Afrikaner Calvinism

A reformed church in Piketberg in South Africa.

Afrikaner Calvinism is, in theory, a unique cultural development that combined religion Calvinist with the political aspirations of South African whites speaking the Afrikaans.

From 1652 to 1835, settlers came to the origin of the Netherlands and the Protestant Calvinist immigrants and refugees from France , of Germany , of Scotland and elsewhere in Europe , met in South Africa to form a distinct people . Between the late eighteenth ^century and the late twentieth ^century, they saw themselves as Afrikaners rather than European. They spoke their own native language, Afrikaans, and were bound by a form of Calvinism. Afrikaners negotiated an autonomy agreement in the four British colonies of southern Africa , eight years after the Second Boer War , and established themselves firmly as the ruling minority in South Africa until international pressure and increasing disorder in the country forced them to dismantle their policy of domination named exclusive apartheid.

Implementation

The Dutch settlement at Cape of Good Hope was the first colonial success in South Africa. The key to this success was the establishment of strict rules of trade between colonists and indigenous populations. No trade or Christian mission could not venture among Africans without the permission of the director of the company. Stealing or killing cattle was especially forbidden because it could be the cause of unavoidable conflicts with the natives. The first Europeans were horrified by the appearance and customs of the Africans, and rumor - totally false - that the natives were cannibals has strengthened their resolve to stay away from them. Cape Town was a confined space, with Europe inside and Africa to the outside. Strict order to minimize conflicts with the Africans in the first phase of implementation.

However, many settlers had arrived in a goal missionary. The synthesis of this attitude of strict separation and mission awareness leads to a widespread practice of putting people Khoisan serving Europe, and within this relationship between master and servant, teach the Bible in the hope the message successfully to the family's servant (and information superiority of European life) and thus lead to conversion.

The farmers living outside the city walls had a different design. For them, the occupation meant possession and possession implied the right to protect their property. Then they settled in the territories apparently unoccupied surrounding Cape Town, they applied this concept of ownership, and rights related matters, when the wandering hunters or herding tribes crossed the Great Fish River and reached up territories farms in search of pasture or game. Thus, the firm represented an extension beyond the cities, the wall of separation between whites and blacks. Similarly in the city, the slavery practiced in the plantations was sometimes seen as a means to evangelize.

Separation and opposed trade rules early in the Afrikaner mind the invasion and conquest. And this anti-imperialism also extended to the theory on missionary duty in the Dutch Reformed Church : The Kingdom of God should grow up in the sphere of influence vested in the Church by divine providence, since Children are introduced to the message of the Gospel by their parents and their families. If God judges the Gospel suitable for indigenous and to be taught to their children is its glory. To this end, Christians are a key given to them by God, appeal, or responsibility in the covenant (between God and themselves) as people of God to remain pure in faith and fair when they deal with the heathen, and be absolutely adamant in protecting what was rightfully claimed on behalf of the triune God.

Religious People

The history of Afrikaners is key to understanding this particular concept of "appeal" that developed among them. These attitudes, taken early, and continued in subsequent conflicts, were built in such a way that it seemed obvious that they were designed by God himself. They thought they were preserved by the very wisdom of God and the welfare. The things they suffered and the links between them, formed under such circumstances, seemed to confirm this idea at every turn. Their history as a people occupied a central role in the formation of religion Boer. In this way, a popular feature marked their Calvinist beliefs.

The popular religion was not made formally. It was part of the experience of Afrikaners, which they interpreted through their belief that their creator and sovereign Lord had shown them a special grace as a particular people.

Nationalism

However, the French Revolution brought these habits of thought to the surface. Due to the fact that the Dutch of the Netherlands supported the French and American revolutions, the British declared war on the Netherlands and began to take control of their trade routes. They landed at the Cape of Good Hope in 1797. After the Dutch made bankrupt, the British annexed the Cape and named director of Britain in 1805, who were zealous propagators of Enlightenment. They will relax regulations on trade and labor, calling blacks "noble savages" whose souls they pretended to admire the natural and untouched, and finally abolished slavery in 1835. They treated blacks equally, and gave them access to the courts against the white landowners. They also called them to believe in their own Reason autonomous rather than anything else.

