Abstract
During the first few decades of the 20th century, the Nkhoma mission of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa became involved in an ecumenical venture that was initiated by the Church of Scotland’s Blantyre mission, and the Free Church of Scotland’s Livingstonia mission in central Africa. Geographically sandwiched between these two Scots missions in Nyasaland (presently Malawi) was Nkhoma in the central region of the country. During a period of history when the DRC in South Africa had begun to regressively disengage from ecumenical entanglements in order to focus on its developing discourse of Afrikaner Christian nationalism, this venture in ecumenism by one of its foreign missions was a remarkable anomaly. Yet, as this article illustrates, the ecumenical project as finalized at a conference in 1924 was characterized by controversy and nearly became derailed as a result of the intransigence of white DRC missionaries on the subject of eating together with black colleagues at a communal table. Negotiations proceeded and somehow ended in church unity despite the DRC’s missionaries’ objection to communal eating. After the merger of the synods of Blantyre, Nkhoma and Livingstonia into the unified CCAP, distinct regional differences remained, long after the colonial missionaries departed. In terms of its theological predisposition, especially on the hierarchy of social relations, the Nkhoma synod remains much more conservative than both of its neighboring synods in the CCAP to the south and north. Race is no longer a matter of division. More recently, it has been gender, and especially the issue of women’s ordination to ministry, which has been affirmed by both Blantyre and Livingstonia, but resisted by the Nkhoma synod. Back in South Africa, these events similarly had an impact on church history and theological debate, but in a completely different direction. As the theology of Afrikaner Christian nationalism and eventually apartheid came into positions of power in the 1940s, the DRC’s Nkhoma mission in Malawi found itself in a position of vulnerability and suspicion. The very fact of its participation in an ecumenical project involving ‘liberal’ Scots in the formation of an indigenous black church was an intolerable digression from the normative separatism that was the hallmark of the DRC under apartheid. Hence, this article focuses on the variegated entanglements of Reformed Church history, mission history, theology and politics in two different 20th-century African contexts, Malawi and South Africa.
Highlights
When the German theologian, Martin Kähler made his frequently quoted claim describing mission as ‘the mother of theology’ (Kähler 1971, p. 190), the point was to bring about a reorientation regarding understanding the church as an essentially missionary institution in its earliest foundation
What makes this case noteworthy is its role within the development of the ideology of apartheid in the early to mid-20th century. (This article is broadly based on themes emerging from my forthcoming book (Müller Forthcoming), The Scots Afrikaners: identity politics and intertwined religious cultures in southern and central Africa (Edinburgh University Press)) The focus in this article is on the role of one specific Scottish immigrant family in these parts, who together with their influence sphere exercised an outsized role in terms of the mission and policies of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC)
A general thesis argued here is that mission coupled with ecumenism might serve to counteract harmful nationalist discourses, but when mission finds itself coupled with nationalism instead, a theology of separateness or exclusivism is virtually the inevitable outcome
Summary
When the German theologian, Martin Kähler made his frequently quoted claim describing mission as ‘the mother of theology’ (Kähler 1971, p. 190), the point was to bring about a reorientation regarding understanding the church as an essentially missionary institution in its earliest foundation. The complex interplay between mission, church history, theology and politics is well illustrated by the case of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) of South Africa and its missionary and ecumenical interactions in Nyasaland/Malawi. What makes this case noteworthy is its role within the development of the ideology of apartheid in the early to mid-20th century. A general thesis argued here is that mission coupled with ecumenism might serve to counteract harmful nationalist discourses, but when mission finds itself coupled with nationalism instead, a theology of separateness or exclusivism is virtually the inevitable outcome Focusing on this particular case study, this article would substantiate this special edition’s central claim, which challenges the division between the history of Christianity, the history of Christian mission, and the history of theology. A consequence of this policy, aided by the many pastoral vacancies in an expanding colonial frontier, was that Scots soon constituted a powerful factor in the DRC, even outsized in terms of the influence they ended up wielding
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