Afrikaner Nationalism - Formulating The Ideology - Dutch Reformed Church

Dutch Reformed Church

Religion, especially Afrikaner Calvinism, played an instrumental role in the development of Afrikaner nationalism and consequently the apartheid ideology. The Dutch Reformed Churches of South Africa were involved throughout the 18th century in a constant battle against modernism and modernity. They aligned with the conservative views of Abraham Kuyper, who emphasized God's authority over separate spheres of creation. These spheres, for example historical nations, had to be preserved and protected from liberalism and revolutionary ideologies. Kuyper also rejected the Enlightenment with its emphasis on human rationality and individuality and thought that it had led to the ideals of equality, fraternity and freedom of the French Revolution. In his view, all these ideas challenged God's authority. Afrikaner theologians worked from this foundation and defined a number of political, economic and cultural spheres that had their separate, independent destinies. The Afrikaner history was also reinterpreted through a Christian-nationalistic ideology. Already Paul Kruger, president of Transvaal and a founding member of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk, referred to it as "sacred history" with volk as the chosen people, where the Great Trek was seen as the Exodus from the British rule in Cape to the Promised Land of the Boer Republics.