This article provides an initial overview of the Institute for Contextual Theology’s 1988–1990 project on
In 1987, the Institute for Contextual Theology (ICT)
Beyond the mere historic value of shedding light on an aspect of the struggle against apartheid that has received inadequate or almost no attention, this project also marks one of the few examples of white Christians consciously attempting to think through the implications of Black Consciousness and Black Theology. It is even more important that a group of people, rather than an individual white theologican, attempted to think through grassroots programmes. Recently Klippies Kritzinger, another central committee member of the project, referred to this project as an example of the possible kind of work needed in contemporary South Africa: ‘a process of iterative withdrawal and reconnection on the basis of all the fault lines that separate us’ (Kritzinger
After an overview of the project, I start by introducing a debate between Albert Nolan’s
In the longest section of the article, I explore key aspects of the theological and social analysis found within LMWC. This is mainly focused on ‘the white church as a site of struggle’, which was the theme for two of the three annual workshops. The documents that contribute to this analysis are part of the collection of unpublished material, minutes, and handwritten notes on the project kindly made available by Klippies Kritzinger, Fiona Bulman, and Gerald West.
The ICT AGM passed the following motion in 1987:
[that] the ICT takes up the matter of a positive ministry to the oppressor with particular attention paid to issues such as guilt, fear and material interests in the white community. (Institute for Contextual Theology
Alex Bhiman was acting general secretary at the time and called the first meeting on 15 September 1987. It was attended by Willem Saayman, Denise Ackerman, Beyers Naudé, Nico Smith, Michael Worsnip, Nico Horn, Alex Bhiman, and Klippies Kritzinger (Institute for Contextual Theology
After further meetings of a smaller group (Kritzinger, Naudé, Worsnip, and Bhiman) Kritzinger produced a draft position paper.
There can be no sense in which the undertaking of such a ministry to whites can be divorced from the insights and directions of Black and liberation theology. In fact, the whole exercise is stimulated and called forth by Black Theology, and proceeds by constant interaction with black theologians. It is thus not an exclusively white enterprise, but a joint effort of black and white Christians to develop a liberating ministry to white people. Since we recognise that oppressors are incapable of bringing about liberation, we affirm that the oppressed need take the initiative and critically accompany this enterprise. (Institute for Contextual Theology
From 1988 until 1990, a yearly national conference was held. The intention was that the national conference would be repeated regionally, and that regional conferences would result in local working groups which in return would result in the development of the national working group (Bulman
Meetings were held in September 1988, June 1989 and July 1990.
The 1988 meeting focused on introductions to the white community through a demographic overview indicating white South Africans’ stance on various aspects of apartheid, members of the central committee presenting thoughts on possibilities for transformation among Afrikaners in particular, and presentations by extra-parliamentary groups working to garner support for the democratic movement among white South Africans. The central committee evaluation of the 1988 workshop reveals quite a bit of discomfort around the approaches of groups working within the white community that are not able to confront white complicity and call for white repentance, or that in their view did not adequately address the depth of the problem (Institute for Contextual Theology
The June 1989 meeting was, in many ways, dominated by the inputs of Albert Nolan and Chris Langeveldt on ‘skills for doing theology, social analysis and planning’ and ‘the church as a site of struggle’, respectively. These also became the central part of the regional meetings, where these were held. Nolan and Langeveldt were both Catholic priests, part of a small group called together by Frank Chikane, then director of the ICT
In February 1990, F. W. de Klerk announced the unbanning of the liberation movements, and the Rustenburg consultation was held in November 1990. Consequently, 1990 represents a certain historic marker within both the history of South Africa and the church struggle against apartheid (Vosloo
Denise Ackerman was a member at the beginning of the project, but withdrew early on in order to complete her dissertation. In a letter after the first meeting, however, she describes the original purpose of this project as having a far more (academic) theological aim: to first develop a white liberation theology, which would then be translated into a liberating ministry for whites (Ackerman
Nolan published
In their introductions, they evaluate the relevance and importance of Black Theology in different ways. In highlighting their different evaluations, some of the ideological and theological differences within LMWC (as well as other anti-apartheid groups) become more visible.
