Churches Seek Role amidst Violence

Despite past differences in approach to social and political problems, evangelicals in South Africa say it is time to unite and step forward for peace in the face of nearly 800 deaths from black factional fighting.

This week, evangelicals will join representatives from the South Africa Council of Churches (SACC) and the Dutch Reformed Church in a convocation to discuss the church’s role in dismantling apartheid. This marks the first time such a diverse group has met under one roof.

More than 80 percent of the churches in South Africa will be represented at the gathering, which will be chaired by SACC’s Frank Chikane and Louw Alberts, a senior government official who will be acting in a “personal capacity.” The five-day meeting could provide a rare opportunity for South African churches to speak “in one voice” on apartheid.

Warning against “spectatoritis,” Michael Cassidy, founder of the evangelical ministry African Enterprise, said Christians have a unique opportunity to help turn the nation around. “Don’t leave [the nation’s future] to President de Klerk and Mr. Mandela,” Cassidy said. “It requires a people movement to save the nation, and the people are the people of God.”

Cassidy is joined in his call for church action by other South African leaders. Bishop Bruce Evans of Port Elizabeth said, “I believe, being an evangelical myself within the Anglican Church, that all the different church groups, whatever their theological position, need to get together and to move and to speak with a united voice over issues of injustice, irrespective of how injustice comes.”

Evans has high hopes for the gathering of South African churches planned for this week. The meeting will include evangelical and Pentecostal churches “who on the whole have not been involved in the anti-apartheid movement at all,” Evans said. Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches that have been involved in the struggle will also participate. “This conference will be to find common ground, because evangelical churches have been seen to have neglected the role they should have been playing,” Evans said. He added, however, that church efforts at reconciliation between blacks and whites have been “very positive and constructive” in changing attitudes on an individual level.

Not all Christian leaders, however, see any progress in past reconciliation efforts. Two officials of Concerned Evangelicals, chairman Moss Nthla and board member Faki Bodibe, in a joint statement blamed the conservative Zulu movement Inkatha and rightist elements in the military for the recent violence. But they also criticized many Christians who, they said, have misused the issue of reconciliation.

Christians as Targets

By initial reports, the incident of a black gang attack on black commuters seemed merely another episode of the factional violence in South Africa. At least 26 people were killed and more than 100 others wounded when the gang swept through a commuter train carrying workers home from Johannesburg to Soweto.

Later press reports, however, added a troubling new twist to the story. The railway car apparently targeted by the gang was known as the site of a nightly prayer meeting held by Christians, according to a report in the Johannesburg Star. Witnesses quoted in the article concluded that the action was planned and directed at the believers.

South African president F. W. de Klerk joined African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela in blaming a “hidden hand” for the recent wave of violence, indicating that they believe an unknown group is playing upon tensions to breed instability in the townships. Church observers noted parallels in the recent events to situations in other countries, such as Algeria and Kenya, in which Christian moderates have become the targets of radical groups.

“Reconciliation between white and black churches has generally been low key, and has not been effective on the main,” they said. “However, the general question of black/white reconciliation as it has been promoted by the [politically] conservative church groups in South Africa has had a negative effect. This reconciliation had very little commitment to a radically different South Africa, and thereby sidestepped critical issues of justice.”

For his part, Cassidy says a key stepping stone to peace is a meeting between Inkatha’s leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and African National Congress (ANC) leader, Nelson Mandela. Though Inkatha and ANC members have held direct meetings recently, several attempts to bring Buthelezi and Mandela together have been rejected by one side or the other.

Political Pressure

Some observers in the U.S. say evangelicals in South Africa risk neglect of the gospel by getting too politically involved. Dean Curry, chairman of the political science department of Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania, said he has for a long time been concerned about what he calls the “intimidation factor.” He said, “There is tremendous pressure on these people to embrace one radical political agenda or another.”

Ron Brett, assistant general director for TEAM who was born and raised in South Africa, said evangelical churches must often operate in the midst of pressure to take a more political stance, such as canceling a Sunday service to attend a political rally. “The Christian church simply wants to get on with the matter of the grace of the gospel, and they don’t like to get tied into a political agenda, so they find themselves really caught in the middle on these things,” he said.

Some churches, however, have found a role to play. Several Baptist churches in black townships hit by violence have joined other Christians in sponsoring reconciliation sessions that bring together members of the opposing factions, sometimes in groups of 50 or more.

In seven townships, Baptist churches have held special evening services, offered Christian counseling in riot-torn neighborhoods, and distributed relief to people who lost possessions in fires and looting.

Another example of evangelicals grappling with realities in South Africa is the racially liberal but theologically conservative New Independent Churches, which Curry said have sprung up in recent years apart from the “mainline” denominations and are committed to reconciliation.

More of that kind of involvement is needed, Cassidy said. “Huge human and political forces have been unleashed, and Christians across the country have got to come to terms with what is happening in terms of violence, how to think rightly about it, and then how to take measures to see it stopped,” he stated.

“We are going to get into the act,” Cassidy continued. “If that happens, South Africa will be saved as dramatically as eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain was saved by the Wesleyan revival, when evangelism and passionate social concern came together, reached the powerful, changed the nation, and turned it around.”

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