Gustav Thiel
The Nederduitse Gerefor-meerde Kerk (NGK) , once again under pressure from its world body to repudiate apartheid, continues to find biblical justification for the separation of races.
Although the NGK apologised in 1990 at its annual synod for as its moderator Doctor Freek Swanepoel puts it those who were hurt by apartheid and the churchs role in this the church has still not been welcomed back into the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. The organisation wants it to condemn apartheid in its fundamental nature.
There are strong voices within the NGK insisting that the church should not condemn apartheid because, as the dean of the school of theology at the University of Stellenbosch, Professor Pieter Koertzen, puts it, there is nothing in the Bible that stipulates that people that people of different backgrounds cant live separately.
Swanepoel led a delegation of his church to the general council of the world alliance in Hungary last month to lobby for full membership in the organisation.
The allaince, which has 211 member churches in 104 countries, suspended the church from membership in 1982 because of the churchs heretical support for apartheid. But it decided last month that the church could become a full member again if it assures the churches of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches that it rejects apartheid as wrong and sinful, not simply in its effects and operations, but also in its fundamental nature.
Swanepoel admits that the church played a role in sustaining the National Party government, but said it never officially supported the structures of apartheid. Hendrik Verwoerd, DF Malan, John Vorster and PW Botha were all devout members of the church (FW de Klerk was a notable exception).
I think too much is made of the role we played in sustaining apartheid, but we have admitted that the system harmed people and for the role that we played in this we have apologised. Now we have to decide whether we are going to apologise for apartheid in its fundamental nature, he said.
We have referred the matter to a commission, which will deliver its report to our synod next year where this decision will be made. Swanepoel agreed with Koertzen that nothing in the Bible precluded people of different races living apart.
Dr Beyers Naude, a former NGK minister who fought apartheid within the church and later, when he couldnt endure its support of the system any longer, as an outsider, this week told the Mail & Guardian he did not believe an apology would be forthcoming.
They must apologise for everything connected with apartheid, but I fear this might not happen. This could lead to another split in the church and could harm its standing. Some members of the church might join the Afrikaanse Protestantse Kerk, Naude said.
The Afrikaanse Protestantse Kerk was formed in the late Eighties with the specific aim of encouraging Afrikaner people to form a separate homeland. At its annual synod in Pretoria this week, members said the church would commit cultural suicide if it apologises for the fundamental principles of apartheid.
The NGK currently has 1,3-million members in South Africa and includes about 60% of the Afrikaans population. The church has traditionally been divided into separate entities for white, black, coloured and Indian members, and Swanepoel says efforts to reconcile these churches might take years.
Jameson Buys, moderator of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa, said it was in the hands of the NGK to decide its own future. The Uniting Reformed Church was formed to stimulate and hasten the process of unification in the NGK.
Said Buys: A negative vote (at the general synod next year) would mean the end of this particular road. This could leave the church out of the international fold of reformed churches indefinitely, which could be an ironic throwback to the days when it functioned in complete limbo under apartheid.
Swanepoel and others in the NGK are tiring of the questions asked about their involvement in apartheid. Sometimes I feel we must simply concentrate on reconciliation and forget about the past, he said.
Professor Bethel Muller, who led an unofficial delegation of NGK ministers to the TRC in 1996 to apologise for their role in apartheid, was reluctant to speak about the issue this week, saying his students were too busy with examinations.
Many like him simply want to get on with the business of God, says Swanepoel, and not be continually usurped by politicians and the international community who use the church as a scapegoat for things that we do not necessarily have to share the blame.