FROM PLURALISM TO IDEOLOGY: THE ROOTS OF APARTHEID THEOLOGY IN ABRAHAM KUYPER, GUSTAV WARNECK AND THEOLOGICAL PIETISM

Abstract

This paper explains how a “theology of apartheid” was constructed in the first half of the twentieth century in SA from a combination of three nineteenth century European theological currents: The neo-Calvinism of Kuyper, the missiological thinking of Warneck, and Pietism. In this way the celebration of plurality – so evident in postmodern theologies – turned into a debilitating, exclusivist ideology that was ultimately dismantled by the witness of the Confession of Belhar in 1982