Nolan (2004) writes:
Today Black Theology is faced with the dilemma of what is called the ideological split between Black Consciousness and the non-racialism that is associated with the Freedom Charter. Black Theology has been a theological reflection upon the meaning of Black Consciousness. If the majority of the people have now adopted the non-racialism of the Freedom Charter, what does this mean for Black Theology? It seems to me that what matters is not what name we give to our theology, but that it remains a genuine theological reflection upon what God is doing in our country today. (p. 4)
While West (West My second basic conviction … is that a liberating theology for South Africa should draw its primary inspiration and methodology from its own context, not from Latin America or elsewhere. (Kritzinger
But more importantly, Kritzinger explicitly differs from Nolan’s rhetorical question (which Kritzinger read as implicitly questioning the relevance of Black Theology in the late 1980s) and its implication that the theological relevance of Black Theology is connected to majority support within the black community (Kritzinger
Gerald West’s post-apartheid overview of liberation theologies in South Africa highlights this particular tension as well. West lists a number of liberation theologies, but gives particular attention to the ICT’s contextual theology and Black Theology.
These different voices also become important in understanding the LMWC project. In spite of an initial emphasis on Black Consciousness, which would call on centring race in the analysis, the project focus was in many ways moved towards class, perhaps for similar strategic reasons as those pointed out in Kritzinger’s response to The Kairos Document. The point, then, is not how we name theologies (to echo Nolan), but rather how LMWC dealt with the relationship between race and class, a debate that continues into the present.
The preceding is an overview of the 3 years of LMWC and some markers of the different interpretations of the importance of consciously drawing from Black Theology and Black Consciousness in thinking through and putting in place a ministry to the white community. I now highlight aspects of the social and ecclesial analysis that informed the project and the ecclesiological reflections developed during this project. The section is almost exclusively descriptive and draws exclusively on the unpublished material from the project. It serves as a first attempt at breaking the silence on this project. I start with the title of the 1989 and 1990 national workshops, which highlight the main emphasis of the project.
Perhaps no theme was more prominent throughout the project than the emphasis on the
While the language was commonly used, Langeveldt provided conceptual clarity on the notion ‘site of struggle’. In particular, the focus of LMWC was on the ‘white church as a site of struggle’. I first provide a more general description, and then more closely examine the implications of understanding the ‘white church’ under the late stages of apartheid the church as the ‘site of struggle’. This is then explored further in the next two sub-sections.
Sites are the metaphoric ‘places’ where people are brought together through a common set of social practices. Social practices involve activities such as working, praying or studying, and sites are the places where a group of people are involved in these social practices. The school is then a site of education, the church a site of religion. At the same time social practices can contain certain contradictions within themselves. Contradictions, within and between sites, can occur when social practices become dysfunctional. Examples include the claim that apartheid produced harmony versus its actual effect was protest and disharmony. This became a contradiction between sites when conflict arose in which both the church and state contested issues of moral authority. The church preached, for example, that all people were created equal yet barred some (such as women) from leadership. Social change will only be possible when such contradictions exist (in brief, there is no need for social change if social practices do not exhibit certain contradictions), but also requires a consciousness of the contradictions. A consciousness of contradictions within or between sites of social practices leads to struggle of some sort, and only through struggle does social change occur. Raising consciousness of contradictions is therefore of utmost importance (Langeveldt
A broad distinction can be made between political, economic, and ideological sites (Langeveldt
Langeveldt’s key point is that the church as a site of social practices becomes a site of struggle because it is a site of contradictions. In his argument, the church will ‘always’ be a site of contradictions. The opposite of a site of struggle is that the church is a true community. But the church will only be a true community ‘when it is in complete harmony with itself and the rest of society and until that far distant reality takes place, the church will be a site of struggle’ (Langeveldt
For the purpose of understanding the project, the key point is that one task of prophetic theology, and of Christians working with a prophetic imagination, is to participate in the struggle
While Black Theology is considered an intellectual and ideological call together with which the project seeks to explore white liberation, another aspect repeatedly mentioned as informing the project is a perceived change within the white community by the second half of the 1980s. The resolution passed by the ICT in 1987 is explained as informed by a growing interest among white South Africans in the democratic movement (Institute for Contextual Theology
In describing the ideological struggle of which the church is a particular site, church and society in general, but the white church and society in particular, are described as representing a linear distribution of prophetic, middle-ground and conservative people.
Within LMWC, ‘prophetic’ is used in line with the prophetic theology of
For the project, the ‘white middle-of-the-road people’ it is concerned with are those who ‘are open to changing … a group that can be influenced’ (Institute for Contextual Theology
Drawing on this aspect of the project in a recent description of the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa and the Dutch Reformed Mission Church’s struggle for justice in the period 1986–1990, Kritzinger described these three groups as follows:
In doing this, he consciously describes these groups through their theological commitments. While LMWC worked with the white church in mind, the theological lines are largely similar.
