Afrikaner Calvinism: Difference between revisions

'''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}}

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 Indonesia.{{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}}

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 the 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 WilliamWillem Janssens|Janssens]] and [[Jacob Abraham Dede 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}}

[[Category:History of CalvinismReformed Christianity]]

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