The Afrikaanse Protestantse Kerk (English: Afrikaans Protestant Church), commonly abbreviated APK or AP Kerk is a South Africa - based conservative Reformed Church with about 50,000 adherents^[1]. It has 240 congregations, including some in Namibia, Australia, England and Wales.

Its official motto is lig in duisternis from Job 26:10:"He has described a boundary on the waters until light and darkness comes to an end".

Formation

In 1982 the World Alliance of Reformed Churches's General Council declared apartheid a sin and its theological justification a heresy, in the process expelling from its membership the Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk (NGK), the major branch of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) in South Africa and the traditional mother church of South Africa's Afrikaner population^[2]. The shock of this isolation from other branches of the Reformed Churches worldwide led to the adoption in 1986 of Belhar Confession by some branches of the DRC; the NGK, while stopping short of adopting the Belhar Confession, retracted its 1976 defence of apartheid as a biblical imperative, instead releasing a "more nuanced" document called Church and Society that provided "qualified support for apartheid." ^[3]

However, the document "reflected the new majority consensus within the NGK which rejected the older, Kuyperian theology and was struggling to break with apartheid practice"^[4] and thus outraged the more conservative clergy within the NGK. The General Synod of the NGK decided to integrate church services in principle, declared that apartheid and the prohibition of miscegenation were errors, and, most importantly, declare racism a sin: as a "direct result"^[5] the Afrikaanse Protestantse Kerk was founded in Pretoria on Saturday, 27 July 1987 by 2000 dissidents, together with conservative elements from other branches of the DRC in South Africa^[6].

Another reason for the formation of the new church, was the growing influence of Arminian and liberal theology in the NGK. The new church also opposed the use of the new Afrikaans Bible translation (1983) during worship services. The APK strongly opposed these modernest reforms and sought to preserve traditional Boer Calvinism.

Growth

In 1988 the APK set up a seminary so its pastors could be trained independently; the seminary has now grown into a full theological institute, called the Afrikaanse Protestantse Akademie, and based in Pretoria.

In 1990 Church and Society was revised by the NGK to indicate that "any attempt by a church to try to defend such a system (of forced separation) biblically and ethically must be seen as a serious errancy; that is to say, it is in conflict with the Bible." The triumph of the reformers within the NGK led to an increase in the number of congregations choosing to join the APK.

Theology

The church holds to the Bible as the infallible Word of God and the sole authority in all metters of the faith. Like most offshoots of the DRC, the APK focuses its theology around the Three Forms of Unity and is Calvinist in doctrine.

Racial exclusion

This whites-only denomination believes in the theological justification of apartheid. The Church also claims that it is essential that "diversity" in worship be maintained, as well as the "indigenous" nature of church doctrine^[7]. In effect, it continues to maintain the "position that ethnic and racial separation is natural and sanctioned by God"^[8]. The central place in the formation and ideology of the church assigned to the promotion of "indigenous" methods of governance and the defence of forced ethnic separation means, in effect, that the APK is a whites-only church. Several constituent churches proclaim, as part of their name 'n Gereformeerde Kerk van Christus onder blanke Afrikaners, or "a reformed Church under white Afrikaners"; black worshippers have reported being asked to leave services^[9].

Following claims by Western Cape premier Gerald Morkel that the APK was "the last bastion of apartheid" in his province, the leadership of the APK stated that "one of the aspects of our culture is that we are white and we work to remain that way....we hold church within our own culture."^[10] During the former cabinet minister Clive Derby-Lewis' appearance before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission asking for amnesty for his murder of the head of the South African Communist Party, Chris Hani, Derby-Lewis stated that "the Afrikaanse Protestante Kerk would have approved of Hani's murder"^[11]. George Bizos, the distinguished lawyer who opposed amnesty on behalf of the victim's family and friends, read into the record of the Commission the teachings of the APK that Communism was the antichrist and the dissolution of apartheid would hasten the victory of Communism.^[12][13].

References

af:Afrikaanse Protestantse Kerk