Civil Religion in South AfricaThe Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid, and the Afrikaner Civil Religion by T. DunbarMoodieReview by: J. Alton TemplinAfrica Today, Vol. 23, No. 1, South Africa and the World (Jan. - Mar., 1976), pp. 81-83Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4185573 .

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Civil Religion in South Africa

J. Alton Templin

T. Dunbar Moodie, THE RISE OF AFRIKANERDOM: Power, Apartheid, and the Afrikaner Civil Religion (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1975): xii plus 328 pp., $11.00.

Thomas Dunbar Moodie, who teaches sociology at the University of Wit- watersrand (Johannesburg), has written an excellent analysis of how the Afrikaner civil religion developed between the years 1910 and 1948. He has, in addition, summary chapters dealing with the period before 1910 as formative, and a survey of certain developments following 1948. The major contribution concerns, however, the thirty-eight-year period between these two dates.

There are two major types of arguments. First, his theoretical framework assumes that the civil religion is based on the theological framework of John Calvin as modified, and, may we say falsified (?), by Abraham Kuyper ("Kuyperism"), an ultra-conservative Dutch theologian of the mid-19th cen- tury, and one of the founders in 1880 of the Free University of Amsterdam. This may well reflect "neo-Calvinism" in the terminology of Ernst Troeltsch. Kuyper's specific contribution to theological thought in South Africa, so Moodie argues, was to emphasize God's "sowereiniteit in eie Kring" (sovereignty in each particular sphere). Kuyper emphasized at least four mutually exclusive "spheres", responsible only to the Sovereignty of God: the individual sphere; the corporate sphere such as a University; the domestic sphere such as the family; and the communal sphere such as a town or village. Each sphere was created by God and was subject to His Sovereignty; therefore, no one sphere had any authority in another's area of concern. The function of the state was to maintain harmony between the spheres and mete out justice where necessary. One further sphere presupposed by South Africans but not set out thoroughly within the time span of this book, was that of race. God had created the white person ("civilization") basically different from the black person ("heathen"), and it was not the function of the church nor the state nor the intellectual community to attempt to change this status quo, which was God's plan. In the later portion of the book - the post World War I developments - Moodie senses a certain neo-Fichtean modification of this scheme - that is, the concept of an all-sovereign, proto-Nazi state in place of the sovereignty of God. He does not develop this idea fully, however.

The second type of argument is a narrative reiteration by Afrikaners of many past grievances in which God's challenge was seen, and in which true Afrikaners were called to stand for their faith or be disloyal to God's plan for them. The argument proceeds through the expulsion of Hertzog from Botha's cabinet in 1912, and his formation of the National Party in 1914; the execution of

Dr. Templin is associale professor of Historical Theology and Church History al lhe lliff School of Theology, Denver, Colorado.

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"martyr" Jopie Fourie, a rebel against British authority, in 1914; the "betrayal" of Afrikaner anti-British sentiment by their being drawn into World War I on the side of their enemy - Britain; the victory in the drive for recognition of the Afrikaans language as equal to English in 1925; the "betrayal" of the Afrikaners by Hertzog when he joined Smuts and the United Party in 1933; the formation of the "Purified" National Party by Malan in 1933; the "betrayal" again when South Africa was drawn into World War II on the side of Britain, fighting against the friend of the Afrikaner cause, Adolf Hitler; finally, the victory of Afrikaner civil religion in the election of 1948 when Malan and his Purified National Party won, and Smuts, "pro-British traitor" of the Afrikaner cause, was forced into retirement. Since so much emphasis is placed on the election of 1948, one wonders why the author does not refer to Gwendolen Carter's study, The Politics of Inequality (1958), or at least place this thorough study in the bibliography.

The major thrust of the Afrikaner Civil Religion was, throughout this whole period, the attempt of the Afrikaners to establish themselves as a unique people before God, with their own civil liturgy, sacred days, leaders, and "cause." They were thus anti-British and dreamed of a future republic separate from the British Empire; they resented neglect of their own language, and argued for their own culture through the Afrikaans language movement; they remem- bered several "martyrs" for the Afrikaner cause; they fought for a political party which would express true Afrikaner sentiments and would not be subject to liberalism, rationalism or English "jingoism." Their winning of the election in 1948, and the establishing of the Republic in 1961 seemed to be fulfillment of their dreams of a century and a half (the British first took military control of South Africa in 1806 after the Dutch had been there since 1652).

