One Sunday morning in 1963 Naude preached a sermon with the theme Obedience to God. After the sermon he stepped down and stood with his wife Ilse in front of his Aasvoelkop NGK Congregation as a document was read that meant the end of his minister status in the NGK. He then symbolically took off his robe and walked with Ilse down the aisle to the back of the church.
”My congregation filing out looked like a funeral procession. There were people with tears in their eyes, some looked away when they shook my hand, others just walked past,” Naude recalls this devastating day in the documentary The Cry of Reason. This former moderator of the Southern Transvaal Synod of the NGK and youngest ever member of the Afrikaner Broederbond, has come a long way. ”They warned me, Beyers you are playing with fire”, but Naude went on to become the director of the anti-apartheid Christian Institute banned in 1977.
He was banned for seven years: In 1982 it was extended for another three years. In 1984 his banning order was suddenly lifted and he became the secretary-general of the South African Council of Churches. After this term he continued with church activities as well as politics. He was a surprise inclusion in the ANC’ s negotiation team with the government earlier this year in Cape Town.
On Sunday night Naude preached again after a 27 year break from the NGK. At 7pm a fully packed Parksig congregation – in the Johannesburg suburb of Parkview, a few kilometres away from Aasvoelkop – attentively listened to a much older Naude pleading to the NGK to confess to its sin of supporting apartheid; to unite with the black NGK in Afrika, the ”coloured” NG Sendingkerk and the Indian Reformed Church – in the NG church· family; and to urgently draw up a document outlining the role the NGK sees for itself in a changing South Africa.
He said that the NGK more than any other institution could see, understand and digest fear in Afrikaner hearts of the new apartheid-free South Africa and urged them to play that role. In question time theologians Jan van Rooyen and Ben Engelbrecht awakened memories of the witch-hunt of Naude. They reprimanded him on his pro-sanctions views, political role and accused him of vagueness and using platitudes. To Engelbrecht’s remark that Naude should have stayed away one of the congregationists loudly retorted: ”Why don’t you go home then?” At the end of the sermon, which Naude ended with a prayer, the people streamed to talk to him and it was clear to this congregation, at least, ”Oom Bey” has come home.
Theologians urge church merger
The Christian in South Africa, and especially in the white Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk (NGK), needs two conversions: one away from sin and one away from apartheid, says NGK theologian Dr Johan Louw. Louw took part in a discussion on church unity at a meeting of the left-wing Reforum discussion group in Pretoria on Wednesday. Two quarters of the NGK family verge on unity. The black NGK in Afrika (NGKA) and the coloured NG Sendingkerk (NGSK) are expected to merge in October.
The main speaker at the Reforum meeting, Professor Piet Meiring of the Theology Faculty at the University of Pretoria, said there are three stances on unity in the white NGK. There are people who believe the status quo of four separate churches for the different race groups should be retained. There is a middle group who thinks the circuits of the respective synods should unite as an interim measure before the merge.
The last group thinks that the church should unite from the bottom to the top structures. Dr Willem Nicol, also of the University of Pretoria, made on impassioned plea for church unity saying that no church can make balanced pronouncements when they only represent one interest group.
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
