Christian and Anti-Nationalist?
Allan Boesak's alternative take on neo-Calvinism
Some of the desires that motivate the common life of humans are so fierce they might be gods. The ferocity with which such wild wants are pursued can make this earth a hell. Throughout human history few idols drew forth as great a degree of fanaticism as has kinship (real or imagined). I saw the murderous effects of the idolatries of race and ethnicity up close as a teenager active in the struggle against apartheid in 1980s South Africa and again as an interpreter for the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the 1990s. This series draws out the similarities I notice between the Christian nationalism into which I was born and from which I converted and the Christian nationalism now rampant in North America.
Calvinism is the Christian tradition to which Andries Treurnicht appealed in his moral defense of apartheid, or segregated national development, as I showed in my previous post in this series. But it is also the tradition to which Allan Boesak appealed in his volume of addresses and essays published in 1984, Black and Reformed: Apartheid, Liberation, and the Calvinist Tradition (Orbis Books). (An early version of the key essay appeared in the November-December 1981 issue of The Reformed Journal.)
What the task was for Black Reformed South Africans in the 1980s is no less the task for White Reformed North Americans in the 2020s: “to salvage this tradition from the grip of the mighty and the powerful who have so shamelessly perverted it for their own ends and let it speak once again for God’s oppressed and suffering peoples.”
Treurnicht had argued vehemently against those who would consider Christian ecclesial solidarity to be a negation of racial and national difference: “Die kerk van Christus is daar om die volkere van die wêreld te verbroeder, nie om hulle te verbaster nie.” (“The church of Christ exists to bring the nations of the world to brotherhood, not to bastardization.”) Boesak critically confirmed Treurnicht’s unapologetic assertion of the thoroughgoing implication of the Afrikaans Dutch Reformed churches in the racism and nationalism of the apartheid regime:
The white Dutch Reformed Church has not only provided a theological justification for this policy; it also worked out, in considerable detail, the policy itself. It was the white Dutch Reformed Church that, from 1932 on, sent delegation after delegation to the government to support proposals for racial legislation. It worked hard to devise practical policies of apartheid that could be implemented by the government, while formulating theological constructs to justify the policy. … It is no wonder that the Kerkbode, official mouthpiece of the white Dutch Reformed Church, wrote with pride in 1958: “As a church, we have always worked purposefully for the separation of the races. In this regard apartheid can rightfully be called a church policy.”
Included in Black and Reformed is a 1979 open letter to the then-South African Minister of Justice, in which Boesak writes, “I believe I have done nothing more than to place myself squarely within the Reformed tradition as that tradition has always understood sacred scripture on these matters.” (Re-reading Boesak on placing himself in the Reformed tradition reminded me of Kristin DuMez and Nicholas Wolterstorff in the Free to be Faithful conversation at Eastern Avenue Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on May 3, 2025, during which each affirmed their continued, grateful albeit critical, allegiance to the Reformed tradition). Boesak identifies the political consequence of his self-placement in the Reformed tradition by quoting John Calvin’s 1536 address to King Francis I of France that appears as the prologue to Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion: “For where the glory of God is not made the end of the government, it is not a legitimate sovereignty, but a usurpation.”
As Treurnicht does, Boesak relies on the neo-Calvinism of Abraham Kuyper, whom Boesak quotes from an address in 1891:
When rich and poor stand opposed to each other, Jesus never takes his place with the wealthier, but always stands with the poorer. … Both the Christ, and also just as much his disciples after him as the prophets before him, invariably took sides against those who were powerful and living in luxury, and for the suffering and the oppressed. … It can neither nor may ever be excused in us that, while our Father in heaven wills with divine kindness that an abundance of food comes forth from the ground, through our guilt this rich bounty should be divided so unequally that while one is surfeited with bread, another goes with an empty stomach to his pallet, and sometimes must even go without a pallet.
Together, the example of Andries Treurnicht and the counter-example of Allan Boesak show that the Reformed tradition that looks for inspiration to John Calvin and the neo-Calvinist sub-tradition that looks for further inspiration to Abraham Kuyper, admits to interpretations in support of both nationalism and anti-nationalism. This reality does not demand the abandonment of the tradition by its adherents. But it does demand, I believe, recentering the tradition on Jesus. In recentering the Reformed tradition thus, North American Christians have a ready example in the black Reformed church of South Africa.
Boesak writes that, “We confess that Jesus Christ embodies true divinity and true humanity. He was human as God intended humans to be. In him God was in the world. In him God was with humankind. In him our being ‘like God,’ of necessity, took a clear and distinct form.” This confession raises a question for Boesak: “What is the meaning of this confession for Blacks who are the oppressed of the world?” He articulates an answer to this question throughout his addresses, for example as follows:
For the black church, Jesus Christ is Lord. He is Lord over all of life. This confession must cling to at all costs. Our loyalty and obedience are to him alone. If the black church is to have any future at all, this is where we must be firm. Our allegiance is ultimately not to the laws of the state, or to the laws of self-preservation, but to the commands of the living God. Our loyalty is to Christ. Our criteria are the demands of his kingdom. We shall have to learn not to be dictated to by the demands of the status quo, however intimidating; or by the demands of any ideology, however tempting.
Boesak moved from confession to conviction:
It is my conviction that the Reformed tradition has a future in this country only if black Reformed Christians are willing to take it up, make it truly their own, and let this tradition once again become what it once was: a champion of the cause of the poor and the oppressed, clinging to the confession of the lordship of Christ and to the supremacy of the word of God … Beginning with our own South African situation, we should accept our special responsibility to salvage this tradition from the grip of the mighty and the powerful who have so shamelessly perverted it for their own ends and let it speak once again for God’s oppressed and suffering peoples.
What the task was for Black Reformed South Africans in the 1980s is no less the task for White Reformed North Americans in the 2020s: “to salvage this tradition from the grip of the mighty and the powerful who have so shamelessly perverted it for their own ends and let it speak once again for God’s oppressed and suffering peoples.”
In my next post, I will continue to learn from Allan Boesak about the salvaging of the Reformed tradition, starting with some of the most beloved words in the tradition, Question and Answer 1 of The Heidelberg Catechism.
If you would like to learn and discuss authoritarianism, resistance, and Christian nationalism in more depth, we invite you to relive ICS’s Summer Read (recorded on July 10, 8PM) with Kristin Kobes Du Mez and Bruce Berglund:
You might also wish to enrol in Bruce’s course in the fall: https://f2bf.icscanada.edu/#page-0