Pacifism and Pentecostals in South Africa

A new hermeneutic for nonviolence

Marius Nel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429995927
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Religión, política y estado

Most of the early twentieth-century Pentecostal denominations were peace churches that encouraged a stance of conscientious objection. However, since the Second World War Pentecostals have largely abandoned their pacifist viewpoint as they have taken on a more literal Biblical hermeneutic from their interaction with Evangelical denominations. This book traces the history of nonviolence in Pentecostalism and suggests that a new hermeneutic of the Bible is needed by today's Pentecostals in order for them to rediscover their pacifist roots and effect positive social change.

The book focuses on how Pentecostalism has manifested in South Africa during the twentieth century. Much of the available academic literature on hermeneutics and exegesis in the field of Pentecostal Studies is of an American or British-European origin. This book redresses this imbalance by exploring how the Bible has been used amongst African Pentecostals to teach on the apparent paradox of a simultaneously wrathful and loving God. It then goes onto suggest that how the Bible is read directly affects how Pentecostals view their role as potential reformers of society. So, it must be engaged seriously and thoughtfully.

By bringing Pentecostalism's function in South African society to the fore, this book adds a fresh perspective on the issue of pacifism in world Christianity. As such it will be of great use to scholars of Pentecostal Studies, Theology, and Religion and Violence as well as those working in African Studies.

1 Church and war

A change in hermeneutical stance among Pentecostals

Introduction¹

For the first forty years of its existence, Pentecostalism was mostly a pacifist movement proclaiming that disciples of Christ should support nonviolence and nonretaliation. Then it changed its stance, in many instances without officially taking a decision on formal platforms, due to the changes that occurred when its members became socially and economically mobile and the movement strove to be accepted in society. These changes were, however, essentially due to a change in its hermeneutical viewpoint. After the 1970s, several theologians within the Pentecostal movement formulated a hermeneutic that concurred to a large degree with the way early Pentecostals viewed and interpreted the Bible, leading inter alia to Pentecostals’ rethinking their nonpacifist stance. In the nuclear age such a reconsideration has become imperative. It is argued that the movement should change its ethical stance on and discourse about war and violence due to its renewed hermeneutical viewpoint, making the church more relevant in a society where most Christians seemingly accept the Augustinian just war doctrine.

A case study

Christians can in broad terms accept one of three basic positions regarding the believer’s involvement in war and military service: activism, the just war view or pacifism (Clarke & Rakestraw 1996:489–494). Activism holds that Christians are to support a military effort whenever their country declares war because governments are ordained by God and Scripture (e.g., Rom 13:1–7; 1 Pet 2:13–14) tells Christians to submit to their political leaders. Because citizens do not have access to the classified information available to political leaders, they should trust politicians’ judgment that a war declared by the state is necessary. Few Christians would probably admit that they hold the activist view in theory, although a great many follow it in practice.

A second option is the just war position or selectivism that holds that Christians may support and fight in some wars, specifically those waged for a morally defensible cause (cf. chapter 5). The theory distinguishes between the conditions necessary for declaring war in the first place (jus ad bellum) and the guidelines to be followed once a war is underway (jus in bello). It allows in the viewpoint of some for a preventative war, when an enemy nation is preparing to attack, as well as for a crusade when conditions within another nation are intolerably evil. Christians who support the just war perspective follow several lines of argument. One involves biblical evidence that uses the description in the Mosaic law and the commands to wage wars against the enemies of the elect people. A second line of argument is based on the intuitive sense of justice within most people. A third line of argument is that the just war theory provides a moral basis for foreign policy, where Christians should act as salt and light in the national life of their society.

Another position regarding the believer’s reaction to war is pacifism and nonviolent resistance.² Defenders argue that any war in all circumstances violates many of the criteria of the just war theory. Christian pacifists ground their view on several convictions. One is the argument that Jesus Christ lived nonviolently even when he had just cause for violence. He loved and died for his enemies without retaliation (Matt 5:38–48; Luke 6:27–36). And Christians are exhorted to obey Christ’s example and teachings and to imitate Christ in his nonviolent life (1 Pet 2:18–23). The implication is that war is untenable for them. The way the world tries to solve conflicts differs radically from the way disciples of Christ do it. The Christian glories in the foolishness of the cross and the nonviolent advancement of God’s kingdom (Rom 12:19–21). Christians do not have a duty to make history come out all right; that is God’s business. Their duty is to obey Christ. A second conviction is concerned with the sacredness of all life. Since human life is a sacred gift from God, no one has the right to end another’s life. Since Christ died for all people, Christians cannot kill them and rob them of an opportunity to receive the gift of eternal life in Christ. And when Christians kill other Christians in a war, they kill their own brothers and sisters. A third conviction supporting pacifism is the concept of redemptive witness. The witness of nonviolent Christians over the centuries won many unbelievers to Christ. Many of these witnesses paid the highest price for their courageous testimony. Because they lived according to the principles found in the Sermon on the Mount, they were willing to die for their faith in a nonretaliatory fashion.

