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Scottish Religious Cultures: Historical Perspectives

The Scots AfrikanersIdentity Politics and Intertwined Religious Cultures in Southern and Central Africa

By Retief Müller

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£100.00

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About this book

One of the International Bulletin of Mission Research’s Ten Outstanding Books in Mission Studies, Intercultural Theology, and World Christianity for 2021 Reveals Scots influence on church and society in South Africa
  • Contributes to academic discourse on the historical relationship between mission, empire and colonialism
  • Sheds light on the relationships between religion, nationalism, and ethnicity
  • Focuses on Scottish–Afrikaner entanglements and tensions over time to create an intermeshed historical narrative of two diverse cultures

Drawing primarily on Dutch and Afrikaans archival sources including the Dutch Reformed Church Archive and private collections this book presents a trans-generational narrative of the influence and role played by diasporic Scots and their descendants in the religious and political lives of Dutch/ Afrikaner people in British colonial southern Africa. It demonstrates how this Scottish religious culture helped to develop a complicated counter-narrative to what would become the mainstream discourse of Afrikaner Christian nationalism in the early 20th century. The reader can expect new perspectives on the ways in which the historical changeover from British Imperial rule to apartheid South Africa was both contradicted, but also in often paradoxical ways facilitated, by the influence and legacies of Scottish religious emissaries.

Reviews

In The Scots Afrikaners, Müller examines the impact of diasporic Scots and their descendants on the religious and political lives of Afrikaner people in British colonial South Africa from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. [...] Recommended.
superbly researched book [...] a substantial contribution to the history of South African missions and to South African historiography
The book is excellently researched from archival and published sources, and written in a very readable style. [...] valuable reading for scholars and academics in South African history, as well as for the interested reader.
This book reveals a welcome and lesser known aspect of Dutch Reformed Church history in South Africa, which contributed a significant stimulus to its historical development through Scots missionary and evangelical identity, grounded in a belief in the possibility of redemption which superceded ethnicity as it mutated into a counter-narrative to apartheid.
Table of contents

Chapter 1. Introduction: Scots Influence on the Dutch Reformed People of South Africa Chapter 2. Scots in South African Dutch Pulpits in the early to middle 19th century Chapter 3. Scottish ministers, evangelical revival, and church based ‘apartheid’? Chapter 4. The Scottish (and American) Foundations of a trans-frontier Afrikaner missionary enterpriseChapter 5. The South African War (1899-1902) and the Scots Afrikaners Chapter 6. Other(ing) Identity Formations: from mission field ecumenism to home church controversyChapter 7. Afrikaner Volkskerk ideologues and the Scots Afrikaners Chapter 8. Conclusion: The Scottish legacy in Afrikaner religiosity reassessed Notes, References

About the author

Retief Müller

Dr. Retief Müller Director of the Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity at Calvin University. He is also a research fellow at Stellenbosch University’s discipline group of systematic theology and ecclesiology. Recently awarded a major research grant in this capacity by Templeton Religion Trust for a project focusing on African theology, Müller has published widely on southern and central African religious history and theology, e.g. African Pilgrimage: Ritual Travel in South Africa’s Christianity of Zion (Ashgate, 2011). His previous academic appointment was as Associate Professor of Church History at Stellenbosch University, where he continues to serve in the capacity of research associate.

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