Brian J. Brown (born 1938) is a South African-born Methodist minister, theologian, author and anti-apartheid activist. He served as a minister of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa from 1962 to 1978 and joined the staff of the Christian Institute of Southern Africa in 1970. He subsequently became the Institute's administrative director and deputy to its national director, Beyers Naudé.
Brown worked with African independent churches, Black Consciousness activists and communities affected by forced removal, detention and political repression. When the government outlawed the Christian Institute in October 1977, he was served with a five-year banning order. He defied its prohibition on addressing gatherings by continuing to preach and was prosecuted, although the charge was subsequently withdrawn. Brown left South Africa for Britain in 1978.
In 1980 Brown became Africa Secretary of the British Council of Churches. During the 1980s he helped move the principal British churches towards support for economic sanctions and disinvestment, strengthened church contacts with southern African liberation movements and helped establish the Southern Africa Coalition in 1989. He later served as Secretary for Africa of the Methodist Missionary Society, taught at the Selly Oak Colleges in Birmingham and returned to parish ministry.
Brown's publications include the memoir Born to Be Free: The Indivisibility of Freedom and, as a co-editor, At Home with God and in the World: A Philip Potter Reader. His later activism has included Christian advocacy concerning Israel and the Palestinian territories.
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.
The Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid Society, commonly known as SPRO-CAS or Spro-cas, was a South African Christian research and social-action project active from 1969 to 1973. It was jointly sponsored by the South African Council of Churches (SACC) and the Christian Institute of Southern Africa and directed by educator and publisher Peter Ralph Randall.
The project arose from A Message to the People of South Africa, an ecumenical statement issued in 1968 that challenged the theological foundations of apartheid and argued that Christian loyalty could not be subordinated to race or nationalism. SPRO-CAS brought together approximately 150 academics, clergy, lawyers, educators, economists and other participants in six commissions examining the church, economics, education, law, politics and society.
The first phase, subsequently known as SPRO-CAS I, conducted research and published reports analysing the principal institutions of apartheid society. Its findings moved beyond appeals for improved race relations and called for a fundamental redistribution of political power and economic resources.
A second phase, SPRO-CAS II (formally the Special Project for Christian Action in Society) operated during 1972 and 1973. It attempted to translate the earlier research into action and was divided into black-led community programmes and a white conscientisation programme. The Black Community Programmes, initially associated with SPRO-CAS II, became an important organisational expression of the Black Consciousness Movement under figures including Bennie Khoapa and Steve Biko.
SPRO-CAS also contributed to the establishment of Ravan Press, which was initially created to publish project reports and later became a major oppositional publishing house. The project completed its formal work in 1973, but its community programmes, publishing initiatives and methods of Christian social analysis continued through the Christian Institute, the Black Community Programmes, Ravan Press and other organisations.
Adrianus van Selms (22 January 1906 – 30 April 1984) was a Dutch theologian, Old Testament scholar, Semitic philologist, biblical archaeologist and minister who spent most of his academic career in South Africa. He joined the University of Pretoria in 1938, becoming professor and head of its Department of Semitic Languages in 1948. He held the chair until his retirement in 1971 and also taught biblical archaeology in the theological faculty of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika (NHK) from 1938 to 1962.
Van Selms published widely on the Hebrew Bible, the languages and cultures of the ancient Near East, Ugaritic, the Dead Sea Scrolls, biblical archaeology, Christian doctrine and Islam in South Africa. His study of early Muslim religious texts written in Arabic script but largely in Afrikaans became an important contribution to the history of written Afrikaans.
He was also a critic of racial segregation within the NHK. He contributed to the 1960 anti-apartheid theological collection Vertraagde Aksie (Delayed Action), opposed the racial exclusion contained in Article III of the church's constitution, resigned from its theological faculty in 1962 and severed his membership of the denomination in 1967.