Vertraagde Aksie: 'n Ekumeniese Getuienis uit die Afrikaanssprekende Kerk (English: Delayed Action: An Ecumenical Witness from the Afrikaans-Speaking Church) is a 1960 collection of theological essays by eleven ministers from South Africa's three principal Afrikaans Reformed denominations. Edited by New Testament scholar Albert Geyser and Stellenbosch theologian Barend Bartholomeus Keet, it challenged the biblical and ecclesiastical arguments used by the Afrikaans churches to support racial segregation and apartheid.

The book appeared shortly before the December 1960 Cottesloe Consultation, in the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre and amid growing disagreement within the Afrikaans churches over the theological legitimacy and practical consequences of apartheid. Its contributors addressed church unity, Christian fellowship, mission, racial ideology, social justice and the public responsibility of the church. Although the essays differed in emphasis and did not propose a single political programme, the collection constituted one of the first coordinated public challenges to apartheid by theologians writing from within the white Afrikaans Reformed churches.

The publication provoked intense opposition from Afrikaner church leaders, politicians and sections of the Afrikaans press. Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd publicly rebuked the dissident theologians, while church bodies investigated or censured several contributors. The controversies surrounding the book contributed to the growing isolation of Geyser, Adrianus van Selms and other Afrikaans church critics of apartheid and formed part of the background to the establishment of the Christian Institute of Southern Africa in 1963.

Background

Afrikaans churches and apartheid

The National Party, which came to power in 1948, developed apartheid into a comprehensive system of statutory racial classification, territorial separation and political exclusion. The policy received substantial institutional and theological support from the Afrikaans Reformed churches, particularly the Dutch Reformed Church and the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika (NHKA).

Supporters of apartheid theology argued that the Bible recognised separate peoples, languages and nations and that racial separation could therefore constitute a legitimate expression of divine order. Mission policies established racially and ethnically separate churches, while white congregations remained institutionally distinct from the churches created through their missionary activities.

A minority of Afrikaans theologians increasingly challenged these arguments during the 1940s and 1950s. Keet and Ben Marais questioned whether racial separation could be derived from Scripture, while Geyser and Van Selms criticised the division of the Christian church along racial lines. Their objections intensified after the police killed 69 demonstrators at Sharpeville on 21 March 1960.

Ecumenical Study Circle

During 1960 Geyser began convening private discussions among Afrikaans-speaking ministers and theologians who were concerned about apartheid and the churches' response to the political crisis. The group became known as the Ekumeniese Studiekring (Ecumenical Study Circle). Its members represented the NHKA, the Dutch Reformed Church and the Reformed Churches in South Africa (GKSA).

The meetings took place while the World Council of Churches and its South African member churches were preparing for an interchurch consultation at Cottesloe in Johannesburg. The Cottesloe meeting was intended to consider the country's racial crisis in the light of Sharpeville and formulate a common Christian response.

Vertraagde Aksie was not an official World Council of Churches or Cottesloe publication. It was an independent initiative by Afrikaans ministers who wished to address members of their own churches before the consultation. Its publication demonstrated that theological opposition to racial separation existed within all three Afrikaans Reformed traditions.

Publication

The Afrikaans edition appeared in Pretoria late in 1960 under the full title Vertraagde Aksie: 'n Ekumeniese Getuienis uit die Afrikaanssprekende Kerk. It was issued by the authors, with Geyser and Keet acting as editors, and was distributed through N.G. Kerkboekhandel.

The title literally means “Delayed Action”. The authors explained that the testimony was already overdue: the ecumenical church should have spoken earlier and more clearly about the nature of the church and the moral consequences of racial separation.

An English-language edition, Delayed Action!: An Ecumenical Witness from the Afrikaans-Speaking Church, appeared at about the same time. The English edition comprised 168 pages and formed part of the series Africa's Own Library.

In an interview published by Die Transvaler on 21 November 1960, Geyser and Marais stressed that the collection had not been written as a party-political pamphlet or an incitement to rebellion. They described it instead as a theological document whose arguments necessarily had political consequences.

Contributors

All eleven contributors were ordained ministers associated with one of the three Afrikaans Reformed “sister churches”.

Contributors by denomination

Denomination

Contributors

Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika

A. S. Geyser, A. van Selms, M. J. Redelinghuys and J. Stutterheim

Dutch Reformed Church

B. B. Keet, B. J. Marais, G. C. Oosthuizen, J. A. van Wyk and G. J. Swart

Reformed Churches in South Africa

H. du Plessis and C. Hattingh

The participation of ministers from all three denominations was significant because the churches differed institutionally and theologically but generally shared segregated membership, mission and worship structures. The contributors did not write on behalf of their denominations, and the book did not carry formal ecclesiastical approval.

