Zionist origins in South Africa

The Daily Maverick recently published an interesting article about Wakkerstroom, the birthplace of Zionist Christianity in South Africa -- if you are not sure about the difference between Zionist Christianity and Christian Zionism, see here.

The Daily Maverick article, with the title Letter from Mpumalanga: Listening to history’s whispers by the river of enlightenment, has some interesting pictures of the places where Zionist Christianity started in South Africa at the turn of the 20th century. It has since split into numerous different denominations, the largest of which, the Zion Christian Church, is the biggest single denomination in the country.

Around 1900, a Dutch Reformed missionary living in Wakkerstroom, Pieter Le Roux, became interested in the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in Zion, Illinois. Zion was a utopian community dedicated to two chief propositions, both radical in their time: one, that doctors were unnecessary because Jesus could heal all ailments; and two, that all races were equal in the eyes of God.

Both propositions resonated with Le Roux, who spoke fluent Zulu and seems to have had unusually egalitarian ease with black Africans in that era. Le Roux tried to resign from the Dutch Reformed church, but they asked him to delay his departure until after the Anglo-Boer war.

The article is misleading in some respects -- first, while the church in Wakkerstroom was the first Zionist church in South Africa, it was not the first African independent church (AIC). There were several earlier AICs, such as the Ethiopian Church which started in Marabastad, Pretoria, about ten years earlier, and a movement started by Nehmiah Tile even earlier than that in the Eastern Cape. Secondly, the early history of Zionism has been fairly well documented in numerous books, including some by my erstwhile colleague Allan Anderson -- see, for example: Zion and Pentecost, 

 What is significant in this article, though, is the description of the physical sites of early Zionist history, which should surely be declared historical monuments, and the Daily Maverick article is illustrated with some interesting photos of these.

There is also something that puzzles me, and I hope someone familiar with the sources of early Zionist history will be able to enlighten me. This article, and most of the books I have read on the topic, say that the first Zionists were baptised in the river that runs through Wakkerstroom -- the eponymous wakker stroom (wakeful or lively stream). But some mention the Slang River, which is over the mountains, and indeed, in those early days over the border in a different country, the then Natal Colony. The photo in the article clearly shows the same bridge in Wakkerstroom as appears in the old photo, So I wonder about the source of the mention of the Slang River, as something in the early history of Zionism that needs to be clarified. Did Le Roux and his flock flee across the mountains to Natal at some point -- and if so when, and for what reason? I am curious, partly because I was at one time quite familiar with Groenvlei in the Slang River valley and I used to visit the Anglican church there once a month for services, but that's another story, which you can read about here, if you are curious.

Anyway, I was pleased to see this article, and to see that some are beginning to take an interest in preserving the history of one of the most significant movements in South African Church history, and from which the largest group of Christians in South Africa spring. 

Religious symbols as aid to developing local theology

Joey Dela Paz writes (Missions and Theology: Religious symbols as aid to developing local theology)

I’m reading illiam Dyrness’ book entitle Invitation to Cross-Cultural Theology. Here, Dyrness did five case studies of the way ordinary Christians, in a variety of settings, think about and live out their Christian faith. He points out that Academic theology have a lot to learn about theologies of the people that are done outside the bounds of Western academic setting and from written sources.

That is one of the reasons why I find the African Independent Churches (AICs) so interesting, especially the Zionists. One of the things that I have been thinking about recently, because of a book I am working on, is the use of holy water in healing.

Martin West, in his book Bishops and prophets in a black city (Cape Town, David Philip, 1975), writes:

The administering of holy water appears to be fairly uniform. Sufficient water (either from tap water or a spring) is put in a large container and then prayed for by a prophet, or by all the prophets and other senior officials of the church. In some cases the blessing of water may include stirring with a holy stick. The water is then given to the congregation members to drink, usually in small glasses, at a particular time in the service. In the Full Gospel church, for example, drinking of holy water often takes place at the same time as members are treated at the Holy Place. During the dancing they may come to the table which has the holy water on it, be given a glass to drink, and then receive a blessing and laying on of hands by a prophet. This is a rather informal approach, but in other churches the drinking of holy water may be much more formal.

What strikes me about this is that the description is almost identical with the celebration of the Great Blessing of the Waters that takes place in Orthodox Churches at Theophany (Epiphany). When the water has been blessed, members of the congregation come forward, and are sprinkled with holy water (the priest dips a sprig of basil into the vessel containing it, and uses that to sprinkle it) while drinking the water from glasses. At the end of the service members of the congregation bring bottles and other containers to take the holy water to their homes (usually the plastic bottles in which one buys bottled water in shops). They drink this when they feel ill, or use it for sprinkling it on objects they want to bless, or if somethuing bad has happened.

I very much doubt that the Zionists learned to do this from the Orthodox Church (which has done it for centuries), and yet the fact that the ceremonies are almost identical seems to point to something in human nature that needs to worship in this way, or the Zionists rediscovering something that their Protestant predecessors had dropped -- premodern religion emerging from the veneer of modernity, perhaps?

The AICs usually have very little "systematic theology", and missiologists have referred to the "enacted theology" of the AICs. Actually something similar happens when Western theologians write about Orthodox theology. They usually base what they write on written works by Orthodox Christians, but Orthodoxy does not have a systematic theology, but rather a holistic theology. Written theology must be read in conjunction with the enacted theology, and cannot be understood apart from the Divine Liturgy and the other services of the church. Orthodoxy cannot be understood apart from orthopraxy.

I referred to something similar in relation to holy water in an article Sundkler deconstructed: Bethesda AICs and syncretism, which I also cited in the December synchoblog on syncretism.