4: The journey after Cottesloe

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4.3 How did the Christian Institute (Cl) affect the Dutch Reformed Church?

4.3.1 The Christian Institute of Southern Africa was established in August 1963. The aim of the institute was stated as "an attempt to allow Christians to reflect, converse and pray together and to demonstrate their unity" [translation] (Pro Veritate, 15 October 1963).

There was undoubtedly a link between the establishment of the Cl and the Cottesloe conference, where the various churches recognised anew the need for and good sense of a dialogue amongst themselves. Ds CFB Naude was appointed director of the Cl. When it was announced that he had accepted the full-time post of Cl director, Naude preached a sermon to his Aasvoe:lkop congregation based on a text which would later become his refrain: "We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29).

4.3.2 Right from the beginning the Dutch Reformed Church wanted nothing to do with the Cl and its activities. The Extended Moderamen declared in 1963 that it could not approve of the establishment and continued existence of the Cl "because it is clear that (it) will inevitably come into conflict with the racial and ecumenical perspective of the Dutch Reformed Church" [translation] (Die Kerkbode, 27 November 1963). In October 1966 the General Synod rejected the Cl as a heretical tendency which undermined pure doctrine, and asked office bearers and members to withdraw from the Cl out of loyalty to their church "and to remain steadfastly true in their love for their own church as an institution of God through Jesus Christ" [translation] (Handelinge [Proceedings], General Synod 1966, pp 459, 564 and 565). A proposal that members who stubbornly continued to be members of the Cl should be censured was rejected because it was thought that the assembly's resolution implied censure in any case (cf. Dr JD Vorster's statement to Die Transvaler, 24 October 1966).

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4.3.4 Anyone reading the history of the Dutch Reformed Church and the Cl in the 1 960s with an open mind would have to concede that it was seen in the ranks of the Dutch Reformed Church largely as a struggle against forces threatening the national policy of apartheid. In the years following its rejection of the Cottesloe resolutions, the Dutch Reformed Church was even more convinced that apartheid /sep a rate development represented the route to solving the problems of relationships in South Africa.

4.3.5 It is also true, however, that over time the Cl, just like Pro Veritate, became increasingly radical and militant and that its activities warranted criticism. Its "Christian" umbrella covered all manner of things, and the power and influence of outspoken atheists in the organisation had the result that virtually all of the Afrikaans theologians who had at one stage been sympathetic towards the aims of the institute distanced themselves from it long before the Cl was declared illegal in 1977. Initially the Cl particularly wanted to play a part in bringing about a change of attitude in the ranks of the Afrikaans churches towards race relations in South Africa. Within just a few years of its inception, however, the Cl had become so radical that it exercised hardly any influence over the thinking of the Dutch Reformed Church in particular - another reason being that the Cl under the leadership of Naude became known for stirring up hostility towards South Africa overseas (cf. B Engelbrecht, A Geyser: Journal of Theology for South Africa, September 1988, p 5).

4.4 Did Cottesloe stimulate or stifle reflection on racial issues within the Dutch Reformed Church itself?

4.4.1 After the rejection of the Cottesloe conference resolutions, the Dutch Reformed Church continued to study race relations in the country in its own way. As early as 1965 a commission submitted eight reports to the Cape Synod, the first of which was entitled ''Ras, volk en nasie in die lig van die Skrif" [Races, peoples and nations in the light of the Scriptures]. (The policy document ultimately approved for the Dutch Reformed Church by the General Synod in 1974 would be called Ras, volk en nasie en volkereverhoudinge in die lig van die Skrif [Races, peoples and nations and relations amongst peoples in the light of the Scriptures].) There were two clearly opposing lines taken in the eight reports presented to the Synod in 1965. "This was owing to the fact that the commission was equally divided between those who aligned themselves with Cottesloe and those who distanced themselves from it," [translation] suggests Kinghorn (op. cit., p 129).