Contents and arguments

The collection consisted of a preface followed by essays addressing the church's nature and public calling, Christian relations across racial boundaries, mission, nationalism and racial ideology. The essays varied in their directness. Some dealt explicitly with apartheid and racial discrimination, while others challenged the system indirectly by rejecting its underlying ecclesiology and biblical interpretation.

Keet's preface

Keet opened the collection with a warning that the time for an adequate Christian response had already arrived. In the English edition his preface was titled “The Bell Has Already Tolled”. He argued that a fully territorial partition of South Africa might conceivably have been attempted at an earlier historical stage, but that under contemporary conditions it could be achieved only through grave injustice to one part of the population.

Keet distinguished the interests of Christianity from the preservation of white political power. The church, he argued, could not present a policy as Christian merely because it served the security or continued dominance of a particular racial group.

Unity of the church

Geyser's essay, “Die Eerste Evangelie oor die eenheid van die Kerk as Christusgetuienis” (“The First Gospel and the Unity of the Church as Witness”), treated the visible unity of Christians as the collection's fundamental ecclesiological question.

Drawing on the early church, the Nicene Creed, the Greek term ekklesia and the prayer for unity in John 17, Geyser argued that the church was one, holy and universal because it belonged to Christ. It was therefore theologically incoherent to regard separate Afrikaans, African or ethnically defined churches as permanent and self-contained manifestations of Christianity.

Geyser rejected a distinction in which Christian unity was described as spiritually real but allowed to remain institutionally invisible. The church's unity had to become visible in worship, fellowship, mission and congregational life. Missionary activity that produced permanently separate ethnic churches reproduced the racial organisation of society within the church and weakened its witness to the gospel.

Although Geyser did not name apartheid repeatedly in the essay, his rejection of racially separate churches had immediate political significance. The Afrikaans churches had made ecclesiastical separation an important component of their defence of apartheid.

Church and contemporary society

Marais contributed “Die Kerk in die Kontemporêre Wêreld” (“The Church in the Contemporary World”). He placed the South African controversy within the transformation of the postwar world, the decline of European colonialism and the emergence of African and Asian nationalism.

Marais argued that the church could not treat racial conflict as an external political problem beyond its competence. Its proclamation, institutional conduct and treatment of other Christians formed part of its public testimony. The church had a responsibility to examine whether inherited social arrangements accorded with Christian brotherhood and justice.

His argument reflected the ecumenical outlook he had developed through participation in international church organisations. It also continued his earlier criticism of attempts to identify a specific programme of racial separation with an unambiguous command of Scripture.

Communion across racial boundaries

Van Selms's essay, “Die gemeenskap van die heiliges en die kleurvraagstuk” (“The Communion of Saints and the Colour Question”), examined racial separation through the Christian confession of the communion of saints.

He argued that Christians united to Christ could not deny one another ecclesiastical fellowship solely on the basis of race. The church was not merely a collection of independent ethnic institutions that possessed an invisible spiritual relationship; it was a concrete communion whose members shared worship, sacraments and responsibility for one another.

Van Selms's position directly challenged Article III of the NHKA's constitution, which restricted membership of the white denomination and provided for separate churches created through mission. He later developed this argument in public criticism of the denomination's racial boundary.

Race, mission and ideology

Other essays considered Christian responsibility towards black South Africans, the effects of racial ideology on the church, the relationship between mission churches and white denominations, and the command to love one's neighbour.

J. Stutterheim's concluding contribution, “Die Kerk en rasse-ideologieë” (“The Church and Racial Ideologies”), warned against allowing a political or racial ideology to determine Christian doctrine and ecclesiastical practice. Across the collection, the authors repeatedly distinguished theological reflection from the instinct for racial self-preservation.

The essays did not all advocate the immediate abolition of every form of social separation or endorse the same constitutional future for South Africa. Some retained the language of differentiated communities, gradual reform or separate development under conditions of justice. Their common intervention was narrower but consequential: apartheid could not be elevated into binding Christian doctrine, and the church's nature could not be defined by racial exclusivity.

Reception

Public and political reaction

The book caused considerable controversy in the Afrikaans community. Its authors were accused of undermining Afrikaner unity, assisting the international ecumenical movement and threatening white political survival.

In January 1961 two large public meetings were organised to denounce the authors. A gathering at Brits, attended by approximately 3,000 people, portrayed the contributors as conspiring with ecumenical and liberal forces against the Afrikaner people. Adriaan Dirk Pont, a professor of church history at the University of Pretoria and one of Geyser's most determined opponents, claimed that the collection's authors were effectively demanding the destruction of white South Africans.

Some contributors received hostile correspondence and threats. Geyser was increasingly excluded from preaching and church activities and became the principal target of press and ecclesiastical attacks.

Prime Minister Verwoerd personally rebuked the dissident theologians in his 1961 New Year's message. Historian Saul Dubow has described the subsequent response as an organised right-wing backlash against internal Afrikaner criticism following Sharpeville and Cottesloe.

