South African Christianity

Contextual Theology

Black Theology

Cape Folk (Cape Coloured) Christians

19th Century Protestant Missions

Contextual Theology

South African Black theology rose in the middle of the 1970s in response to Apartheid and in dialog with the Latin American theologies of Liberation. Black theology, also called Contextual theology is a theology of struggle and of liberation from oppression. Liberation theology took its first steps in the white communities. The Anglican Trevor Huddleston wrote his impassioned and influential plea against Apartheid, Naught for your Comfort in 1955. He was followed by the white Afrikaner Beyers Naude, moderator of the Transvaal synod of the NGK. Beyers Naude resigned from his post and from the church and founded the Christian Insitute as an agency for interracial reconciliation. He later served as president of the South African Council of Churches and as a pastor in the black Reformed Church (NGKA).

The Black communities became radicalized in the 1977, when Steven Biko founded the Black Consciousness movement. Although not specifically Christian, the Black Consciousness Movement tried to unite the African, Coloured and Indian communities against apartheid. The South African government responded with repression, and Biko died a violent death in a South African jail shortly after his arrest in 1977.

At this point theologians from a number of different South African religious communties began to develop theologies of justice and liberation. Prominent among these theologians were the Zulu Lutheran bishop Manas Buthelezi, the Xhosa Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Cape Coloured Reformed theologian Alan Boesak who mobilized the worldwide Reformed community against Apartheid,the Rev. Frank Chikane an ordained pastor in the (Pentacostal) Apostolic Faith Mission, and the white South African Dominican Roman Catholic Albert Nolan.

They were all united in the conviction that Christianity and the Gospel message had a edge of justice, liberation, and a preferential option for the poor. Many of them operated in a global theological context that included the Latin American theologies of Liberation, and all of them were firmly convinced that the Gospel is political.

In large measure through the prodding of Alan Boesak, in 1982 the World Alliance of Reformed Churches suspended the membership of the Afrikaner Reformed churches, declared Apartheid a heresy and elected Boesak their president. BoesakÕs church, the NGSK responded to the World Alliance of Reformed ChurchesÕ declaration of a status confessionis -- a situation in which the very essence of Christianity is threatened and a new confession of faith is required, by drafting the Belhar Confession ratified in 1986, "because the secular gospel of apartheid fundamentally threatens the reconciliation in Christ as well as the unity of the church of Jesus Christ. The Belhar Confession affirmed the unity of the church (against the separate churches under Apartheid), the centrality of reconciliation to the gospel message, and the principles of justice and peace as basic to the nature of God."

In 1985 a number of pastors, teacher and theologians in the ecumenical Institute for Contextual Theology drafted the Kairos Document, which criticized both the "state theology" of the Afrikaners who were defending apartheid on biblical grounds and the "church theology" of the English-speaking community which appealed to the ideals of reconciliation, justice and non-violence, without understanding that reconciliation requires repentance, that the justice of reform is insufficient in South Africa and that state violence makes individual non-violence impossible in South Africa. They proposed in its place a "prophetic theology" which fought for justice against tyranny and appealed to those who were oppressed with a theology of hope, rather than appealing to the powerful to reform a radically unjust system.

Probably the key institutional voice of the Contextualizing theologians was the South African Council of Churches. The SACC was served by a series of extremely able Contextualizing theologians, beginning with Desmond Tutu who was its general secretary from 1978-1985. He was followed by Beyers Naude from 1985-1988 and then Frank Chikane from 1988 to 1995.

Perhaps the greatest work of the Contextualizing theologians has been guiding the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which began to meet in February of 1996 under the leadership of Desmond Tutu, and turned in its "final" report in October of 1998. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was guided by the principle that confession and repentence could lead to forgiveness, and that a full investigation and disclosure of the human rights abuses of the era of apartheid could heal the deep wounds inflicted by the apartheid regime in South Africa. See also http://www.life-peace.org/nroutes/learning498.htm

This page was based on the following sources, which you can consult for more detailed information:

Christianity in South Africa, edited by Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997 pp. 153-4, 377-82, ch. 25.

Adrian Hastings African Catholicism London: SCM, 1989 Ch 6

For further study of the Contextualing theologians of South Africa, begin with the following works:

Manas Buthelezi "Creation and the Church" 1968 thesis

Alan Boesak, Farewell to Innocence

Trevor Huddleston, Naught for your Comfort . London: Collins, 1956

Hope and Suffering: Sermons and Speeches of the Rt Rev. Desmond Mpilo Tutu. London and Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1984.

Frank Chikane No Life of My Own. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1988.

Not without Honor: Tribute to Beyers Naude edited by Peter Randall. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1983.

Resistance and Hope: South African Essays in Honour of Beyers Naude, edited by Charles Villa-Cicencio and John W. de Gruchy. Cape Town: David Philip and Grand Rapids Michigan: Eerdmans, 1985.

"The Most Trusted Man in South Africa: An Interview with Beyers Naude," in Sojourners, Washington D.C.February 1988: 14-21.

For the pentecostal perspective see http://www.fullnet.net/np/archives/cyberj/nico.html