TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 3

Subsection 3

Internalising racism

42 Despite their claim to loyalties that transcended the state, South African churches, whether implicitly or as a matter of policy, allowed themselves to be structured along racial lines - reinforcing the separate symbolic universes in which South Africans lived. Besides the Afrikaans churches and the Apostolic Faith Mission, the Lutheran Church, too, was racially divided; its white members consistently refused to join the unity movement that was to become the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Conservative-evangelical organisations were also affected by the climate of the country. The Student Christian Association split into separate white (SCA) and black (SCM) organisations. While the Seventh Day Adventist Church was unified at its highest level, many of its structures became segregated – into racially divided Union conferences and secondary and tertiary educational institutions as the church began to “pattern itself after the thinking of the politicians”.

43 Yet even churches which retained the principle of non-racialism in their structures were not guiltless in practice. Some, such as the Salvation Army, confessed to tacit support of racism. And while the Catholics officially disavowed racial divisions, “effectively there was a black church and a white church.” This was equally true of each of the English-speaking churches - it has been suggested that Sunday morning and evening constituted the most segregated hours of the week. In those communities where black clergy were in the majority, they were insufficiently empowered as leaders within church structures. Stipends were drastically different for black and white clergy, reinforcing racial stereotypes of lifestyle differences. According to the Baptist Convention, some black Baptist ministers earned as little as R50 per month after thirty years of service to the Union.⁷

The same contradictions that are prevalent in society are present and often reflected in the teaching and life of the church.⁸

44 Discrimination was not unknown in faith communities outside of Christianity. According to Imam Rashid Omar of the Claremont Mosque, Cape Town, theological distinctions between Indian and Malay Muslims reflected ethno-class distinctions, as exemplified in the Ulamas and the Cape organisations respectively. Hence, whether legislated or not, and even in the face of their own resolutions to condemn racist government policies, many South African faith communities admitted to having mirrored the racial divisions of society.

Propagating ‘state theology’

45 The term ‘state theology’ is derived from The Kairos Document and refers to the theology that gave legitimacy to the apartheid state. The effects of state theology were to “bless injustice, canonise the will of the powerful and reduce the poor to passivity, obedience and apathy.”⁹ Few churches did not allow a distinction between black and white members at Sunday worship.

46 The most obvious example of a faith community propagating state theology was the Dutch Reformed Church, although it never (even in its submission to the Commission) confessed to actually ‘bowing down’ to the monster that apartheid disclosed itself to be. Right wing Christian groups¹⁰ also promulgated state theology and acted as arms of the state, infiltrating especially evangelical and Pentecostal denominations. This became particularly evident in investigations into the information scandal of the late 1970s, when it was disclosed that government was funding groups such as the Christian League – the forerunner of the Gospel Defence League.

47 Evangelical churches were often used by government agencies to ‘neutralise dissent’. Moss Nthla referred to government-sponsored youth camps which targeted township children for evangelism. “I used to be involved in the struggle,” he recalled one young man saying, “and now I’ve received Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour, and I’m no longer involved”. The Apostolic Faith Mission confessed to preaching that opposition to apartheid was “communist-inspired and aimed at the downfall of Christianity.” Other churches admitted to propagating state theology indirectly by promoting the idea that it was in the interest of ‘Christian civilisation’ to support the state’s ‘total onslaught’ strategy. Claiming to speak for “eleven million evangelical Pentecostals”, Assemblies of God leaders often travelled around the world denouncing the activities of anti-apartheid Christians.¹¹