More antithetical message could not be imagined when the Afrikaners were confronted for the first time in English Enlightenment. From the perspective of the Boers, the Enlightenment had invaded their territory, seized their property, annexed their farms, have imposed foreign laws, freed their slaves without compensation, have justified these acts by the only appeal to reason and each time have proclaimed that they were more virtuous than their God. They were exposed to light and that they appeared to be a revolution against their God.

Separation of Boer and Afrikaner Calvinist

The Cape Dutch Reformed Church, the Gereformeerde Kerk Nederduits , was considered by the Voortrekkers as a government agent in Cape Town. Thus, they did not trust his ministers and his emissaries, seeing them as an attempt to regain control of Cape politics. There were also religious divisions among the trekkers themselves. In 1853, a minister of the Netherlands, Dirk Van der Hoff , went to the Transvaal and became minister of the Hervormde Kerk Nederduitsch , which was founded in 1856 and recognized in 1860 as the state church of the Republic of South African Transvaal , separated from the Church of Cape Town.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands, the Dutch Church had been transformed by the Enlightenment, represented a change in the minds of those who opposed the loss of any profession of faith required for serious adult members of the Church and by the singing of hymns (in addition to Psalms) and other innovations in worship and doctrine. In the Netherlands, a movement grew in reaction to what was seen as a dismantling of biblical faith. He was appointed Doleantie (from Latin meaning dolere mourning) and caused a schism in the Dutch Reformed Church and the formation of the Christian Reformed Church in the Netherlands. The writings of Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer and Doleantie leader, Abraham Kuyper , became gradually aware among Afrikaners. Highly critical of the Enlightenment, the revolution as they called it, were equivalent in education and politics. The moment was felt that influence was significant, at the height of a wave of evangelical revival, the Clock (the clock) in the Dutch Reformed Church, which was led by the Scottish preacher, Andrew Murray. The slogan of the Doleantie, who had an unintended connotations for Afrinakers nationalist, was: "the division is strength."

Doppers

In the Dutch Reformed Church in Transvaal, the most conservative group, known as "Doppers" were opposed to sing hymns in church. They asked the Gereformeerde Kerk Afgescheiden the Netherlands, to grant them a minister. The Reverend Dirk Postma happened then in 1858 in the Republic of South Africa, from Zwolle. He was appointed Minister of the Hervormde Kerk (Reformed Church). But on learning that his congregation would be forced to sing hymns (rather than just the Psalms), and the Doppers him, which included a total of three hundred adults, including the future president Paul Kruger , seceded from the Church of State to form the Gereformeerde Kerk in Rustenburg in February 1859. There were three Dutch Reformed churches in South Africa: the Afrikaner Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk (Cape Synod), the Hervormde Kerk Nederduitsch Boer who was the state church of the Republic of South Africa , and Gereformeerde Kerk Boer the smallest of the three, led by Dirk Postma.

The term "Dopper" insulting to the original word could come from the Dutch DPKO (French, Mouchette ) assigned because of their opposition to candles and other innovations in worship, or perhaps for their disregard of Enlightenment. It is also possible that the term comes from the Dutch dop (cap) in reference to their strong opposition to small sections of communion individual ^, .

The separatism of Doppers expressed in the radical nature of their doctrine, in the austere puritanism of their faith, and even in their speech and how to dress individuals, showed a strong contrast with European influence. The Doppers were symbols of resistance to everything that was English in South Africa. And despite their small number and their specificity, they were culturally sophisticated and exercised an influence disproportionately during and after the Great Trek. It is the Church of Doppers that establishes the University of Potchefstroom , and is also from this sect that Paul Kruger began his ascent .

New Boer States, formed after the Great Trek, needed a complete philosophy around which to organize a genuine Boer society. The Voortrekker "Uncle Paul" Kruger, first President of the Republic of South Africa which had won its independence after the annexation of the Transvaal by the British adopted the policy as it Doleantie and formulated the "cultural mandate" boer. The latter was based on the belief that the Calvinist Afrikaner South Africans had been specially called by God in a manner quite similar to the Israelites in the Bible. The Doppers led an intellectual war against what they saw as the foreign culture that invaded South Africa through the installation Mass of foreign occupiers attracted by gold and diamonds and accompanied by the British armies. In the spirit of Afrikaner, British imperialism represented, wickedness, foreign oppression, greed, envy and disbelief . When the Boer War broke out, the idealized version of Paul Kruger of Afrikaner history, forged a united and powerful force among Afrikaner population. The experience of the Boer War in the latter, which includes the death of 28,000 civilians and destruction of farms, reinforced their fortress mentality, necessary to preserve them and their lifestyle, the crucible UK.

