How The Spirituality Of The Church Can Address The Legacy Of Apartheid

As South Africa’s second-largest metropolis (after Johannesburg), Cape Town not only has a rich history but is also a melting pot of scenic views, cuisines, and skin colors. She boasts incredible beauty but also thrombotic veins of prejudice and inequality, which are still fed by the painful legacy of the failed social experiment of racial segregation known as apartheid. Remarkably, the Reformed family of churches in South Africa more or less assumed a political role in both the rise and the demise of institutional apartheid, which officially ended in 1994. This political role has continued into the establishment of a new liberal democracy on the southern tip of Africa into the new millennium. Complicating this role has been the social justice ideology of cultural Marxism and postmodern identity politics. This essay sets forth key events in South African Reformed history, where combinations of Calvinist and Pietist legacies have made the church a questionable political force. In turn, I argue for the corrective value of a cruciform rendering of the church, which is its spiritual polity (Belgic Confession 30). Read more»

Simon Jooste | “From Orange to Pink: A History of Politics and Religion in South Africa’s Cape Town“ | November 1, 2021

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