Afrikaner Calvinism: Difference between revisions

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'''Afrikaner Calvinism''' ({{lang-langx|af|Afrikaner Calvinisme}}) is a cultural and religious development among [[Afrikaner]]s that combined elements of seventeenth-century [[Calvinist]] doctrine with a "chosen people" ideology based in the Bible. It had origins in ideas espoused in the Old Testament of the [[Jews as the chosen people]].{{sfn|Du Toit|1985|p=209}}

A number of modern studies have argued that [[Boers]] gathered for the [[Great Trek]] inspired by this concept, and they used it to legitimise their subordination of other South African ethnic groups. It is thought to have contributed the religious basis for modern [[Afrikaner nationalism]] and ''[[apartheid]]''.{{sfn|Williams|1991}} Dissenting scholars have asserted that Calvinism did not play a significant role in Afrikaner society until after they suffered the trauma of the [[Second Boer War]]. Early settlers dwelt in isolated frontier conditions and lived much closer to pseudo-Christian [[animist]] beliefs than organised religion.{{sfn|Hexham| Poewe|1997}}

White settlement in [[South Africa]] is traced to the 1652 arrival of the [[Dutch East India Company]] at the [[Cape of Good Hope]], seeking to establish a supply and refreshment station for its ships and crews bound to and from IndiaIndonesia.{{sfn|McNeill|1967|p=381}}{{efn|The Dutch administration at the Cape did not initially envision or desire a large European settlement there.}} From its headquarters in [[Amsterdam]], the Company recruited crew and equipped voyages for the Orient. Most of its Dutch employees were Protestant Calvinists, who were the majority of the population in the region, supplemented by other Protestants: a few Lutheran Germans, Scandinavians, and numerous French [[Huguenot]] refugees who had fled religious persecution in France.{{sfn|McNeill|1967|p=381}}{{sfn|Greaves|2013|p=37}} Among their Afrikaner descendants, individual religious communities such as the ''Dopper''s became known for establishing their own doctrine in rifts with the [[Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK)|Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk]] ([[Dutch Reformed Church]]). By the late nineteenth century, the separatist churches of [[Reformed Churches in South Africa|Gereformeerde Kerk]] had developed in South Africa.{{sfn|Du Toit|1985|p=214}}

The Dutch settlement of the [[Cape of Good Hope]] was the first colonial success in South Africa. The Companycompany established strict rules for trade between the settlement and the native population. Only a Company administrator could authorize trade or [[Christian missionary]] ventures among the Africans. Settlers were forbidden from stealing or shooting [[cow|cattle]], which were a form of wealth and sustainability for the Africans. The early Europeans were shocked by the differences in the customs, clothing and appearance of the Africans. False rumours that the natives were cannibals reinforced the motive to avoid unnecessary contact. The Cape was a walled garden, with Africa on the outside and Europe within. This strict order minimised conflicts with the Africans during the early settlement period.

The farmers who lived outside the physical walls of the towns had a different arrangement with natives than did than the townspeople. To them, occupation meant ownership, and ownership implied the right to protect their property. As they settled into the seemingly unoccupied territories surrounding the Cape, they enforced their assumptions about ownership and its rights against the wandering hunters or herding tribes who crossed the [[Fish River, Eastern Cape|Fish River]] into farm territories. The settlers considered the farms to be an extension beyond the towns of the separation between the white and the black occupants of the land.

This history is essential to understanding the distinctive concept of "calling" that developed among the Afrikaners. These attitudes, adopted very early adopted, went with them through later conflicts, formed in a way that to them, seemed to thembe obviously crafted by the hand of God Himself. They believed themselvesthat they were preserved bybecause of God's own wisdom and [[divine providence|Providence]]. The thingssuffering which they sufferedexperienced, and the strong bonds between them that werethey formed throughin response to it all, seemed to confirm this idea at every turn. Their history as a people has a central place in formingthe formation of the Boer religion. In this way, a distinctive folk character became attached to their Calvinistic beliefs.

This [[folk religion]] was not articulated in a formal way. It was the experience of the Afrikaners, which they interpreted through their assurance that their absolutely sovereign Creator and their Lord had shown special grace to them as a particular people.

However, the [[French Revolution]] brought these habits of thought more self-consciously to the surface. France invaded the Republic of the United Provinces in January 1794, the Stadtholder fled to England and asked the [[Kingdom of Great Britain|British]] to send [[Royal Navy|its Navy]] to take care of the possessions of the [[Dutch East India Company|United East India Company]] that was in dire financial straits and in which hethe Stadtholder had a huge stake. The British took care of the [[Cape of Good Hope]] in 1795 and handed it back to the Batavian Republic after the [[Peace of Amiens]] in 1802. For about a year and a half, Enlightenment ideas were promoted by [[Jan Willem Janssens|Janssens]] and [[Jacob Abraham de Mist|De Mist]], including changes in church government. In 1806, the British re-captured the Cape of Good Hope on its own, and appointed British administrators there, who were zealous propagators of the Enlightenment. They loosened the trade and labour regulations, speaking of the blacks as those whose untainted natural souls they professed to admire. The British government [[Slavery Abolition Act 1833|outlawed slavery in parts of the British Empire in 1833]] with enforcement in the [[Cape Colony]] in 1834. They called the blacks equals, and gave them access to the courts in suit against white landowners. And, they professed to believe in their own autonomous [[reason]] above all else.{{sfn|Du Toit|1985|p=209}}