The influence that LMWC then hopes to have is to shift middle-ground white opinion towards full acceptance of the agenda of the democratic movement. This move is perhaps best described as moving white people from a position of sympathy to one of solidarity (Institute for Contextual Theology
Churches’ position and involvement in terms of political realities.
Prophetic | Centre | Conservative |
---|---|---|
(working for transformation) | (working for reconciliation) | (preventing transformation) |
The church is a site of struggle because these different positions visible in society are also visible within the church, among both ordained and lay members. The struggle is between competing beliefs, symbols, and meaning, struggle around which different parts of the church participate. The goal of prophetic theology is to oppose those seeking to preserve the status quo, those who support injustice, and to draw a deeper commitment to work to transform the society from those who are open to change.
Nolan (Nolan
In Nolan’s analysis of society, we find a description that decentres race as a problem in South Africa in favour of class. Firstly, Nolan argues for analysis on different levels: psychological, social and structural. A social analysis reveals that tension exists between social groups, while a structural analysis reveals that the deeper problem is that of structural domination. For Nolan, the structural domination is class based, yet these classes largely corresponded with social groups under apartheid.
Secondly, in response to the analysis, Nolan indicates how different solutions are proposed depending on the lens through which an analysis is being made: a social analysis results in highlighting the reconciliation of black and white South Africans while a structural analysis results in highlighting the restructuring of society. Nolan maintains that reconciliation as a response to the problem in South Africa is based on an incorrect social analysis; it is an answer that assumes that the problem is the competition for power between two social groups. The project attempted to teach white Christians that the problem should be understood as a structural conflict of domination and oppression by some over others. The response should therefore be the restructuring of society more than the reconciliation of social groups (Nolan
The result of Nolan’s analysis is that it risks a class reductionism, in which the problem of whiteness is reduced to its position within a capitalist system. This becomes explicit in statements such as the following:
Much of the behaviour of whites in our society has nothing to do with their whiteness as such but everything to do with their positions of power and wealth in the South African pyramid. Whites often say and do things simply because they are on top and in power. In other words if whites were in a different position in the hierarchy of power and privilege they would act and speak quite differently. (Nolan
This materialist analysis cannot engage with the notion that whiteness is also maintained through assumptions about intellectual and moral superiority that are not necessarily dismantled by an economic restructuring of society, important as such a restructuring is in the disruption of whiteness. Drawing on the language of the previous section, and noting a tension between these two documents, this social analysis seeks to articulate a response to the economic struggle but does not respond to the ideological struggle of whiteness in the church: the struggle around faith, beliefs, and symbols that reinforce whiteness as a social phenomenon.
Given that the church as a site of struggle was the preferred analysis of the conference workshops, noting the options rejected in the process helps to clarify some ecclesiological assumptions. I ignore the possible ways in which conservative and middle-ground forces would see the relation between church and struggle, since these were clearly not options for LMWC. But prophetic theology itself could see the relation between church and struggle, more particularly between prophetic church and struggle, in at least four ways.
Two of these call for the withdrawal of the prophetic voices from the church. This might imply a complete withdrawal into new worshipping communities separate from the ‘unconverted church’ (described as a confessing church model). Alternatively, the prophetic voices remain as rebels within the church but actively refuse to participate in activities considered wrong (a rebel model). A third model sees the task of the church as supporting the struggle. In this model, the struggle is happening elsewhere and the church brings its resources and capacity to the struggle.
The rebel option implies that prophetic theology refuses to participate in what are considered the sinful activities of the church, while the confessing church option would set up alternative worshipping communities separate from the unconverted church. Different from either, seeing the church as a site of struggle, implies that we recognise that the church reflects contradictions similar to those found in society. Moreover, though the church should support the struggle of the people, the task of prophetic theology is also to conduct the struggle within the church (Institute for Contextual Theology
Following the argument through the last three points brings us to a key strategic understanding of prophetic theology. The ‘prophetic’ of prophetic theology should not be understood as a typically ‘radical’ or ‘voice in the desert’ notion. ‘Prophetic’ should rather be understood as being the ‘voice of the people’. The people, in this case, were the black majority of South Africa, calling for democracy and a deep restructuring of society. The task of prophetic theology within the white church as a site of struggle was to work to convince those white South Africans who were open to change to give their support to the black majority. The work of LMWC might then best be described as attempt to move the white middle ground from sympathy to solidarity with the black majority.
The second decade after the end of apartheid, and recent years in particular, has highlighted the importance of ongoing critical engagement with race in South Africa. Important for this paper is the growing emphasis on Black Consciousness, the re-emergence of South African Black Theology in recent years, and the growing critical study of whiteness.