4.4.2 The report was adopted by the synod with a considerable number of amendments, and served as a point of departure for the study undertaken at general synodal level which led to the adoption in 1974 of Ras, volk en nasie ... (RVN) as a policy document. amongst the conclusions of RM was that the Old Testament taught the church to "avoid the modern tendency to obliterate indiscriminately all diversity between peoples" [translation] (point 11), and: "Subject to specific circumstances and conditions, the New Testament allows for the regulation of the coexistence of different peoples in one country on the basis of separate development" [translation] (point 13.6).

The document emphasised that "the commandment that one should love one's neighbour provides the ethical norm for the regulation of relations between peoples" [translation] (point 13.8). Elsewhere it states: "A constitutional system based on differentiated development for different population groups can be justified in principle in terms of the Scriptures. Here, however, the commandment that one should love one's neighbour must always constitute the ethical norm for the regulation of sound relations between peoples" [translation] (point 49.6).

4.4.3 With the adoption of RVN, the Dutch Reformed Church was convinced that the policy followed by the then government could be "Scripturally justified". While the church emphasised the fact that the policy should be implemented with the commandment to love one's neighbour as the ethical norm, it is nevertheless disappointing that the misery caused by the application of the policy in the black and coloured communities was not the subject of critical inquiry. The fact that migrant labour, for example, resulted in the disintegration of families, the separation of legally married couples, neglect of family life and moral decay is mentioned (point 54.2), but the issue is not pursued.

4.4.4 An entire section of the draft report dealing with black people in the cities was deleted because it encroached on the realm of politics. And on mixed marriages the synod decided that they were not merely "undesirable" but also "unsanctioned" (point 65) - in other words, unscriptural.

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4.6 Did the Dutch Reformed Church at any stage receive government money to publicise its views on national issues?

4.6.1 In 1974 the Department of Information approached the Dutch Reformed Church and offered to make money available confidentially to enable the church to open an ecumenical office for its General Synod. The department needed assistance in evaluating ecclesiastical information collected by its offices overseas. In particular they needed effective counter-arguments for the streams of negative propaganda against South Africa emanating from the World Council of Churches. This did not mean that the church had to follow orders from the department, and it approached its work in terms of its own discretion and in a strictly ecclesiastical fashion (cf. FE O'Brien Geldenhuys, op. cit., p 74). This funding also enabled the Dutch Reformed Church to publicise its views, such as those contained in RM, for instance, to a wide audience.

4.6.2 The fact that the Dutch Reformed Church received and used money from secret government funds in its ecumenical work was known to only a few people in the church (the members of the Moderamen), and was from the outset a source of concern and unease amongst them (cf. O'Brien Geldenhuys, op. cit., p 75). The thinking was that the government assistance would be limited and temporary, and that the case could be made that the money thus released would be put to better use by the church than it would have been if used by the department concerned in other ways. These church leaders were also unaware of the fact that the ecumenical office of the Dutch Reformed Church was but one of more than a hundred organisations receiving money through the then Department of Information.

4.6.3 When the information bombshell exploded in 1978, the fact that the church had been using secret government money for some time also came out. The Extended Moderamen issued an explanatory statement, and the director of Ecumenical Affairs, Dr O'Brien Geldenhuys, said in a subsequent statement that it had been an error of judgment "to accept, for church work, funds over which, as 1 now see, there could be a question mark" [translation]. Geldenhuys wrote later that this episode had provided "greater clarity on the critical distance which the church should always maintain between itself and the state, and on the dangers which arise when the boundaries between church and state become blurred" [translation] (op. cit., p 77).

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4.8 Did the Dutch Reformed Mission Church also make its voice heard in this period?

4.8.1 Appeals to the Dutch Reformed Church "from outside" to turn on its tracks and repudiate apartheid where the order of the day towards the end of the 1970s. The 1978 synod of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church had already expressed itself clearly in this regard, and one of the most noteworthy appeals came in 1980 from Die Ligdraer, official organ of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church. This journal wrote on 16 August 1980 that through its missionary policy the Dutch Reformed Church was, in fact, the formulator and propagator of a constitutional and economic apartheid policy. It wrote: "The Dutch Reformed Church honestly believed that it was the only policy which could serve the highest interests of the whites and the non-whites, and that as a defence against racial conflict, it would be a lasting solution to our social and political problems.

