The Dutch Reformed Church and Apartheid

Among the many sad ironies of South African life perhaps none is more poignant than the role of the dominant church of the Afrikaner people the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk.1 For the Afrikaners remain one of the few western peoples of the modern era whose values and customs are established by, and expressed through, their church, and over the years that church has had the opportunity, perhaps unique in the contemporary world, to temper with the Christian message of brotherhood and love the harsh racial attitudes which have grown up in South Africa. This opportunity has never been explored. Indeed, the DRC's influence has been exerted to opposite ends to the more and more precise refinement of an ideology of apartheid, and to exercising pressure on successive governments to accept this ideology as the basis of race policy. It was the Church that did not rest content with the traditional baasskap principles on which South Africa had been run since 1652 the simple pragmatic acceptance of the superiority of the white man to the 'natives' he dwelt among. It is the Church that has insisted upon progressively sterner definitions of 'separateness', ending up with the present government's elaborate programme still in the theoretical stage of the total physical segregation of the races. Religion has always been the most powerful formative influence in shaping the values, norms, and institutions of the Afrikaner community. This is reflected in the great prestige and status