These concerns of an anti-English, anti-Imperial emphasis took precedence over other underlying concerns such as race. In fact, the racial question was assumed, but not theoretically developed until the last twenty-five years - not until after the National Party came to power in 1948, and Hendrik Verwoerd, as Minister of Native Affairs, began his systematic development of Apartheid. This is not to suggest that racial assumptions were not commonly held, but the civil religion rhetoric gave much more emphasis to other concerns before 1950. This reviewer is in basic agreement with Moodie's assumptions on this point.

I should, however, like to differ in other emphases. Moodie argues that the civil religious rhetoric was developed gradually, coming into full fruition only in 1938, the centenary of the Blood River battle (December 16, 1838). In the later date a great celebration was held at the beginning of the construction of the Voortrekker Monument near Pretoria as well as many other gatherings which formed the culmination of the "Kuyperian" civil religion. I am not convinced that "Kuyperian" is the correct designation for this civil religion, but, instead, that the roots go back well before Kuyper himself. In fact, while all elements in the Civil Religion which preceded Kuyper were strengthened by his assump- tions they were not established by them. In an article which I wrote (Church History, September, 1968), on which Moodie was commentator in a Harvard Seminar, I argued that the civil religion themes arose out of the 1830s, the period of Great Trek, were augmented at the Convention of Sand River (January 1852) and of Bloemfontein (February 1854), and were reiterated again in the speeches leading up to the war of 1880-1881 - begun December 16 (the high holy day of Afrikaner Civil Religion), 1880! Finally, the Civil Religion was embodied in three documents toward the end of the century: S. J. du Toit, Die Geskiedenis van ons Land in die Taal van ons Volk (The History of our Land in

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J. Alton Templin

the Language of our People) Paarl, South Africa: 1877; F. W. Reitz (?), Een Eeuw van Onrecht (A Century of Injustice) Dordrecht: 1899; and C. P. Bezuidenhuit, Die Geskiedenis van het Afrikaansche Geslacht van 1688 tot 1882 (The History of the Afrikaner lineage from 1688 to 1882), Bloomfontein: 1882. Only "A Century of Injustice" has been translated into English. The last-named document Moodie does not quote, nor is it even cited in the bibliography. The themes of the Civil Religion, therefore, date from the last half of the 19th cen- tury, and relate to ideas and ideologies which are older than Kuyper. To be sure, the same ideas were developed further, and given new applications in various periods of the 20th century. One wonders, further, why Moodie does not refer to the excellent study of his fellow South African: Coenraad Jacobus Juta, Aspects of Afrikaner Nationalism: 1900-1964, a Ph.D. dissertation written (1966) at the University of Natal and filed in their library at Pietermaritzburg. Moodie and Juta parallel each other closely. While Moodie proceeds basically chronologically, Juta develops his study topically, taking the same six or eight main ingredients of developing Nationalism - such as the Broederbond, the Federasie van Kultuurvereniging, and the Ossewa Brandwag - and analyzes each in turn. Juta quotes much primary material in the original Afrikaans which supports Moodie's thesis, but which Moodie evidently did not see, much less incorporate into his stody.

Several minor criticisms come in mind. Since Moodie did much of his research in South Africa, one wonders why he often quotes significant speeches from secondary sources, whereas in most cases the originals are available. While he uses Wendel as a source for the thought of Calvin, one wonders why his only authority for the theology of Luther is Erikson (p. 22)! Several questionable colloquialisms appear, not acceptable in American English - but perhaps so in South African English! For example, we note the use of "ramified" and "emotive" both p. 16; the incomplete sentence, last line p. 12; and "come-uppance", p. 212. There are almost two dozen misspelled words which are probably type-setting errors. Finally, the date of Paul Kruger's first election, listed as 1881 (p. 22), should read 1883.

Despite these minor questions and qualifications, this is a very well- researched book, and portrays very accurately, if not exhaustively, the ideology of a country destined to play a significant role in the next few decades - whether because of its racial problems of Apartheid, its business and financial developments, or its social experiments in developing different "homelands" for different African cultural groups. As noted above, Moodie does not deal, except cursorily, with the place that racial attitudes have in the full-blown civil religion. This topic should be the subject of another similar theoretical study - and in this as well the author would have to trace origins back over a century before coming to the coalescing of idea, ideology, rhetoric and laws of Apartheid in the period following 1950. A part of this task has been begun in Vatcher, White Laager (1965).

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