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Apartheid Is A Heresy
Edited by John W. DeGruchy and Charles Villa-Vicencio
Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1983. 184 pp. $5.95.

That "apartheid is a heresy" may not initially come as big news to North Americans, who have long been able to point a judgmental finger at practices thousands of miles from home; fearless spectators of a life and death struggle on another continent. But that the statement is being made within South Africa itself, and by South Africans-black and white, English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking, from a variety of denominations-is an important fact in the life not only of the South African but of the world church.

In an event with immense consequences for the church (an event not widely noticed at the time outside the Reformed and Presbyterian family), the World Alliance of Reformed Churches at its General Council meetings in Ottawa in 1982, formally defined apartheid as a heresy, stating that active justification of apartheid by certain reformed churches in South Africa constituted a status confessionis, a confessional situation in which the church had to draw clear lines between truth and error. Those who have observed the actions of the Alliance in the past know that it is not an outfit to move precipitously, so the decision can be seen as one gravely deliberated, in full light of the consequences (which are, among other things, that a number of member bodies have already left the Alliance).

This decision was not an "outside opinion" forced on the South

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African churches, but the result of considerable pressure at Ottawa and earlier by South African church leaders themselves, notably Allan Boesak, the energetic black South African who was also elected President of the Alliance at the Ottawa gathering.

The book is a series of reflections by South Africans themselves on the implications of the Ottawa decision for religious and civic life in their country. It should be of intense interest to readers elsewhere, for at least two reasons. First, it is a chronicle of the convictions of a brave group of individuals who are willing to put into print convictions that could result in their imprisonment or "banning," since they go contrary to governmental policy. Second, it canalso serve as a warm-up or preview of things to come elsewhere. The only honest way we can see South Africa is as a microcosm of our larger world, a microcosm in which the racial and political bigotry are more blatant, the restrictions more overt, and theintimidations more widespread, than on the rest of the planet. South Africans, in other words, are now fighting battles that the rest of us already face in subtle form and may soon face in more obvious form, not only in relation to racism but also in relation to the repressive power of a state that will not brook criticism or challenge. Issues that seem reassuringly "far away," turn out, as readers of this volume will discover, to be alarmingly close to home as well, and a tu quoque message is not the least of the volume's contributions to our understanding.

The essays are of uniformly high quality, and of special interest to North American readers will be Allan Boesak's address at the Ottawa conference, David Bosch's treatment of background issues, John DeGruchy's "Towards a Confessing Church" (which probes parallels between Hitler's Germany and South Africa today), and Douglas Bax's careful assessment from a biblical perspective of a South African church document seeking to make a scriptural case for apartheid. It. is a sign of the healthy internal critique going on that a separate essay is devoted to racism in the English-speaking churches, who have, comparatively speaking, a less tarnished track record than their Reformed Afrikaan-speaking counterparts, who usually receive the brunt of the criticism. Other essays give further history and interpretation. One of the most valuable assets of the book is a large collection of relevant church documents on apartheid, from the South African Catholic bishops statement in 1957 up to the present. Much of the internal struggle and progress in the life of the churches can be intuited by reading these in chronological order.

South Africa is a tragic land and there is yet more tragedy to come. Whatever hope there is can be represented by the existence of volumes such as this one, the voices and lives that lie behind it, and the one to whom they have chosen to dedicate it, the Rev. Beyers Naudé, a Dutch Reformed Church leader who has been under house arrest for more than six years. In the ultimate victory of decency and right, such persons,

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along with thousands of equally brave but nameless ones, will be vindicated.

Robert McAfee Brown
Pacific School of Religion
Berkeley, California