Is Blood Thicker Than Justice?

Second Quarter 1999

I will argue that Abraham Kuyper has had both an oppressive and a liberative influence on South Africa. Both main traditions of the South African Reformed church—Dutch and Reformed as well as Black and Reformed—lay claim to the legacy of Kuyper.

The Oppressive Legacy

Kuyper's influence on the oppressive tradition in South Africa has been more complex than his influence on the liberative one. His main influence on the former was in providing a theological foundation that undergirded the core value of the Afrikaner Calvinists.

The Dutch Reformed Church has held as a core value the idea of racial separateness. There are some people within the DRC who hunger for wholeness and unity with people of other races. Yet the value of separateness drives the church into an attitude of overagainstness. In a very important address in 1980, D.P. Botha conclusively showed that the apartheid policy of separate development was essentially forged in the DRC's mission policy of 1935. It is my opinion that the mission policy has roots all the way back in the ninth synod of the DRC in 1857.

Where does Kuyper fit into all this? The DRC started by taking Kuyper's creation theology and developing it as a grand natural theological foundation for separateness. By 1974, the majority opinion of the DRC held that the biblical metaphor of the tower of Babel in Genesis 11 together with Kuyper's creation theology could serve as the cornerstones of a theology of race that would not contradict the core value of separateness.

They had not been told, of course, that Kuyper had drawn a distinction between the condition of humanity before Babel, on the one hand, and after Christ, on the other. Their mentors did not tell them that Kuyper regarded visible pluriformity as a passing phase in historical development. Kuyper's warning to the deputation from the Transvaal not to be falsely humanitarian towards blacks but to uplift them to equality remained a secret. They had not even been reminded of Kuyper's conviction that unity would triumph as the eventual purpose of God's plan of creation.

The DRC, although fully committed to the development of its own Afrikaner Calvinism, recognized that Kuyper's theology, for all its dialectical balance, allowed separateness and overagainstness to filter through. In a speech at the turn of the century, for example, Kuyper clearly reflected the value of racial separateness. Even sympathetic scholars speak of the "overtones of racism or at least cultural chauvinism" in that speech. He not only regarded blacks as a lower race, he even referred to their aspirations as "the black danger." When Kuyper's ideas gained ground in South Africa, his thinking had a formative influence on the racial theology of the Dutch Reformed Church. Though he was not the root cause of apartheid, once he became involved, the core value of separateness that undergirds apartheid somehow fed on his theological constructs.

The Liberative Legacy

The liberative influence of Kuyper has been uncovered and stressed by a group of South Africans organized in 1981 as the Alliance of Black Reformed Christians in South Africa (ABRECSA). One of its members, Allan Boesak, underscores the social justice position of Kuyper. This belief in social justice was expressed magnificently by Kuyper in his speech to the Christian Social Congress of 1891. "When rich and poor stand opposed to each other, Jesus never takes his place with the wealthier, but always stands with the poorer. He is born in a stable; and while foxes have holes and birds have nests, the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head... . Both the Christ and his disciples after him (just as the prophets before him) invariably took sides against those who were powerful and living in luxury, and for the suffering and oppressed." ABREC-SA grounded its charter in Kuyper's legacy, and specifically in his concern for social justice.

In 1982 the World Alliance of Reformed Churches drafted the Confession of Belhar, which, in 1994, was adopted by the new Uniting Reformed Church of Southern Africa created by the merger of three black churches. This confession stresses strongly the biblical teaching of social justice. Kuyper's legacy became part and parcel of the basic tenets of the Confession of Belhar. It was no longer blood ties that would bind Reformed people in South Africa. Confession, and particularly the confession of a God of justice, would become the binding force for uniting Reformed Christians everywhere.

Kuyperianism beyond Kuyper

There never was a comprehensive attempt to appropriate Kuyper's systematic theology in South Africa, neither in the oppressive nor in the liberative use of it. To the oppressive tradition it was the value of separateness, and to the liberative tradition it was the value of justice that decided which amputation of Kuyper would be made. The issue of separateness is a serious theological question that should not be confined to South Africa. It is a question of transnational proportions and responsibility. A closer look at the situation has brought me to the conclusion, for example, that, although all Europeans have benefited from apartheid, the core value of separate-ness was exclusively Dutch European. Despite the attempts to come to a black Reformed usage of Kuyper in South Africa, I am led to conclude that in Kuyper's legacy blood turned out to be thicker than justice.

It is the responsibility of those charged with the patronage of Kuyper's legacy to set us back onto Kuyper's tracks in order to become methodological Kuyperians in the interest of a post-Kuyperian Reformed theology. Kuyper's world is no longer ours. We no longer think in terms of an "organic society" opposed to a "mechanical" government, but instead we confront the adversarial power of a technological, global society that has left the nation-state superfluous. We can no longer affirm the concept of the sovereignty of God without an equal emphasis on God's freedom and historical vulnerability. As black Re-formed people steeped in Dutch Calvinism, we owe it to ourselves to remember Kuyper's role in the anti-apartheid movement. We also owe it to ourselves not to build uncritically on a theologian who regarded us as "people of a lower race."

The transition to a new democracy in South Africa was deeply affected by neo-liberal perspectives on power, especially economic power. The forces of global exclusion have taken the place of apartheid, thereby replacing a racial problem with a dominant class issue. These forces share a common victim-blindness and a culpability for sacrificing their victims to a false faith.

South Africans, as people in many other places, are indeed facing the post-exodus question of how to live with the golden calf. This is the deeply religious question of who is ultimate. Kuyper himself reflected on issues of economic power. In a sermon on Matthew 6:24, for example, he warned that Scripture has identified a greater evil than the golden calf: the power of Mammon. One expects nothing from the golden calf yet sacrifices all one's belongings to it. The golden calf at least inspires giving in people. This makes Mammonization a more dangerous idolatry than the naiveté of worshipping the golden calf. Jesus' claim that one cannot serve God and Mammon reveals to us the anti-religious nature of economic injustice. It is not about a mere choice for another god, Kuyper argued; it is a choice against God and a denial of God's providence for all people.

The most underdeveloped part of Kuyper's systematic thinking is his integration of questions of economics with Reformed theology. His focus is also limited to money and market issues. A recontextualization of the Reformed worldview and action should accept the challenge of coming to terms with global economic exclusion as a sacrifice to Mammon, with Africa first in line. The Mammonization of the market is an urgent matter for theological reflection. It is no longer merely a matter of ethics. It has become a matter of faith, a matter of Reformed identity.

What is at stake in developing a post-Kuyperian worldview is nurturing a less ethnic and more transnational form of Reformed identity. Making this contribution to the worldwide debate will mean justice, truth, and reconciliation for an abandoned continent called Africa. What we need is justice reformed; justice beyond blood.