Does Our Strength Lie in Isolation?

When I started attending a Christian Reformed church in 1973, my only interest in the church was it had a basketball court inside the building. Over time, I found the pastors were gracious and kind. The interracial congregation felt its mission was that all African American lives would flourish on the west side of Chicago.

My only interest in the church was it had a basketball court inside the building.

Thanks to that experience, I joined a Reformed Church in 1981. My call into pastoral ministry was confirmed through this church. Seven years later, I would graduate from Calvin Theological Seminary. In 1993, I became a Christian Reformed pastor. I was launched into pastoral ministry with thirst for learning and applying my additional skills for use in my denomination.  

I stumbled upon a history book of my denomination in 2016. I love history. I read the book to gain more knowledge about the family I joined in 1981.  

My call into pastoral ministry was confirmed through this church.

But my world was shaken when the author wrote “our strength lies in isolation” (Marian Schoolland, Children of the Reformation, 1958, p. 84). The quote caused me to question the theological underpinnings of the faith I loved and cherished. It appeared to me that sociology had trumped theology. Or that theology and sociology were two sides of the same coin that explained what I experienced in many churches, Christian schools, and denominational meetings.    

I began to ask searing questions about my denomination’s theology in history. Why did Reformed theology became the theological basis for apartheid in South Africa? Who were the leading theologians? Did theology shape my church’s sociology of isolation? It crossed my mind that the Reformed theology of my church might be racist. I needed to investigate.

But my world was shaken when the author wrote “our strength lies in isolation.”

One of the theologians I read in seminary was the Dutch theologian and former prime minister of the Netherlands in the 19th century, Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper sought a progressive approach to culture-making in the United States and Canada. He believed Christians should be involved in all areas of public and private life. He declared, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, mine!” (James Bratt, Abraham Kuyper, p.195) These are profound words of a robust theological vision that seeks to image Christ in economics, art, politics, and beyond.

But this laudable side of Kuyper’s vision concealed a dark secret. He had a racist disposition and it informed his theology. Kuyper biographer James Bratt wrote, “Kuyper’s views were one with racist thinking everywhere from the American South to Nazi Germany” (Bratt, p.293).

Why did Reformed theology became the theological basis for apartheid in South Africa?

“Kuyper [was] a man who recorded the loftiest of affirmations about God's delight in pluriformity and a gloriously unified, multiethnic human destiny, but [who] says little about race that is not deeply troubling,” write Jeff Liou and David Robinson.

Kuyper saw white people as the antidote that improved nations of darker hues. He believed the merging of white and black blood would improve the status of black people. However, he drew the line with any co-mingling with Dutch people. He felt the racial mixing ban was necessary to keep Dutch whites in South Africa “as their highest mark of morality and only hope for the future” (Ibid, p.293)

Kuyper saw white people as the antidote that improved nations of darker hues.

Kuyper’s theology played a major role in providing the theological basis for apartheid in South Africa. To build the case for apartheid as the law of the land, the National Party in 1914 promoted a movement by white Afrikaners for a separate land where their language, identity, and religion could be practiced without any interference. Their unifying slogan was, hauntingly, almost identical to Schoolland’s proud declaration: “Isolation is strength” (John de Gruchy, The Church Struggle in South Africa, p. 29).

A friend of mine sent me a photo of a banner from the Apartheid Museum in South Africa. The banner read, “Some Afrikaner theologians believed that every volk (nation) had its own destiny and that racial and ethnic separation was supported by the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. (This) idea was influenced by Dutch politician and theologian Abraham Kuyper, who promoted rigid separation of different groups…Some historians believe Kuyper’s notion was the core idea of apartheid.” The National Party took power in 1948 and made apartheid official until 1994.

A friend of mine sent me a photo of a banner from the Apartheid Museum in South Africa.

Kuyper’s theological vision informed the means of sociological isolation as the way to remain untarnished by darker hued people like me. Racist theology was at work among the Afrikaners to build a separate nation based on Kuyper’s own theologizing.

