In Verse 13 of the book of Romans it says: “Everyone should submit to the power of the state. Because there is no authority that is not conferred by God.“ So how logical perspective is from Theo, and in Christian practice, with a criminal state deal? In “the bridge building against Apartheid?” explores the historian Sebastian Justke, such as West German pastor, were sent in the seventies and eighties, in the German-speaking municipalities in South Africa and Namibia, Apartheid, perceived, and responded.
Evangelical-Lutheran churches introduced to German settlements in southern Africa since the beginning of the colonization of a social, cultural, and identity-crystallization point is. In the 1960s, they organized in four regional Church associations, whose members were exclusively German, German-speaking or German-born South Africans or Namibians. The Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) supported these churches financially and in terms of personnel with the deployment of German pastors. Separately, were organized by the Evangelical-Lutheran churches of the non-white majority population, which were originated by the German Mission.
The German-speaking municipalities were in the seventies and eighties, up to 40 000 members. As a White, these were privileged by Apartheid, and lived at the same time in increasing “existential angst” before the overthrow of the majority of society. In particular, under the southern Africa-born members of the community by many, and hung a “politico-cultural thought” and “imagined germanness”, which had decoupled from social developments in the Federal Republic of Germany for a long time.
Church played in Apartheid South Africa, an accentuated role on both sides of the political spectrum. The Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk, the Afrikaans-speaking Church of the Boer population, supplied the apartheid regime until the 1980s, the ecclesiastical legitimacy of racial segregation. On the other hand, parts of the English-speaking churches used since the 1940s actively against racial segregation, which they condemned as “blasphemy”.
The Evangelical-Lutheran churches were long Silent on political issues. In municipalities of the black majority population, who were often led by white pastors, broke up this attitude from the sixties. This led to tensions between the Lutheran churches. Because the German-speaking municipalities refused to a large extent the political positioning and justified, among other things, Luther’s Two-Kingdoms doctrine.
were As a vote against the apartheid regime internationally, louder, came the EKD for the promotion of the segregated German-speaking municipalities in the criticism. The Mainz working group on South Africa from the formerly on-the-ground pastors and Church staff required in 1972, the support of the municipalities set. In the reaction, the EKD has positioned itself since the beginning of the seventies the fight against Apartheid, continued the promotion but. She argued that she would not allow the continuation of contracts greater influence. Thus, the EKD called for by the German-speaking churches to a unity of the Lutheran Church across racial boundaries, and commissioned your pastor, and Ecumenical collaboration.