Afrikaner Broederbond

Boer wars have left many Afrikaners destitute. Ruined farmers there were hundreds out of the war, lining the roads to sell their product basket. After the reorganization of the Union of South Africa by the British and the abandonment of their hold in favor of democratic elections, a small group of anonymous young intellectuals called the Broederbond or Afrikaner Broederbond, formed in the years following the Second Boer War to discuss the strategy to address the massive social problems that affected the "poor whites" and Afrikaner interests. According to statements by Klaus Venter and Hendrick Stoker, two members disappointed with this secret organization, the university reported by Irving Hexham in 1927, the Broederbond moved to the University of Potchefstroom asking what the institution to resume the direction of the group wishing to break even at that time. It's the same year as the Broederbond officially adopted the philosophy Calvinist doctrine based on Abraham Kuyper . The Broederbond was deeply convinced, through the interpretation of faith, that what the Afrikaners were endowed by their history, was a model of anti-imperialism, self-discipline and responsibility, which ultimately preserve Justice for All - Black, Coloured and White - against Communist deception. These strategies emerged from the Broederbond were directly responsible for the establishment of apartheid in 1948.

However, some who had been members of the organization until 1927, preferred the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte , and other versions of nationalism in Europe. A program fascist , social Darwinist , expressing some sympathy for Hitler , winning the backing of some Afrikaners during the Second World War. The Broederbond became so, so annoying, an ally of the policy. The Calvinist party within the Broederbond tried to distance itself from this movement, but it had very limited results because of the secrecy of the organization. Later, they admitted having misunderstood the true ambitions of non-Afrikaners, and not having seen the pain of Black and Coloured under apartheid and the extreme unpopularity of the policy of apartheid in the eyes of non- Afrikaners. The nationalist anti-Calvinists, led by Hendrik Verwoerd , defeated the Calvinists in 1950 and used the Broederbond to advance their own political ambitions. International pressure grew, increasingly isolating the Afrikaners and assimilating their political oppression of the worst heretics. But it took time to get that awareness - or at least for a while, it aroused no strong enough to lead to the dismantling of the complex social system that had been founded on the basis of apartheid.

After the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, under immense international pressure that followed, the Broederbond began a long and discreet review of its policy proposals. And yet, no significant change did not occur to reform the system of apartheid to the riots in Soweto in 1976. Shortly thereafter, the Broederbond apartheid decreed as a failure unreformable and began dismantling it. The conviction was finally established, although not universally shared, that if the people, the Afrikaner language and religion were to survive, they must take the initiative to leave their camp and to invite South Africa in its breast. The Broederbond, who abandoned his policy of secrecy and took the name of Afrikaner Bond , began to propose initiatives on land reform and the overthrow of apartheid.

Although the Afrikaner Calvinism and Calvinism Boer were associated during most of the ^twentieth century, it has recently become increasingly clear that these are two separate forms of Calvinism.

Radical changes

The overthrow of apartheid has led the Dutch Reformed Church of Cape Town (the Gereformeerde Kerk Nederduits ) to enter a period of change. While remaining religiously Calvinistic, the religious character of this church is now less cohesive and more difficult to define. Having been fully merged with apartheid, the historic Calvinism appears to have fallen somewhat into disuse. The liberation theology that takes the idea of revolution came from the Enlightenment took hold in some quarters and appears to have support for both left and right of the political spectrum. The evangelical American style and Arminianism also appear to have gained ground, with an accent which benefit individualistic, have less potential to form generalized civil religion. Of course the old synthesis of natural theology and revealed theology is widely rejected, at least officially. However, popular religion is not dead. Some revisionist historians and some academics are trying to delineate the distinction between Calvinism per se, the history of Afrikaners, the civil and religious apartheid in particular.

References

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