"The fruits of the policy, however, are the quintessence of ambivalence, of good and evil, of opportunities for self -realisation intertwined with circumstances of gross dehumanisation, of large-scale material and technical progress coupled with unbelievable deprivations in human values. For this reason the members of the (black and coloured) churches have experienced the apartheid policy, with all the benefits it has brought, as extremely oppressive." [translation]

Therefore, wrote Die Ligdraer, the Dutch Reformed Mission Church asked the Dutch Reformed Church to turn on its tracks and repudiate the policy of apartheid, and to help bring about the repeal of the Mixed Marriages Act, section 16 of the Immorality Act and the Group Areas Act.

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4.10 Why could 1982 be seen as a "decisive year"?

4.10.1 In certain respects 1982 was a decisive year. In September that year the Synod of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church reconfirmed its 1978 decision that apartheid (separate development) was a sin, that the moral and theological justification thereof was a mockery of the gospel and that its consistent disobedience to the Word of God was a theological heresy. The Synod of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church declared in 1982 that its resolution of 1978 implied that it had no choice "but, with the deepest regret, to accuse the Dutch Reformed Church of theological heresy and idolatry in the light of (the Dutch Reformed Church's) theologically formulated stance and implementation thereof in practice" [translation] (Handelinge [Proceedings], Synod of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, 1982, pp 604 and 706). The apartheid situation in South Africa and the stance of the Dutch Reformed Church on it, declared the Synod of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, created a status confessionis. This decision of the Synod of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church was in line with a resolution adopted by the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WLRC) earlier the same year when it suspended the membership of the Dutch Reformed Church (cf. 4.13).

4.11 What is a status confessionis?

4.11.1 In a letter to the Dutch Reformed Church the Dutch Reformed Mission Church elucidated a status confessionis by saying "that we regard this as a matter on which it is impossible to differ without seriously endangering the integrity of our communal confession as reformed churches" [translation] (cf. Die Kerkbode, 4 April 1984).

Strictly speaking, wrote DJ Smit, the expression status confessionis means "that a Christian, a group of Christians, a church or a group of churches judges that a situation has arisen, a moment of truth has come, in which nothing less than than the gospel itself, their most basic confession concerning the Christian gospel, is at stake, so that they feel obliged to testify and act against that situation" [translation] (cf. GD Cloete, DJ Smit: 'n Oomblik van waarheid, 1984, p 22).

4.11.2 A status confessionis does not always necessarily imply a new article of faith, but in the case of the apartheid issue the Dutch Reformed Mission Church judged in 1982 that it had to proceed to the formulation of a confession.

A draft confession was submitted to the Synod. It was adopted as an article of faith four years later by the Synod of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church under the title "The Confession of Belhar" and also in 1994 by the first synod of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa, at which the Dutch Reformed Mission Church and the larger part of the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa amalgamated.

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4.13 What did the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) decide regarding apartheid in 1982?

4.13.1 In the same year in which the Synod of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church declared that the apartheid situation in South Africa and the stance of the Dutch Reformed Church on it created a status confessionis, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), of which the Dutch Reformed Church and the Dutch Reformed Mission Church were members at that stage, took a similar decision.

The WARC is the oldest and largest reformed ecumenical body in the world. On the basis of the view that the Dutch Reformed Church - and the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika, which was also a member had attempted to justify apartheid by misusing the gospel and the reformed confession, their membership was suspended. This suspension would remain in force until the two churches proved through their utterances and actions that their disposition had changed.