Was this aspect of Kuyper’s vision transported to the United States? I wondered how it played out in my own denomination. Was racial and cultural isolation as a strategy against racial “pollution” successful?

The late Calvin Theological Seminary president and church historian John Kromminga wrote a reflective book on his Dutch Calvinist subculture in the American context. Streams of people made their way to the United States for religious freedom. Kromminga admitted that his denomination “tried the method of isolation to defend itself” (In The Mirror, p. 19).

Kromminga admitted that his denomination “tried the method of isolation to defend itself.”

This isolation was its response to American culture, but it could be argued that also meant racial groups as well. Kromminga revealed that his church had a defensive posture and attitude as an immigrant people. Isolation was a sociological answer to its theological vision that hampered its witness in big cities such Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Their Reformed theological vision birthed isolation. Kromminga said, “the idea that the church can preserve itself by strict concern for itself” describes the isolation mentality at its core.

Now, it could be argued that this is all distant history, that Reformed churches that espoused these segregationist views were a product of their times, nothing more. How does this thinking show up in our own times? Does it?

Calvin College sociologist Mark Mulder conducted a study of Reformed churches on Chicago’s south side. He argued that their theological vision informed their sociological action of mobility to recapture isolation. Their neighborhoods of Englewood and Roseland felt threatened by the breakdown of  segregation of the races. The Reformed churches left the neighborhoods quickly for the suburbs in a matter of a few years in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s as African Americans came up from the American South, including my own family.

Their neighborhoods felt threatened by the breakdown of segregation of the races.

The retreat for isolation was the default for my Dutch brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, the very churches that were supposed to be salt and light in those neighborhoods did not have a spacious theology for the flourishing of those who are the “other.”

He wrote, “the significance of racial segregation (was) the complicity of churches….In many cases, churches not only failed to inhibit white flight but actually became co-conspirators and accomplices in the action” (Shades of White Flight, p. 3). In other words, yet again, isolation was their strength.

In other words, yet again, isolation was their strength.

Mulder further stated, “they were driven by fear of the other….Insularity became the best means of protection against the American culture….Their history and culture predisposed them to isolation and mobility” (Ibid, p.31). The well-defined boundaries of neighborhoods endangered their well-defined theological vision. This vision could not make room for racial differences or receive with thanksgiving new gifts of the Spirit from their new neighbors. A theology of fear drove them more than a theology of hope and acceptance.    

Mulder’s parting shot in the book is worth stating. He remarked, “The strength of those congregations as institutions led to (their) weakness in the potential for cross-racial relationships with newly arrived African Americans and contributed to the economic decline of Englewood and Roseland” (Mulder, p. 148). In other words, fear of and isolation from African Americans contributed to problems of decay, when a different theological vision could have resulted more positively. What if those same churches had stayed and worked together for racial harmony?  

What if those same churches had stayed and worked together for racial harmony?  

Back to the original question: is Reformed theology racist? Yes, some of what has been passed down to us came with the rot of racism. The theological vision of Kuyper was passed down to Dutch immigrants who stepped onto the shores of the United States, well-versed in his ideas. The Reformed church’s theological characteristics of separation, insularity, and mobility had sociological implications: isolation was seen as a strength. This vision contributed to fearing that close proximity to people of color was bad, fostering paternalistic attitudes, and ignoring God’s dream of diversity for His church as a bold witness to the world.     

It will take deep, prayerful and intentional examination of the past to build a new vision of courageous reconciliation for the present future. On July 14, 1968, a day of prayer and forgiveness was declared by CRC Synod of 1968.

On July 14, 1968, a day of prayer and forgiveness was declared by CRC Synod.

This July 14, I call my brothers and sisters again to repentance, prayer, and action against racism in all of its forms. My colleague Rebecca Warren will write the next piece in this mini-series, focusing on the impacts of this segregationist thinking in Reformed churches today.

[Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash]