Christian Denominational Difference in South Africa

South africa is a profoundly Christian country. In 2001, the national census reported that about 80 per cent of South Africans described themselves as Christian, with nearly 72 per cent belonging to a Protestant church (Cabrita and Erlank 309). Although Christianity was introduced to South Africa with colonial conquest in 1652, when officials from the Dutch East India Company (DEIC) established a settlement in what would become Cape Town, it was only during the nineteenth century that Christianity—and especially Protestantism—became entrenched. The history of Christianity in South Africa is largely a Protestant one. (The Roman Catholic Church's presence in the region before 1860 was minimal, and this church's growth was on a smaller scale than that of Protestant denominations [Brain 195]). Attention to denominational difference is, thus, important for understanding how and why Christianity took root in, and changed over the course of, the nineteenth century in South Africa. But those denominational differences were often elided by the complications of colonial conquest and rule. Although historians have distinguished "settler" from mission churches, it was frequently the case that churches such as the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) included black members. Some DRC congregations remained racially mixed even after the DRC established a separate Mission Church for black converts in 1881. The Methodist Church did not distinguish between its white congregations and its mission churches. Nineteenth-century Christianity reflected the complexity of South African society during the period.

With the imposition of British rule in 1806, the DRC, which had functioned largely as a social gatekeeper and boundary marker under DEIC governance, became one of a number of churches serving both settlers and Indigenous populations (Lutherans had also been permitted to worship in the Cape at the end of the eighteenth century). The Church of England, the Presbyterian Church, the Methodist Church, English Baptists, and other, much smaller denominations established churches in the Cape. According to the 1898 census, by far the biggest churches in terms of membership and wealth were the DRC, with 225,517 members in the Cape Colony, and the Methodist Church, with 203,067. Indeed, these two figures are useful examples of the racialized nature of church membership; the DRC was overwhelmingly the church of white Afrikaners, with 145,831 of its Cape members describing themselves as white. However, the same census indicates that nearly 180,000 Methodists were black (meaning African and multiracial) (Davenport 55).

The growth of the region's settler churches—in terms of founding new parishes, employing new ministers, and increasing the size of congregations—was made possible by the economic expansion of South Africa, with the elaboration of British rule in the region, the establishment of the two Boer Republics, and the industrialization attendant on the discovery of diamonds (1868) and gold (1886). Perhaps unsurprisingly, much of the debate within those churches concerned their relationship with the state. In the Cape, the DRC, the Church of England, and some smaller churches received a stipend from the colonial government. Efforts to disestablish those churches—which culminated in 1872—were met with resistance from the DRC, with ministers split into orthodox and evangelical, on one side, and liberal factions, on the other, with the latter supporting the church's disestablishment. This fight drew on global debates over the nature of Calvinism itself, with orthodox ministers accusing liberals of Arminianism, a form of Calvinism that disputed predestination and placed emphasis on individuals' ability to reject or receive salvation. (Three evangelical revivals that swept DRC congregations in the second half of the century entrenched the power of the conservative faction.) The DRC remained prone to schism: as members of the church moved northward from the Cape, they founded the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika (the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa) in 1856 and the intensely conservative Gereformeerde Kerk (Reformed Church) in 1859 (Duff 324–33).

Always smaller in numbers and resources than the DRC, the Anglican Church—which suggested but never went forward with a merger with the DRC in 1870—was dominated by the Anglo-Catholicism of the first Bishop of Cape Town, Robert Grey...