Colonialism In South Africa Essay

A church mirrors a society. In the words of David Bosch, “The key to the understanding of history as God’s revelation lies in the eyes of the beholder.” God can be seen as One who ‘nationalizes’ all humanity, or as the Great Revolutionary, and the church can be seen as a pillar of the status quo or a force for social change. All around the world, groups in churches have become vital elements in the swing to the right and fear-ridden resistance to change. The churches have also spawned the growth of what Brazilian Archbishop Helder Camera calls “Abrahamic minorities” and in South Africa, these groups have pushed their establishments to stand up for measures leading to the gradual dismantling of ‘apartheid’ (separateness). The ‘South African

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw a huge expansion of scale and intensity of missionary efforts in sub-Saharan Africa. Africa became one of the most systematically occupied fields of Christian missions in the world. According to Gilbert and Reynolds, the missionaries preceded the flag in most instances, meaning that their work often took them beyond the frontiers of colonial control. These colonial missions took on many forms: from David Livingstone’s solo journey across East-Central Africa to Albert Schweitzer’s hospital at Lambarene. Christians were a catalyst for cultural change right from the start, and Africans were often deeply involved in this process of cultural creation. Christianity was also adapted and modified to meet local conditions and concerns. Shortly after the arrival of the missions, Independent Churches began to arise, and their presence was most prominent in West and southern

This church was initiated by American missionaries from Illinois but quickly grew to the point where its members number in the hundreds of thousands. In his interested in the faith healing and other practices of the Christian church, an Afrikaner named P.L. Le Roux split from the Dutch Reformed Church, and founded the Zionist Apostolic Church. It is interesting to note that the idea behind the apartheid had developed in the Dutch Reformed Church (NGK) in the 1920s. The Church concluded that these were separate communities in need of separate churches, after debating its missionary efforts toward the country’s African and Coloured communities, and from this perspective, one can see that apartheid did not derive primarily from racist motives. Le Roux was influenced by missionaries from Zion, Illinois – hence, the name of the church – and most of his followers were black South Africans. Zion churches soon spread outside of South Africa into neighbouring countries like Zimbabwe. The rise of these churches exemplifies how culturally dynamic the modern world is and was among the many sites where the global met the