Racial Integration In The Church Of Apartheid

Racial Integration in the Church of Apartheid relates the struggle of South Africa’s Reformed churches to overcome their apartheid past and merge into one multiracial church. It uncovers the potential of faith communities and their limits in untangling religious-nationalist affiliations.

Report commenting on the implications of Apartheid legislation for the Protestant Church in South Africa R and on racial discrimination within the Church - includes recommendations to Church authorities for the social integration of Africans, and explains Christian doctrine with regard to basic human rights.

Inverting the Norm describes how a few Christian congregations in apartheid South Africa achieved racial integration despite the state's legal enforcement of segregation. The book analyzes how this paradoxical racial integration, alongside state segregation, relates to historical shifts in global and national norms.

An examination of the role played by civil society in the legitimisation of South Africa's apartheid regime and its racial policy. This book focuses on the interaction of dominant groups within the Dutch Reformed Church and the South African state over the development of race policy within the broader context of state-civil society relations. This allows a theoretical examination and typology of the variety of state-civil society relations. Additionally, the particular case study demonstrates that civil society's existence in and authoritarian situations can deter the establishment of democracy when components of civil society identify themselves with exclusive, ethnic interests.