Multiculturalism and the Church in South Africa 7.0. Introduction
7.10. Cultural and Linguistic Differences
The early church among South African 'whites' were composed of the NGK, Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Catholics and Lutherans.
Inter-racial contact within churches was a different matter; it was of great importance for South African Christianity. In the nineteenth century relationships developed which would later provoke a world wide denunciation of religious apartheid. Yet the origin of segregated worship varied.
Methodists, who straddled the two racial cultures over a wider geographical area than any other denomination ,were accustomed to separate white and indigenous congregations from the start, although they commonly considered it only a temporary expedient.
Cultural incongruity, linguistic differences, and residential separation contributed to the general practice of segregated worship. Methodists, like almost all whites, assumed that white culture was radically superior to black culture. Most missionaries considered African converts should abandon undesirable cultural practices. Methodists set up different circuits for black and for white churches but without sufficient integration a the clerical level. In the end, they paid the price for this, being subject more than other denominations to the turmoils of black separatism. Although the Methodists ordained African ministers beginning in 1871 , Nehemiah Tile's Thembu Church broke away in the 1880s, followed by Mangena Mokone's Ethiopian Church. The unifying trends of shared spiritual experiences in South African Methodism were overwhelmed by blacks' desire to attain higher status than their white colleagues in nominally non-racial church would allow, linked to a growing conviction that were proven resources in African Christianity which allowed blacks to pioneer new directions of their own (Elphick and Davenport 1997:65).
For the Anglicans too, racially separate worship was customary if not mandatory.
All dioceses had both predominantly white parishes, but all were represented in the same synods. This structural unity at the top discouraged secessions, and , by strange irony, provided flexibility sufficient both to absorb the prejudice of some believers against mixed worship and to enable the Church to incorporate the
Ethiopians in their fold in 1900 as a separate religious order. Episcopal structures, it could be argued, safeguarded the unity of the Anglican - as well as the Roman Catholic - under circumstances that might otherwise have resulted in an ethnic divide.
In Baptist circles the maintenance of common worship across the colour line appears to have been relatively unimportant, at least for the Afrikaanse Baptiste Kerk. A mixed congregation was established at Stutterheim in 1867, but the Kerkraad (church council) minutes of 1924 make it clear that over a period of time separation had occurred because it was 'necessary that general public opinion on race relations be taken in account' if an effectiye ministry among whites was to continue.
Elphick and Davenport (1997) comment that, it was not a foregone conclusion that worship in the NGK would be segregated. In Boer homesteads early 19th century travellers found the farmer's (Coloured) volk (people), often participating in the routines of family worship, although conversions were rare and those who did convert gained little status. Thus the NGk's synod's decision in 1857 to legitimise the custom of separate churches for the races 'on account of the weakness of some' had a more decisive impact than it would have had in other denominations. It had arisen out widespread, and fairly longstanding, discomfort within white congregations at the presence of black worshippers. Thus principle came to be abandoned. The decision was not based on language differences or on the inconveniences caused by residential segregation. In the Dutch Reformed tradition of 'internal holiness', infant baptism was considered to bestow 'covenantal holiness' only on children of believers. Christian and non-Christian communities were, in consequence of this theological distinction, regarded as two static groups between which no movement was likely, if even possible. An additional rationale, which the NGK shared with English-language churches, especially the Presbyterian, argued that blacks feel more at home in their own churches than as subordinates in white churches.
Presbyterians' original premise was that the races should not be segregated, and they were not in fact segregated in the early Cape Town congregation. The movement leading to a separate Bantu( subsequently, Reformed) Presbyterian Church of South Africa in 1897, began in the year when the Presbyterian Church of South Africa (pCSA) founded to bring together of the separate Presbyterian congregations on the subcontinent. The missionaries of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland joined the new body; but those in the Free Church of Scotland were divided.
A minority of the Free Church missionaries opting for the new multiracial church, the majority for an autonomous African church. James Stewart, principal of Lovedale, feared that whites would· have leave the new united church if blacks gained control; also that a predominantly black membership would stymie a possible union with the NGK; and again - in conformity with a prevalent view in the Scottish church- that the function of the mission was to support new Christian communities until they could stand on their own feet, and then let them go. Others who were in favour of separation argued in favour of cultural autonomy for black and white (Elphick and Davenport 1997: 66).
Inquoting Elphick and Davenport (1997) they say that,
... opposition from leaders, often for status reasons, reached a climax after the Ethiopianism among Methodists, and Pambani Mzimba's movement out of the PCSA in 1898 caused a rift that did not easily heal. A proposed compromise of 1914, which includeda decision by the PCSA to continue to organise 'Native Presbyteries' linked to an autonomous Kaffrarian synod whose members could participate in proceedings of the General Assembly, failed to remove the taint of subordination for blacks who wanted real freedom; nor did it satisfy whites who saw the proposal as racist. When the Bantu Presbyterian Church (BPC) was set up in 1923, the debate had not been resolved: whether to stand by the unity of the church at all costs, and risk further splits, or rationalise the position and let the BPC go (Elphick and Davenport 1997: 67).
The story of how the various churches wrestled with cultural cleavages in a society that found it hard to apply the doctrine that' in Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor
Gentile, rich nor poor, bond nor free' thus betrays a tension between the pull of ethnic preferences on the one sided and a sense of ethical obligation on the other.
This tension was more painful in southern Africa than in most parts of the world, because when big issues had to be faced in the 20th century, especially in the debates over racial party and human freedom, the starting point was clouded by ambiguous assumptions about in the meaning of baptism and notions of individual rights inherited from the earliest days of contact (Elphick and Davenport1997: 65- 67).