A more antithetical message could hardly be imagined, as the British Enlightenment found itself with the Afrikaners for the first time. From the Boer (meaning farmer in Dutch and Afrikaans) point of view, the Enlightenment had resulted in a foreign power ruling over them, imposing alien laws and alien languages, liberated their slaves without compensation, and put the interest of English-speakers over those of the Dutch-speakers. They were exposed to the Enlightenment, and it appeared to them to be a revolution against their [[God in Christianity|God]] and way of life.{{sfn|Du Toit|1985|p=209}}

During the Great Trek, many people, mostly from the eastern part of the [[Cape Colony]], went north, to areas not under control of the British colonies authorities. Because the Cape Dutch Reformed Church was seen by the trekkers as being an agent of the Cape government, they also did not trust its ministers and emissaries, seeing them as attempts by the Cape government to regain political control. There were also religious divisions among the trekkers themselves. A minister from the Netherlands, [[Dirk Van der Hoff]] went to the Transvaal in 1853, and became a minister in the [[Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk]], which was constituted in 1856, and in 1860 recognised as the State Church of the [[South African Republic]] (also known as the Transvaal), separate from the Cape Church.

Meanwhile, back in the Netherlands, the Dutch State church had also been transformed by the Enlightenment, a change represented in the minds of those opposed it, by the loss of any meaningful profession of faith as requisite for adult church members, and the singing of hymns (in addition to psalms) and other innovations in worship and doctrine. In the Netherlands a movement grew in reaction to this perceived dismantlement of Biblical faith. It was called the Afscheiding, in which the Rev. Hendrik de Cock separated himself from the State Church in 1834 in Ulrum, Groningen. There was also a movement called the [[Reveil]] (''Awakening''), supported by those who did not separate from the State Church, like [[Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer]], whose writings became known in South Africa. And much later the leader of another schism called the [[Doleantie]], [[Abraham Kuyper]], began to become known to the Afrikaners. Highly critical of the Enlightenment, the "revolution" as they called it, the Doleantie in the church had counterparts in education and in politics. The timing of this influence was significant, coming on the crest of a wave of evangelical revival, the Reveil in the Dutch Reformed Church, which had been led in South Africa by the Scottish preacher, [[Andrew Murray (minister)|Andrew Murray]]. The slogan of the Doleantie, which eventually rang with unintended nationalist nuance for the Afrikaners was, "Separation is Strength".

The [[Boer War]]s had left many of the Afrikaners utterly destitute. The ruined farmers were seen in the hundreds, following the war, lining the highways selling produce by the basket. After the four South African colonies united politically into the [[Union of South Africa]] and relinquished control to democratic elections, a small, anonymous group of young intellectuals called the [[Afrikaner Broederbond]], formed in the years following the [[Second Anglo-Boer War]] to discuss strategies for addressing the overwhelming social problem of ''poor whites'' and other Afrikaner interests. By the account of [[Irving Hexham]], according to [[Klaus Venter]] and [[Hendrik G. Stoker|Hendrick Stoker]] who were themselves disgruntled members of the secret organisation, in 1927 the Broederbond moved to Potchefstroom University, asking that the school would take over leadership of the then-struggling group. That year, the Broederbond formally adopted the Calvinist philosophy based on the work of [[Abraham Kuyper]]. The Broederbond believed, with deep-rooted conviction, that what their past had provided them through the interpretation of faith was a model of anti-imperialism, self-discipline and responsibility, which in the end would preserve justice for all – blacks, coloured, and whites – against Communist deceit. These strategies that arose from the Broederbond were directly responsible for the establishment of [[apartheid]], in 1948.{{Citation needed|date=March 2009}}

The reversal of apartheid has cast the [[Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk]] (NGK) into a period of change. While remaining confessionally Calvinist, the religious character of the church is now less cohesive and more difficult to assess. Having been thoroughly conflated with apartheid, historic Calvinism appears to have fallen out of favour. [[Liberation theology]], which attempts to reconcile [[Christianity]] with the [[Marxist]] doctrine of [[class struggle]], has gained a foothold in some quarters, and appears to have advocates on both the left and right ends of the political spectrum.{{Citation needed|date=March 2010}} American-style evangelicalism and [[Arminianism]] also appear to have made inroads, which with its more individualistic emphasis has less potential for a full-scale civil religion. Certainly the old synthesis of revealed and [[natural theology]] is largely repudiated; officially at least. But, the folk religion of the Afrikaners is not dead. Some scholars and revisionist historians are attempting to draw lines of distinction between Calvinism ''per se'', the history of the Afrikaners, and the civil religion of the apartheid regime in particular.

*{{cite web|title=The Christian Afrikaners: A Brief History of Calvinistic Afrikanerdom from 1652 -– 1980 |last=Lee |first=Francis Nigel |url=http://dr-fnlee.org/docs3/ca/ca.pdf |location=Cape Town |publisher=Gospel Defence League |date=1992 |access-date=30 March 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130906130111/http://dr-fnlee.org/docs3/ca/ca.pdf |archive-date=6 September 2013 }}

*{{cite journal|last1=Du Toit|first1=André |title=Puritans in Africa? Afrikaner "Calvinism" and Kuyperian Neo-Calvinism in Late Nineteenth-Century South Africa|journal=Comparative Studies in Society and History|volume=27|issue=2|year=1985|pages=209–240|issn=0010-4175|doi=10.1017/S0010417500011336|s2cid=145566439 }}

[[Category:History of CalvinismReformed Christianity]]

[[Category:History of Christianity in South Africa]]