A summary definition of whiteness by Melissa Steyn captures the various aspects of the analysis of struggle in the LMWC debate and in the analysis below:
What, then, is whiteness? I believe it is best understood as an ideologically supported social positionality that has accrued to people of European descent as a consequence of the economic and political advantage gained during and subsequent to European colonial expansion. (Steyn
Though this need not imply the impossibility of a whiteness not bound to racism
In e-mail correspondence shortly before his death, Willem Saayman wrote about this particular project and mentioned that he thought that it would be a good idea ‘to see where we were going when FW [de Klerk] interrupted us so rudely’.
In many ways, the discourse on whiteness within the LMWC project revolved around apartheid. Imagining what whiteness would become beyond universal suffrage and a Bill of Rights was not easy, apart from the suspicion that class inequalities would remain beyond the end of apartheid. Describing whiteness as a theological problem that is not synonymous with apartheid as a theological problem was probably even less common (even though the building blocks for such an analysis were in place by this time).
But ending apartheid did disrupt this early attempt by white theologians to start exploring whiteness critically. The interruption was possibly inevitable, given the close connection between apartheid and whiteness. This close connection is perhaps best seen in the discourse around prophetic theology used within the project. Implied in the description above, the position assumed in descriptions of prophetic theology was that of taking on the task of convincing the middle ground to abandon their support for apartheid. In this, there was little room to explore that it might mean to be complicit in maintaining whiteness in spite of strong opposition to apartheid.
To what extent LMWC was able to critically engage whiteness is the question that underlies my analysis up to this point. Much of what was presented in these meetings decentred the importance of race and whiteness in favour of class. Yet the meetings also revealed that different challenges might be at stake, which is an important strategic observation in the ideological struggle around white supremacy. One such challenge was the task of taking the theological response to white racism that Black Theology presented seriously, in the search for an appropriate white theological response. ‘Response’ in this context implied taking up the challenge of Black Theology. But simultaneously there are questions around what is politically attainable, what the most immediate goals should be, and how to move the white community towards support of the concrete policies and programmes that are part of the longer process of dismantling racism.
The emphasis within LMWC was on being strategically wise, which included discerning what is attainable with a particular group of white people. This included an insistence that they should refrain from making ‘outsiders’ of people and that there should be sensitivity to the struggles white people had when breaking with their communities. However, these strategies are explicitly focused on the so-called ‘white middle ground’, not those seeking to maintain the status quo. In short, those open to change should be guided towards a deeper commitment to transformation, but those committed to maintaining the status quo should be actively opposed (Institute for Contextual Theology
At some points in LMWC, the intention for more conceptual work around liberating whiteness was indeed present, but the focus was this strategic work for changing the white middle ground, for drawing them into a greater support for democracy and transformation of society. The aim was white solidarity with the struggle of the black majority against apartheid.
With the benefit of hindsight, we might argue that a key distinction that the LMWC could not yet articulate was between a disruption of whiteness and apartheid, on the one hand, and a disruption of whiteness and middle-class living, on the other. While whiteness was evidently maintained through a racist political system in South Africa, the dismantling of apartheid in itself did not and could not dismantle whiteness on its own. Analyses in the project correctly noted that political change without economic transformation will result in the perpetuation of a system of oppression beyond the end of apartheid. But, though whiteness was indeed, and continues to be, maintained through a system of class inequality, class solidarity in and of itself does not dismantle a problematic whiteness. In analysing the project from beyond apartheid, I will therefore consciously highlight the importance of the ideological struggle emphasised in the overview above.
In the minutes of the September 1988 meeting, describing the opening by Michael Worsnip mentioned in the initial overview of the project, it is noted that:
The conference began with an introduction by Fr. Michael Worsnip. He explained that the purpose of the workshop was to explore strategies for liberating whites through the churches. Black consciousness and black theology inspired the notion of a theology for whites in the early 1970s but this idea did not take off. This workshop was intended thus to reopen the debate and to discuss whether the moment had come to deepen our understanding of a specific approach to white Christians. (Institute for Contextual Theology
From even a cursory reading of contemporary South African discourse, it is clear that Nolan’s rhetorical question (which by implication questioned the future importance of Black Consciousness) was not accurate. Today, Black Consciousness in general and Steve Biko in particular remain key sources for a contemporary public discourse on race and racism. Though the student protests of 2015 indeed went to great lengths to highlight the effects of ongoing inequality, symbolised in the call that #feesmustfall, it was also made quite clear that the problems facing universities cannot be reduced to one of class inequalities. There are questions of curriculum, the politics of knowledge production, and, in highly personalised terms, the way in which pedagogic spaces remain racialised.
