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Afrikanerdom and Apartheid: Churches in Turmoil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2015

Gordon J. Spykman
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Extract

From an Afrikaner perspective, a firmly established way of life is at stake in the crisis situation of South Africa. The ongoing struggle centers on two passionately held principles. Taken in tandem, these two fundamental convictions have over the years assumed a quasi-confessional status. The one is freedom (vryheid), the other identity (identiteit).

A fierce determination to preserve its privileged freedom pervades the Afrikaner community. They fought long and hard throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to achieve liberation from the stranglehold of English domination and other opposing forces. Within the ranks of Afrikanerdom this hard-won freedom to exploit their own tradition is as clearly a self-evidently righteous cause as it is a self-serving one in the eyes of others. And they are not about to surrender it easily.

Type
Perspectives on South African Liberation Valparaiso University School of Law Symposium October 28-31, 1987
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , 1987 , pp. 275 - 283
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 1987

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References

1. Proceedings of the 21st General Council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches at 178 (Perret, E., ed. 1983)Google Scholar.

2. Id. at 179.

3. Acts of Synod 1984 at 601–04 (Board of Publications of the Council of Reformed Churches of North America 1984)Google Scholar.

4. RES Testimony on Human Rights aat 134–41 (Reformed Ecumenical Synod 1983)Google Scholar.

5. Acts of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod at 79–94 (Reformed Ecumenical Synod 1984)Google Scholar.

6. Church and Society: A Testimony Approved by the Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church at 10, 37 (1986) [hereinafter Church and Society]Google Scholar.

7. Draft Confession of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in South Africa at 137–17 (1982)Google Scholar.

8. The Kairos Document: Challenge to the Church, 53 Journal of Theology for Southern Africa at 61–81 (12 1985)Google Scholar.

9. 11 A Critique on the Kairos Document by the Plenary Executive of the Dutch Reformed Church at 7–11 (DRC News, 07, 1986)Google Scholar.

10. Church and Society, supra note 6, at 13.