mobilized and into action. That’s God’s call to the South African church: Mobilize, get up, get moving, don’t wait!

Voices from a Troubled Land

“Pray Until We Love Our Enemies”

Eight of us sat in a circle. Through drapery-trimmed windows of the suburban white church near Durban came the sound of children playing. In a few hours four of us—the white journalists—would return to comfortable homes in a quiet neighborhood. The other four—the black pastors—would go back to the conflict and carnage of the black townships. It was an incongruous setting for our interview, but like so much in South Africa, there was no choice; since it was too dangerous for us to go to them, they came to us.

“What’s it like to pastor a black township congregation?” In hesitant sentences, they told of ministry literally under fire: houses burning to the ground, charred vehicles blocking streets, armored troop carriers confronting stonethrowing children, and suspected police informants “necklaced” to death (a gasoline-filled tire is placed around the victim’s neck and set afire). The battle lines created by the inequities between 27 million tribally divided blacks and 3 million ethnically divided whites run through the heart of their parishes.

The first to speak explained how pastors are caught in no-win situations. He told of pressure to use his church sanctuary for illegal political gatherings, knowing if he agreed, government troops could raid the meetings, jailing him and his family. If he refused, young militant blacks would mark both the church and his home for fire bombing. He described the difficulty of explaining this dilemma to a congregation polarized along generational lines. Conditioned by apartheid, the older, illiterate Christians are horrified by both white military force and black-upon-black violence. They yearn for “peace and order,” willing to give up the fight if it would end the bloodshed. Their sons and daughters—the better educated and more politically alert Christians—demand a church that aggressively resists the government regardless of the price.

That price is high for everyone. The pastor told of visiting the hospital room of an elderly parishioner caught in a confrontation between white troops and the neighborhood young people. As he stepped up to her bed, she began to weep while describing the atrocities performed by the soldiers. “All I could hear her saying was ‘white, white, white’! And I remembered the armed, young, white men, peering over the tops of troop carriers roaming the Sunday morning streets. If they hadn’t been on duty, they would have been in church services somewhere with their families. How could churchgoing young men do such terrible things to their elderly black sister? How could one of our own denominational missionaries’ sons shoot black children in the streets?” While he prayed with his elderly parishioner, she kept praising the Lord that she hadn’t been killed. Others in the hospital weren’t so fortunate. A black woman on the next bed was shot in the spine and would never walk again. As the pastor left the hospital, he noticed a young black man who kept staring at him through swollen eyes from a face that had been beaten with rifle butts. “He seemed to be asking me for answers, but I had none.”

The senior member of the group, a graying man in his sixties, described the impact of township ministry upon his seven children, a family raised in the Christian faith. His eldest son, a bright, gifted leader, slowly shifted from serving the church to serving political organizations as he struggled to reconcile Christian theology with township conditions. Declared an enemy of the state, he was arrested, incarcerated, brutally interrogated, and sentenced to a 23-year prison term. Amid choking tears, the pastor tried to tell us what it’s like to visit an imprisoned son and see the marks left by mutilation and torture. He told how his own home as well as the church were repeatedly ransacked by security police looking for accomplices and incriminating evidence. He, too, was arrested and detained until he could prove he wasn’t connected to his son’s political activities.

The youngest member of the four was a trim, taut man in his thirties. He tried to explain the feelings of loneliness and despair that overwhelm his soul when nothing makes sense, and attempts to comfort seem so inadequate. He described efforts to exorcise his own bitterness by writing a pamphlet called Please Don’t Call Me Pastor after being confronted by an inconsolable mother who had just lost her 12-year-old son in security police crossfire. He struggled to explain the frustration of being brushed aside by his own generation who see the gospel as indefensible and irrelevant. He wondered how different it might be if the white members of his denomination understood what was happening in the townships and could offer encouragement and support.

When we asked what hope the church offered to its people, they said the only hope was prayer—the mobilization of their own people and Christians everywhere to pray. One of them has already established a number of parish prayer centers where people meet between four and six in the morning. Another described all-night prayer services where people “get on their knees and call upon God to help us through these times and provide a solution for our country.” They pleaded for prayer: “Pray until we love our enemies. Pray until we can look into the eyes of the white Christian soldier, that man who would gun us down, and say, ‘I love you in the name of Jesus.’ Pray until God changes the hearts of our countrymen.”

The resources. Despite the diversity of the South African churches, they have resources that position them favorably for cooperation. In the case of the Kairos Document, one church leader noted that many of the signatories of Kairos were active and supportive of the NIR meeting two weeks earlier. “You have to understand Africa before you call that schizophrenic. For the African, if you and he are talking and he agrees with 40 percent of what you are saying, he will say without reservation he supports you. This means church groups that fully agree on antiapartheid, but disagree on rationale and methodology, will work together. Nitpicking goes against the grain for most Africans. It’s not a desire to run with the hare and run with the hounds at the same time. It is a desire to be at peace with a brother.”

This desire for brotherhood and fellowship makes differences in theology less divisive than in other parts of the world. “In some ways South Africa has the most ecumenically advanced church I’ve seen anywhere,” said Michael Cassidy. “We are fractured in many ways. The racial issue does divide us. But the church here does not live in nearly such watertight compartments as I see in other parts of the world.

“We broke all the rules in our recent Durban conference. We can get mainline activists, evangelicals, charismatics, Dutch Reformed, Catholics, black independents, and others together to attack this problem. It’s tough, and we do have our disagreements, but we have done it.”

The opportunity. Will the South African church be the active agent in peacefully dismantling apartheid? We believe it will. The church has something the political parties don’t have: a centuries-old foundation of action. The church’s commitment to the gospel bases human rights not on ethnic power blocks or coalitions of special-interest groups, but on every person’s right to exercise the gifts God has given him or her. It is the only absolute, enduring basis for justice.

“The church already has the network,” said David Bosch. “It’s a network that crosses all boundaries. Thus we can lead in negotiations; we can lead in reconciliation; we can even lead in picking up the pieces after the revolution if it comes to that. The question for South Africans black and white is, ‘Where do you fit in the network? What can you do?’

“It means working with ethnics, politicians, and religious traditions we’ve never worked with before. That can be uncomfortable. But it’s the only answer, our only task.”

It is a task not only for the South African church. The network extends beyond the borders of South Africa, beyond the continent of South Africa. It covers the world and breaks down the walls of time.

The question “Where do you fit in?” speaks to all believers and begs an answer. God’s justice moves where men and women of courage and hope move. His breath of peace is our breath when we dedicate ourselves to speak his Word.