*By Adam Fefer
Time Period: 1948-1968
Location: South Africa
Main Actors: Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (DRC), Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cape Town, Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Christian Institute of Southern Africa, South African Council of Churches
Tactics
– Declarations by organizations and institutions
– Signed public statements
– Assemblies of protest or support
Apartheid, South Africa’s system of racially segregated autocracy, formally began in 1948 but was in many ways an extension of colonial-era practices. Under apartheid, nonwhites –Blacks, Asians, and mixed race groups– were disenfranchised and deprived of South African citizenship, forcibly relocated out of white areas, and prohibited from marrying whites. Those critical of the ruling National Party and apartheid more generally were violently repressed and imprisoned, often under the pretext of being communists.
Christian clergy played an important role in both supporting and defecting from the apartheid status quo. Key among apartheid’s religious supporters were leaders of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC), the main denomination among Dutch or “Afrikaner” settlers who colonized South Africa in the late 17th century. Several other denominations followed the DRC in instituting segregated churches from the late 19th century. In fact, the term apartheid (meaning “apart-ness” in Dutch) was coined at a DRC conference in 1929. The varied actions of Christian clergy included justifying apartheid, criticizing it without demanding its end, covertly and overtly supporting antiapartheid activists, and so on.
Many of the specifically white clergy who fought against apartheid paid a high price, including demotions and dismissals, loss of community, threats to their personal safety, and exile. Without detracting from the often greater price paid by Black clergy, focusing on the initial actions of white clergy can help us understand how (a) leaders who might benefit from the status quo take costly actions to defect from it and (b) early defections make possible larger chains of defection that ultimately eject authoritarian governments.
In the immediate post-1948 period, clergy responses to apartheid were limited. For example, the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference’s 1952 Statement on Apartheid said “Were the attitude of Europeans the sole reason for South Africa’s racial problem, it would be simple enough to condemn it as unjust and unchristian…However, the problem is far more complex…aris[ing] out of the fact that the great majority of non-Europeans…have not yet reached a stage of development that would justify their integration.” However, a few examples of defection stand out. Against the warnings of his Archbishop, the Catholic Bishop Francis Hennemann issued a statement in 1948 calling apartheid “noxious, unchristian and destructive,” adding that a “white civilization” could never be a Christian one. These early responses were not limited to statements. In 1950, Anglican priest Trevor Huddleston protested alongside Nelson Mandela and others against the forced removals of nonwhites into “Bantustan” territories. These and other actions led Huddleston’s superiors to recall him back to England several years later. In 1953, after the forced closure of missionary schools that educated Blacks, Catholic Archbishop Denis Hurley launched a fundraising campaign in an attempt to maintain autonomy from the state. And in a bold act of civil disobedience, Anglican Archbishop Geoffrey Clayton sent a letter to South Africa’s prime minister in 1957 stating that he refused to obey –and refused to counsel his laity to obey– legislation that forced congregations to segregate.
The March 1960 massacre of antiapartheid protesters by police in Sharpeville –where 91 died and over 200 were injured– was critical in pushing otherwise apathetic clergy to defect and denounce apartheid After Sharpeville, Anglican Archbishop Joost de Blank called for the World Council of Churches to expel DRC from its ranks, which led DRC to split along pro- and anti-apartheid lines. Especially noteworthy was the Afrikaner DRC minister and longtime apartheid supporter Beyers Naudé. Between 1962-63, Naudé started an antiapartheid ecumenical monthly journal called Pro Veritate as well as an organization called the Christian Institute, both of which were banned by the South African government. Naudé’s DRC superiors issued him an ultimatum: cease all journal and organizational activities or resign. Naudé resigned and was stripped of his status as a minister. A sermon by Naudé in 1963 called his choice one “between obedience in faith and subjection to [Church] authority,” adding that “[by] obedience to the latter, I would save face but lose my soul.”
By the late 1960s, a growing number of clergy became more actively critical of apartheid. For example, in 1968 the South African Council of Churches published “A Message to the People of South Africa,” where it called apartheid “a false faith …[and] security built not on Christ…[that] inevitably conflicts with the Christian Gospel…rooted in and dependent on a policy of sin.” The initial steps taken in the 1950s and 60s, while sometimes patronizing and perhaps insufficiently critical from our standpoint, were crucial in paving the road toward broader clergy defections in the 1970s and 80s. This includes the influential “Special Programme for Christian Action in Society” (SPRO-CAS), which proclaimed that South Africa was “in urgent need of radical change, in the sense of a fundamental redistribution of power…so that the black majority can exercise an effective role.”
What explains these defections among religious leaders at different ranks and within different denominations? It seems clear that antiapartheid white clergy were driven by a specifically Christian ethos centered on equality before God. On this view, apartheid was deemed antithetical to God’s will and political apathy deemed sinful. Explaining their defections by reference to careerism or personal gain seems inappropriate in light of the high costs endured by so many of these clergy. By contrast, many of the clergy who did not defect were sympathetic to a view of apartheid as itself divinely ordained, owing to allegedly innate differences between races.
Democracy organizers in the US can learn much from the example set by South African clergy. First, the incremental and cautious nature of many defections, while disappointing to those seeking more wholesale change, can nevertheless enable and motivate larger chains of defections. US leaders from within the Pillars of Support who, e.g., “merely” condemn political violence –without condemning the authoritarian sentiments underlying it– may turn out to be crucial first movers. A second lesson concerns the power of religious language: the appeals by South African clergy to God’s law were important in convincing their laity to condemn or disobey the laws of apartheid. Finally, the South Africa case attests to the importance of diverse kinds of tactics by defectors, including individual and joint statements, protests, fundraising, and civil disobedience.
Where to Learn More
– Kairos Document (1985).
– Overcoming Apartheid (2024). “Religious Faith and Anti-Apartheid Activism.”
– Special Programme for Christian Action in Society (1972). “Apartheid and the Church.”
You can access all the caselets from the Pillars of Support Project here.