The Dutch Reformed Church & apartheid ????

[BrianBowman]

Folks,

The following stuff below the ------'s is from another board where the Dispensational Sect (Greater Grace World Outreach - GGWO) we left over a year ago is constantly discussed. A former member who is a "neo-Dispensationalist" and DTS grad is hammering on another former member (who happens to be a strong Reformed guy for 15 years now) about the Dutch Reformed Church supporting apartheid.

I'm basically ignorant of these matters, but would simply like some critical comments from knowledgeable PB'ers about the Dutch Reformed Church relative to what is written below. The "Reformed Guy" I mentioned in the previous paragraph was instrumental in "blowing open" the antinomian immorality that plugues GGWO. If there is any possibilty that the this "interjection" of the Dutch Reformed Church's actions (true or false) is simply a smoke screen to bash the Reformed Faith, I would like to expose it for what it is, because many (if not most) of the people who have GGWO are still very confused about true historical Ecclesiology.


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On the role of the Dutch Reformed Church in the development of apartheid:

http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/ricsa/jtsa/j70/j70_king.htm

One significant quote:

From the press and from political circles and eventually also from within the DRC, the proposals, as well as the people who proposed them, were vilified. The position was very clear: the concept of apartheid had become a doctrine. It was considered nothing less than a Godgiven order for human existence about which no question, least of all ethical, could be raised. It was an article of faith and only those who were either completely atheist or agnostic could dispute the validity and the legitimacy of apartheid.

On the University of Stellenbosch as the intellectual home of apartheid:

http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/mandela/sp961025.html

Significant quotes:

From the ranks of this University's alumni came each of the Prime Ministers who governed white-dominated South Africa in the era between the two Bothas. This University was the leading intellectual home of Afrikaner Nationalism. It was from this University that Apartheid received a great deal of its theoretical justification.

This institution has left its unmistakable imprint on our country's troubled history - a history whose scars still show.

But also:

Last week saw an event of the greatest significance that originated right here in Stellenbosch. This was when the Stellenbosch Presbytery of the Dutch Reformed Church confessed before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission a collective share in the systematic injustice of our past. Neither the message this conveyed, nor the impact this will make on the process of reconciliation, is to be underestimated.

Also:

What the Stellenbosch Presbytery did reminds us also of a narrow but significant current in the history of the Afrikaners and of this University which is often quite lost sight of and, indeed, passed over in silence. After all, is it not from this same University of Stellenbosch that there arose courageous voices of warning against and opposition to the doctrine of Apartheid? Voices such as those of a B. B. Keet, a Ben Marais, a Johan Degenaar, an Andrι Hugo, an Andrι du Toit, and others as well? In the affirmation of that current within your history lies the greatest hope, not only for yourselves, but for the whole of South Africa.

[Edited on 9-30-2005 by BrianBowman]

 

[Pilgrim]

Dr. Francis Nigel Lee is a Presbyterian who is originally from South Africa and has a couple of articles on his website about South Africa and the Afrikaners: "The Christian Afrikaners" and "White South Africa's Total Depravity" http://www.dr-fnlee.org/

I don't know if they will directly address your issue or not. If not, you can try emailing him directly and I'm sure he'd be happy to help.

 

[RamistThomist]

A dear friend of mine was Dutch Reformed and from South Africa. She said that apartheid as it was one unfortunate, but to "go the route" that Clinton and Co. did destroyed South Africa. Put it this way: Imagine freeing all American slaves at once and then making them presidents of banks, railroads, etc. (Just so not to be racist, pretend that the white/black roles were reversed; same point stands).

 

[Puritanhead]

Bush Senior as well as Clinton played a role in the chicanery of the new South African regime. Reconciliation such as it is came full circle, and they just traded one form of tyranny for another. Corruption and violence are one of South Africa's unspoken secrets to the outside world. White farmers are butchered in their homes. Rape, murder, robbery and crime are up by several-thousand percent from 1989 levels.

The new South African government is no less racist than the old one-- it just has a different ideological flare. Mandella was a murderous communist terrorist who belonged in prison, and the liberal media reinvented him as a fun-loving peace activist and globe-trotting humanist like Gandhi. Heresy to say that, isn't it? You won't hear that on Oprah! I've studied South African politics enough to know, he is not the good guy the liberal establishment makes him out to be. What did Mandella's wife get caught doing a few years ago? Oh yeah, murdering a little boy with her goons because he comes from the wrong political background. She got a slap on the wrist. Unfortunately, South Africa just traded one tyranny for another. Crime has skyrocketed into the 1,000%+ range. I would recommend reading a book by a black clergyman Sipo Mzimela entitled Marching to Slavery that tells the story about the ANC and the real Nelson Mandella. The ANC is a front for the South African Communist Party. The tide has turned but unfortunately in another bad direction. "Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities, and still remain democratic," as European classical liberal Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn has avowed.

Mandella left giving communist clinched-fist salute at a SACP gathering.

South Africa has a very centralized government and needs a decentralized federal polity like Switzerland with home rule for the various regions. That's really the only way that tensions would be less fierce and that the nation could live more peaceably together. Zimbabwe to the north and Robert Mugabe are even worse. I heard a Dutch Reformed speaker at an OPC once relate his experiences of living under the murderous kleptocrat Mugabe's regime. It doesn't look like things will get better until Jesus comes back sometimes. In the meantime, we have probably have more political, ethnic and social strife.


[Edited on 9-30-2005 by Puritanhead]

 

[CalsFarmer]

Originally posted by Draught Horse
A dear friend of mine was Dutch Reformed and from South Africa. She said that apartheid as it was one unfortunate, but to "go the route" that Clinton and Co. did destroyed South Africa. Put it this way: Imagine freeing all American slaves at once and then making them presidents of banks, railroads, etc. (Just so not to be racist, pretend that the white/black roles were reversed; same point stands).

I have many S'African friends that echo this sentiment also. Its a real shame to see how S'Africa has changed from my first visit in the early 90s' to what it is now.

 

[Peter]

Ditto to the "Christian Afrikaners" e-book recommendation at dr-fnlee.com, sermonaudio.com also has a number of lectures by Dr. Lee on the Afrikaners.

 

[Shane]

There will always be people standing for God in the midst of the devils work. here is an example of one. I am sure he also had his faults llike many of us though.

http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/people/naude-cfb.html

While many of the Dutch Reformed were Racist some werent and I think its dangerous to lable everyone as such.

[Edited on 10-1-2005 by Shane]