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Bonhoeffer, Calvinism and Christian Civil Disobedience in South Africa*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

John. W. De Gruchy
Affiliation:
Dept of Religious Studies, University of Cape Town

Extract

In a much publicised address to the 1979 National Conference of the South African Council of Churches (SACC), Dr Allan Boesak, a theologian of the black Dutch Reformed Mission Church, challenged the Church in South Africa to engage in acts of civil disobedience against apartheid laws:

The church must initiate and support meaningful pressure on the system as a non-violent way of bringing about change. The church must initiate and support programs of civil disobedience on a massive scale, and challenge especially white Christians on this issue. It no longer suffices to make statements condemning unjust laws as if nothing has happened. The time has come for the black church to tell the Government and its people: We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. So we will teach our people what it means to obey God rather than man in South Africa.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1981

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References

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