Church responses

The executive leadership of the NHKA criticised Geyser and Van Selms on 14 January 1961 for their participation in the book. At the denomination's General Assembly later that year, the church reaffirmed Article III of its constitution. It also rejected Geyser's proposal that a commission of biblical scholars investigate whether Scripture had been applied legitimately in the article and in the controversy surrounding Vertraagde Aksie.

Within the Dutch Reformed Church, the Transvaal Synod denounced statements in the collection that it considered inconsistent with the church's confessions. Several church councils sought disciplinary action or clarification from contributors associated with the denomination.

The authors defended their right and responsibility as theologians and ministers to address the moral and ecclesiastical consequences of apartheid. They maintained that the church's public witness could not be confined to pronouncements approved through denominational channels.

Geyser's heresy proceedings

The publication was followed in 1961 by formal charges of heresy and insubordination against Geyser. The ecclesiastical case centred formally on his interpretation of Philippians 2:5–11 and the pre-existence of Christ rather than on the contents of Vertraagde Aksie itself.

Later scholarship has nevertheless treated the trial as inseparable from the broader conflict produced by Geyser's opposition to apartheid, Article III and racially separate churches. His editorship of Vertraagde Aksie, public criticism of government policy and involvement in ecumenical activity had made him a prominent opponent of the NHKA's racial theology.

Geyser was found guilty of heresy and expelled from the ministry in 1962. He successfully challenged the verdict in the Supreme Court, and the church restored his ministerial status in 1963 without a final judicial determination of the doctrinal dispute.

Van Selms resigned from his part-time teaching position in the NHKA's theological faculty in 1962 and later left the denomination. Marais remained within the Dutch Reformed Church but continued to experience opposition because of his ecumenical activity and criticism of apartheid theology.

Relationship to the Cottesloe Consultation

Vertraagde Aksie appeared shortly before representatives of eight South African member churches of the World Council of Churches met at Cottesloe from 7 to 14 December 1960. The two initiatives were institutionally separate, but they arose from the same post-Sharpeville crisis and shared several concerns.

The Cottesloe statement rejected racial discrimination within the church, stated that the Bible provided no basis for prohibiting interracial marriage, and recognised the rights of black South Africans to own land and participate in government. Vertraagde Aksie provided a specifically Afrikaans theological critique of the racial ecclesiology that underpinned opposition to such conclusions.

The book also differed from Cottesloe in audience and form. Cottesloe produced a negotiated statement by delegations representing several denominations, whereas Vertraagde Aksie consisted of signed essays by individual Afrikaans ministers speaking without official mandates from their churches.

Following political pressure from Verwoerd, the Afrikaans church delegations distanced themselves from the Cottesloe resolutions. The NHKA rejected them outright, while Dutch Reformed synods subsequently withdrew their churches from the World Council of Churches. In this environment, the contributors to Vertraagde Aksie became increasingly isolated within their denominations.

Legacy

Scholars have described Vertraagde Aksie as the first coordinated theological protest against apartheid by a group of Afrikaans-speaking theologians drawn from the three white Reformed churches. Its importance lay less in a detailed alternative political programme than in its challenge to the theological authority claimed for apartheid.

The collection shifted the debate from whether racial separation was politically expedient to whether it was compatible with the nature of the Christian church, the unity of believers and responsible biblical interpretation. Geyser's insistence that there was only one visible church in Christ became particularly influential in later reassessments of apartheid ecclesiology.

The Ecumenical Study Circle continued meeting after the publication and Cottesloe controversies. It helped create the relationships and organisational foundations from which the Christian Institute of Southern Africa emerged in 1963, with Geyser as its first chairman and Beyers Naudé as its first national director.

Histories of Christianity and apartheid commonly place the book in a sequence of church documents that challenged racial theology, including the Cottesloe statement, A Message to the People of South Africa (1968), the SPRO-CAS report Apartheid and the Church (1972), the Belhar Confession and the Kairos Document. Its authorship and intended audience remained rooted in the white Afrikaans churches, but its publication demonstrated publicly that the theological defence of apartheid was contested from within those institutions.

Copies of the Afrikaans edition are preserved in South African and international library and archival collections. The Netherlands Institute of Southern Africa collection held by the South African History Archive catalogues the book among its materials on South African churches and resistance to apartheid.

See also

  • Albert Geyser
  • Ben Marais
  • Adrianus van Selms
  • Christian Institute of Southern Africa
  • Cottesloe Consultation
  • A Message to the People of South Africa

Further reading

  • Gräper, Moritz (2019). The Bible and Apartheid: Contested Interpretations in the History of Christianity in South Africa and Beyond. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. .
  • Ritner, Susan Rennie (1967). “The Dutch Reformed Church and apartheid.” Journal of Contemporary History. 2 (4): 17–37. .
  • Vosloo, Robert R. (2017). Reforming Memory: Essays on South African Church and Theological History. Stellenbosch: SUN Press. .