4.13.2 The General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in October 1982 was shaken by the WARC decision, and although the majority of synod delegates requested that the Dutch Reformed Church withdraw completely from the WARC, the two-thirds majority required for such a decision could not be obtained. In July 1997 the Dutch Reformed Church was still a "suspended member" of the WARC.

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4.17 How did the General Synod of 1986 move away from RVN?

4.17.1 With the adoption of the policy document Kerk en Samelewing 1986 [Church and Society 19861, the General Synod of 1986 firmly moved away from certain views contained in RVN and also fell into line with the resolutions taken by the Western Cape Synod three years earlier.

Concerning apartheid, the following was resolved:

• "In South Africa the idea and policy of separate development, with the ideal of territorial separation, evolved in the course of history. This was seen as a component of the whites' guardianship of the other groups, and had as its purpose the optimum development of all groups.
• "Following the reflection that has taken place through the years in church periodicals, conferences, committees and synods concerning the policy which has become known as apartheid, the conviction has gradually grown that a forced separation and division of peoples cannot be considered a Biblical imperative. The attempt to justify such an injunction as derived from the Bible must be recognised as an error and be rejected.
• "The Dutch Reformed Church is convinced that the application of apartheid as a political and social system by which human dignity is adversely affected, and whereby one particular group is detrimentally suppressed by another, cannot be accepted on Christian-ethical grounds because it contravenes the very essence of neighbourly love and righteousness and inevitably the human dignity of all involved.
• "The suffering of people for whom the church has concern must, however, not be attributed solely to the system of apartheid but to a variety of factors such as economic, social and political realities in which persons of different communities have not been accepted by one another. To the extent that the church and its members are involved in this, it confesses its participation with humility and sorrow.
• "The Dutch Reformed Church declares that it is prepared to co-operate in the Spirit of Christ to seek a solution which will enable every sector of the South African society to attain the highest possible level of wellbeing." [translation] (Kerk en Samelewing 1986, par 304-308)

4.17.2 Concerning marriage, the following was resolved, inter alia:

• "The Scriptures do not forbid racially mixed marriages. In its pastoral work, however, the church must give due warning that social circumstances, as well as ideological, philosophical, cultural and socioeconomic differences and other factors, may cause serious tensions. Where such marriages do take place, those involved must receive pastoral guidance in all aspects of marriage." [translation] (Kerk en Samelewing 1986, par 368)

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4.19 What was the consequence of the resolutions of the General Synod of 1986 as contained in Kerk en Samelewing 1986?

4.19.1 The resolutions of the General Synod of 1986 - particularly those which declared "the membership of the Dutch Reformed Church open" (Kerk en Samelewing 1986, par 270) and that "services of worship and other meetings are open to all visitors who desire to listen to the Word in fellowship with other believers" [translation] (Kerk en Samelewing 1986, par 273) - caused great commotion. Eight months after the synod, this led to schism.

The Afrikaans Protestant Church (AP Church) was founded, partly as a consequence of the fact that the demand by aggrieved members for the repeal of "all resolutions contained in Kerk en Samelewing 1986" and for an express injunction that "membership of the Dutch Reformed Church be reserved for white Afrikaners, and also for whites who associate themselves with white Afrikaner society" [translation] was rejected (according to a report in Die Kerkbode of 1 July 1987).

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4.21 How did the Dutch Reformed Church express its doubts about the application of national policy to the government in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s?

4.21.1 It is not correct to assume that in the years between 1960 and 1990 the Dutch Reformed Church seldom if ever expressed criticism concerning national policy to the government at an official level. The feeling, however, was that more could be achieved through confidential discussions with members of the government behind closed doors. In the minutes of the Commission for Liaison with the Government (a subcommission of the Extended Moderamen and later of the GSC) cases are mentioned of representatives of the Dutch Reformed Church raising their doubts to government ministers about the enforcement of, for example, the Group Areas and Immorality Acts. There were also frequent discussions with the government concerning detention without trial. However, the church was hesitant to insist on the repeal of the Acts concerned and usually simply requested that they be applied with compassion and humanity.