One of the first theological and pastoral issues to face the early church was that of race. The racial controversy arose over whether non-Jews could fully and without conditions be welcomed into the church. The Jewish Christians had to struggle long and hard against their cultural assumptions and ethnic biases, but in the end the church decided that there was no place for racial distinctions within the Christian fellowship.
Today this struggle continues in South Africa, where black and white Christians are declaring their country's oppressive racial policies to be a theological issue. They assert that apartheid is a sin and name as heresy its theological justification by the white Dutch Reformed Church.
South Africa's system of strict racial separation has always been an explicitly religious issue. The system originated in the Dutch Reformed Church's 19th-century decision to establish three separate "daughter" churches for black, "colored" (mixed-race), and Asian South Africans, thus prohibiting interracial congregations. The resulting structure provided a model for the segregation system instituted in 1948 by the Afrikaner National Party at the urging of church officials.
To this day, the Dutch Reformed Church, whose membership includes almost all government officials, insists on the biblical justification of its own and the state's racism. In defending apartheid Afrikaner politicians frequently use religious language. The legitimacy of the apartheid system rests almost entirely on a theology that holds that the Afrikaners are ordained by God to rule over their African and Asian neighbors.
Apartheid's religious justification was challenged in late 1981 when the three African and Asian Reformed churches formed the Alliance of Black Reformed Christians in South Africa (ABRECSA). ABRECSA called on the world's Christians to join it in suspending dialogue with the white Dutch Reformed Church until the church stopped giving "moral and theological justification to apartheid."
In June of this year, the South African Council of Churches (SACC), of which the Dutch Reformed Church is not a member, responded to that call, deciding to end its largely futile attempts at dialogue with Dutch Reformed leaders until the church renounced apartheid "as sin and as heresy." In the same month, the Christian Reformed Church in the U.S. refused to "enter into ecclesiastical fellowship" with the white South African Reformed Church.
In August the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, with 149 member denominations in 76 countries, voted to suspend the membership of the South African Dutch Reformed Church. The alliance made its position clearer when it elected as its president Allan Boesak, an internationally respected black South African theologian who was a founder of ABRECSA and who has played a leading role in efforts to isolate the apartheid church.
This disciplining by fellow Christians has resulted in large and far-reaching dissent from apartheid within the Dutch Reformed Church itself. Recently 123 Dutch Reformed clergy signed an open letter condemning the entire system of apartheid in church and society as "scripturally indefensible."
The letter forthrightly attacked segregation laws, forced relocation of blacks, economic discrimination, denial of political representation to blacks, and the "separate development" strategy that maintains apartheid by claiming that blacks have political representation as citizens of puppet "homelands," where few of them actually live.
Public dissent of any kind is risky business in South Africa. The kind of political activity that many in the United States engage in daily can result in banning, house arrest, or imprisonment without formal charges and due process of law.
Many church leaders have already experienced state persecution. Beyers Naude, a leading Dutch Reformed clergyman who in 1962 took the stance that the 123 Afrikaner clergy have now taken, was first expelled from the church and in 1978 was put under a five-year ban as a result of his nonviolent resistance activities. The secretary general of the South African Catholic Bishops Conference, Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, was jailed in 1976. After his release the government placed him under a banning order that was recently renewed for another three years. Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu, SACC's general secretary, has been forbidden to travel outside the country and would have been banned long ago had it not been for the international press attention he has received. Countless lesser known Christians have suffered imprisonment and beatings over the years.
Sadly, at the same time that the churches in South Africa are making a clear witness against apartheid and withdrawing their moral and political cooperation, the Reagan administration is providing the apartheid regime with an added ominous support. In April of this year, the Commerce Department gave Control Data, Inc. permission to sell South Africa a computer system that many apartheid critics, including U.S. Congresspeople of both parties, believe could be used to advance South Africa's nuclear armament program.
On September 15 the Washington Post reported that the Commerce Department is recommending that Autoclave Engineers, Inc. of Erie, Pennsylvania, be allowed to sell South Africa a piece of metallurgical equipment that could be used in the construction of nuclear weapons. In the past the U.S. has refused to allow sales of this same equipment to Taiwan, India, Israel, and other countries that were known to be seeking a nuclear capability.
Of all Reagan's steps forward on nuclear proliferation, these equipment sales may be the most reprehensible. The technological basis of the South African nuclear weapons program was established in the 1950s by the U.S. Atoms for Peace program. Our government has known since at least 1977 that South Africa could develop the bomb. The South Africans are believed to have conducted an atmospheric test explosion in September, 1979. But until now the U.S. has officially discouraged the development of South African nuclear weapons technology.
South Africa doesn't want nuclear weapons to defend itself against the Soviet Union or other external powers. The most likely use of the South African bomb would be against the black people of South Africa in a last-ditch measure to maintain white supremacy. An extensive investigative piece on the Afrikaner bomb in the September issue of the Progressive finds that speedups in South Africa's nuclear program have followed periods of intensified black resistance such as the Soweto uprising and the months after the murder of black leader Stephen Biko.
Every day more Christians in South Africa are taking a strong and costly nonviolent stand for justice and the integrity of their Christian faith. But if the resources of the world's greatest superpower continue to be available to the South African regime, their witness may never be allowed to bear fruit. Christians in South Africa need our solidarity and support more than ever to prevent U.S. government and corporate backing of their oppressors.
Danny Duncan Collum is a Sojourners contributing editor.
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