Abstract
When Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s friend and biographer Eberhard Bethge visited South Africa in 1973, he commented that Beyers Naudé was South Africa’s Bonhoeffer. In this essay I explore what Bethge meant and whether it is a description that helps us understand Naudé’s legacy better. I do this in three parts. Firstly I offer a biographical comparison Bonhoeffer and Naudé. Secondly I suggest why Bethge’s comment was a carefully considered opinion formed over at least ten years. Thirdly I show that Bethge’s interest in Naudé and the church struggle in South Africa continued long after his visit to South Africa. I conclude that whatever their similarities and differences they became models of a new style of being Christian in the world. What unites them as human beings and Christians is their integrity in word and action, confession and resistance.
Highlights
When Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s friend and biographer Eberhard Bethge visited South Africa in 1973, he commented that Beyers Naudé was South Africa’s Bonhoeffer
Bethge’s awareness of the emerging situation and the possible relevance of Bonhoeffer is already evident in his Chicago Alden-Tuthill Lectures in 1961. Commenting in those lectures on “Bonhoeffer’s hot theological discussions with Geneva and with Faith and Order in 1934 and afterward,” Bethge remarked that they “would make a good and penetrating textbook for our judgment of the present crisis between the churches in South Africa and the relation of Geneva to this crisis.”[9]. The crisis was, the situation following the Sharpeville Massacre in March 1960, when the Anglican Archbishop Joost de Blank insisted that the Dutch Reformed Church be excommunicated from the World Council of Churches.[10]. Later in his Chicago lectures, Bethge returned to this subject with the comment that Bonhoeffer himself had “presented the Oekumene with a most delicate demand to accept the condemnation of the heretics, exactly as the archbishop of Cape Town does today.”[11] it was largely because of Archbishop de Blank’s condemnation of the Dutch Reformed Church, which was still a member of the WCC that led to the convening of Cottesloe Consultation in which De Blank and Naudé, who met for the first time, played a key role
He became an important interpreter of Beyers Naudé and the South African church struggle in Germany from on, just as he had become the interpreter of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Kirchenkampf to the rest of the world
Summary
When Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s friend and biographer Eberhard Bethge visited South Africa in 1973, he confided in the author that Naudé was South Africa’s Bonhoeffer.[1]. Abstract When Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s friend and biographer Eberhard Bethge visited South Africa in 1973, he commented that Beyers Naudé was South Africa’s Bonhoeffer.
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