Historian Philip Bonner recently observed that the non-racialism of the ANC and Black Consciousness would probably always remain simultaneously present, even while different voices might be prominent at different times (Bonner
But its relevance is not to be found in its popularity alone. The challenge remains whether white Christians are able to respond to the questions that emerge when Black Theologians name race in general and whiteness in particular as key theological problems of modernity in general and modern South Africa in particular. If the 1970s attempt to work out the implications of the challenge of Black Theology for white Christians (see Kleinschmidt
But the project still remains a marker of such an attempt. Gerald West recently described this particular project as a space of explicitly focusing on whiteness and becoming conscious of whiteness (West
The challenge remains to hold race and racism as central problems that need to be explored theologically. The 1987 ICT resolution could well be repeated 30 years later: an LMWC will need to give particular attention to issues of ‘fear, guilt and material interests’.
The project correctly identified that the church as a site of
This analysis does not seek to undermine the prophetic theology underpinning this project, nor the important work done in thinking through what participating in the struggle would mean for those in predominantly privileged social locations, nor to undermine the importance of thinking through questions of class under capitalism given the levels of economic inequality.
Analysing the white church as a site of ideological struggle opened up possibilities for exploring how whiteness is maintained beyond political and economic dominance, although circumstances shifted attention primarily to the sites of political and economic struggle. The 1988–1990 ICT project
Given the re-emerging emphasis on racism and whiteness in South Africa, the project can serve as a starting point to consciously explore how the church, as an ideological site, maintains whiteness through the faiths, beliefs, and symbols of Christianity. But the project can also spur an examination of how the faiths, beliefs, and symbols of Christianity can work for the disruption of whiteness.
The author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article.
The ICT was a nondenominational organization established in 1981 with the conscious aim of developing a contextual theology that could challenge apartheid. It played a key role in the publication of the 1985 Kairos Document (Kritzinger
This process refers to a practice in which people work in groups along and across the fault lines. For example, in work on gender, men and women would need to work separately but also collectively, in an iterative process that allows them to address questions of gender identity and relations of power.
This work would not have been possible without their generosity of spirit and time, both in making personal archives available and also sharing their memories of this project.
Correspondence indicates that at least Michael Worsnip also contributed to the position paper. In a letter on 29 January 1988, Rev. J.M. Lamola, ICT projects co-ordinator, thanks Kritzinger for the position paper and then also writes that ‘I am impressed at the way Michael has been able to intergrate (sic) the longterm (revolutionary … shh) objectives of this without exposing the project as such to being seen as another mere radical stunt’ (Lamola
The choice to focus my evaluation through the lens of this commitment was motivated, on the one hand, by the contemporary focus on Black Theology in South Africa, tied to the growing emphasis on the importance of Black Consciousness today and, on the other hand, by the conferences at which this research was initially presented, where the focus was explicitly on race and Black Theology.
Although Chikané was director of the ICT from 1983–1987, he was detained repeatedly between 1977 and 1985 (
On 14 June 1985, the South African Defense Force crossed the border to Botswana in a raid on Gaborone. The target was MK officers but the raid also resulted in the death of a six-year-old boy and other civilians.
The third very important stream in West’s analysis is African Women’s Theology, which has little bearing on the project under discussion except that, as will be indicated, gender remained a largely unresolved issue within the project, and the intersection between gender and race was far from the focus of the agenda of this project.
Kritzinger followed Mothlabi’s critique (Kritzinger
Though no sources are indicated in the document, the emphasis of ideological sites correlates with a Gramscian emphasis on culture or civil society as important for the struggle of the left. In particular, the analysis of the church as a site of struggle correlates a reading common among the European left that stresses the distinction between state and civil society (compare Anderson
Some confusion might have existed. Langeveldt clearly emphasises that the struggle is within the church, since the church reflects the same spread of ideas and forces as are found in society. Writing in 1991, but writing from his own notes and without access to the full text of Langeveldt’s lecture, Willem Saayman gives a brief overview of the church as a site of struggle. Saayman, however, repeatedly interprets this to mean that the church should become part of the struggle. Rather than Langeveldt’s emphasis that the church is inevitably a site of struggle, Saayman uses this language to call for the church to ‘become’ a site of struggle, which in his argument implies becoming an ally in the struggle by playing a role in assisting people to find meaning (Saayman
Lind Alcoff’s (
‘om weer te gaan kyk waarheen ons op pad was met die projek toe FW ons so onbeskof in die rede geval het!’