In South Africa, the apologies are not over

Apartheid may be gone, but its legacy persists, even among Christians

John Scheepers, former director of the Isiphambano Centre for Biblical Justice, teaching participants in a study cohort.

One of the largest collective Christian apologies in recent history took place 30 years ago after South Africa’s system of strict racial apartheid, constructed and sustained largely by white Christians, was dismantled.

John Scheepers, adjunct faculty member at Cape Town Baptist Seminary, grew up as a white Christian dissenter under apartheid. As a teenager in the 1980s, he attended interracial youth camps, living alongside people of color who were not allowed to live in his home neighborhood. “I latched on to people who became my role models and friends, even though they were not white,” Scheepers recalled. “It took me a while to realize how abnormal that experience was.”

During his 10 years as founding director of the Isiphambano Centre for Biblical Justice, Scheepers advocated for “cross-centered justice in the South African context.” The center offered study cohorts, seminars, podcasts, and resources on justice issues and gave presentations at churches and organizations across South Africa.

One of the main obstacles Scheepers faced was a widespread insistence in the white South African church that “we don’t do politics.” Scheepers suggests that the actual meaning of that phrase was “we don’t do racial justice politics,” since he found the church quite willing to speak up on other political issues such as pornography and same-sex marriage.

Scheepers’s lessons from nearly 30 years of engagement with justice issues in South Africa provide valuable lessons for Christians seeking to demonstrate God’s concern for all people, especially the poor, in any culture.

Q&A with John Scheepers

You’ve been concerned about racial and social justice for a long time, but you made a deeper commitment in 2014, 20 years after the end of apartheid. What drew you to this calling at that time?

In 1994, apartheid was officially abolished and we had our first democratic elections. Many of my black friends could now go to universities, get jobs, and live in areas they were previously excluded from. Many of us believed that access was all they needed.

In 2015, there was disruptions at universities due to the “Fees Must Fall” movement [in opposition to increases in student fees]. This showed me that access is not enough. Education is crucial for economic uplift, but poorer students were feeling excluded due to their inability to pay the exorbitant fees. Many of them were working multiple jobs and going hungry. Their ability to study was suffering. They had access, but the system was still stacked against them.

I talked with many students around this time. Many black students felt unwelcome in or even chased out of the churches they were attending, which said they would not get involved. When I heard the excuses given, I realized that these were the same excuses given for not getting involved with apartheid. My decision to found the Isiphambano Centre grew out of that experience.

How did your center function and whom did it reach?

I was involved in a quite conservative evangelical tradition at the time. As I engaged in conversations around racial justice, it struck me that no one from my camp was there. I wanted to bring them into the conversation, even if they might disagree.

We built a fairly decent team of part-time staff and volunteers. Our events and training sessions reached a lot of people who had felt they had to choose between Jesus and pursuing justice. Many regarded us as pioneering something new, but honestly we were learning just as much as everyone else. At best you could say we were just farther down the road than most churches, which itself was an indictment of the church in general.

We wanted to target pastors and church leaders, but God had other plans. It was potentially very costly for church leaders to connect with us, because they would risk losing people from their churches or being sanctioned by higher-level leaders in their denomination. Instead, we reached many grassroots Christians who felt alone, wondering if they could be Christians and still go to a protest.

These individuals knew something was lacking in their church’s theology, and we were able to help them think through things historically and theologically. People here generally don’t know their history—the apartheid government made sure of that. We helped people know their story, how we got to this point, how to think about reconciliation, and how to deal with the legacy of colonialism and apartheid.

How would you characterize the attitudes of white conservative Christians in South Africa today?

Many South African white people, whether Christians or not, do not realize how much we have benefited from apartheid, or the extent of damage caused in African people’s lives. Many white working-class people say, “We weren’t given anything either; we had to work for it.” And that’s true. I come from a working-class background myself. But that doesn’t compare to the black mother who has to get up at 3:00 a.m. and take two taxis to her job as a servant in a white neighborhood, work all day, take two taxis back home, and barely have time with her own children. She is working harder than us and gaining little benefit from her labor. Most whites in South Africa still don’t see that.

Apartheid was justified as a Christian system; it was a doctrine before it was ever a law. Under apartheid, shops were closed on Sundays, there was no legal pornography anywhere in the country, movies were controlled, there were strict laws regarding alcohol, and abortion was outlawed. Personal morality was preserved as the tip of a horrific iceberg, the unseen mass of which was a horrific system of racial oppression and injustice. As a result, many more privileged South African Christians say things were better in the old days. They are not dealing with the problem that the overwhelming majority of black people still live in poverty. In fact, South Africa has the worst wealth gap between rich and poor in the world.

In my home country, the US, many young people, especially those raised as evangelicals, have left the church over cultural and political issues. Why are you still committed to the church?

I have sympathy for the people who choose to walk away. I find it hard to argue with them. I founded Isiphambano because matters of justice and inequality are the most important apologetics issues in South Africa today. White churches may discuss things like how the Bible aligns with science, but in black churches, the main questions are “Does God care about me?” and “Is Christianity just a white people’s religion?”—which is what black radicals often claim.

Even when I would speak in racially integrated churches (where the senior pastor was always white), often a black pastor or leader would come to me privately, feeling broken, and tell me, White people say they want to change, but they are not listening and very little has changed. I would like to leave this job, but I need to provide for my family.”

In South Africa, when we disagree with someone, we tend to disengage. We need to read the Bible and formulate our theology in community with people who are different from us, sharing Jesus’ concern for the marginalized. If the rich and powerful are benefiting from your theology, that’s a problem.

What steps do you recommend for people who want to make a stronger impact as Christians concerned for justice and reconciliation?

For real change to happen, there has to be a downward shift of power. As white people, we have to admit that we have most of the power and be willing to give that up. We have to learn to listen to and be led by people who we’ve been taught are not competent to lead us.

As Christians, we follow a person who had all the power and privilege in the world and emptied himself of it. [Scheepers is alluding here to Jesus’ kenosis, or emptying of himself, as described in Philippians 2:5.] Are we willing to empty ourselves? That takes humility, courage, and a willingness to listen even when we think we are right, because maybe we are not.

Personal reconciliation is important, but that is the beginning, not the end. Beyond dealing with personal racism, we have to recognize that there is something bigger—that social structures also contribute to systematic oppression that benefits and enriches some at the expense of others.