Pacifism comes in different degrees (Clarke & Rakestraw 1996:492), representing a continuum of perspectives ranging from the most deontological view on the one end to the most consequentialist view on the other. Deontological positions emphasise the wrongness of war in principle because it violates the fundamental biblical law against killing and the injunction to love all people, including enemies, while the duty of Christians is described as imitation of Christ, also in his nonresistance unto death. Consequentialist or teleological positions focus on the results of war more than on principles and norms. Because of the consequences of war in the form of death, disablement, poverty and hatred between subsequent generations, some pacifists reject war even though they might allow it in principle. One instance is nuclear pacifism that justifies (some form of) conventional warfare, but holds that the use of strategic nuclear weapons is to be ruled out because of its disastrous results. Some nuclear pacifists oppose even the possession of nuclear weapons by states because of the potential and temptation that it might be used in certain circumstances. A nuclear pacifist such as John R.W. Stott allows the use of tactical nuclear weapons when no other recourse is possible.

The early Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa (AFM), one of the classical Pentecostal denominations in Southern Africa, did not at first find it necessary to take a stand about Christians’ participation in the armed forces and war.³ Everybody implicitly accepted that Pentecostal Christians do not participate in any violence, including war operations.⁴ However, in 1914 the then (first South African) president of the church, Pieter Louis le Roux, took the initiative and requested the Executive Council to discuss the issue and formulate a viewpoint. Their decision was communicated in a letter to individual churches and members and explained that the AFM objected to Christians’ participation in war efforts against the enemies of the state. Members of the AFM who were called up for military service were encouraged to serve in a nonfighting capacity and only if it were absolutely necessary (Burger 1987:269). At the same meeting, the Executive Council decided to make representations to the Minister of Defence requesting exemption from military service for members of the AFM (Minutes of the Executive Council, 19 August 1914). The Department of Defence was sympathetic toward the church’s request, allowing members with scruples to receive exemption from military service provided they applied in the prescribed way.

In 1923, the Executive Council again discussed the issue of warfare and made representations to the Department of Defence that since their acceptance of Scripture did not permit them to take up arms they asked that the clause in the previous Defence Act that exempted conscientious objectors from carrying arms be included in the present new Law that was then in the process of being considered by Parliament. The church acknowledged its obligations to assist in bearing the burden of the state in times of war and did not object to do so, but then in a noncombatant capacity, requiring also exemption for the church’s young members to undergo military training (Minutes of the Executive Council, 21 December 1923; cf. Burger 1987:270). The Department reacted by providing the church with the declaration that assures that exemption would be granted to members although they are required to register with the Department, and that the new Law would contain the exemption clause.

By 1932, the Department of Defence had received so many applications for exemption that it decreed that members of churches applying would be required to present proof if they were previously members of another denomination that did not support exemption (Burger 1987:270).

By 1938, it was clear that a world war was imminent and the (white) AFM again discussed its stance. The AFM agreed in its viewpoint with the Assemblies of God in the United States⁵ that although believers should act in accordance with their own conscience, the AFM believed the Bible prohibits the shedding of blood while at the same time it recognised that the government is of divine origins, giving its assurance that it would support the government as far as the Word of God allows it (Dempster 2001:140). When war broke out in 1939, young members were encouraged to participate in the war effort but only in a noncombatant capacity by applying for nonfighting privileges (Burger 1987:271).

Shuman (1996:77–78) argues that although the official resolution of the Assemblies of God of April 1917 met the War Department’s requirement by presenting the Assemblies of God as an unequivocally pacifist community with significant theological convictions in that direction, there existed from the outset two closely related strands of thought which mitigated this presentation. These ways of thinking are identifiable as the basis for the ultimate abandonment of pacifism among Pentecostals. The first is the presence of a certain amount of dissenting rhetoric among some Assemblies of God constituents. Most of this dissension took the form of concerns that the resolution was worded in such a way as to lead Pentecostals to engage in blatant expressions of disloyalty to the US government.

The second strand of thought that mitigated the denomination’s nonviolent witness, according to Shuman (1996:78), was one which presence was acknowledged even before the War Department’s final approval of the pacifist resolution. In the 19 May 1917 issue of the Assemblies of God’s official publication, The Weekly Evangel, an article intended to explicate the recently drafted resolution appeared that explained that although the resolution’s purpose was ‘to interpret as clearly as possible what the Scriptures teach on the subject’, adherence to it would be voluntary rather than obligatory. Concerning the adherence of church members to the position voiced by the resolution, the article noted that it is not intended to hinder anyone from taking up arms who may feel free to do so, ‘but we hope to secure the privilege of exemption from such military service as will necessitate the taking of life for all who are real conscientious objectors and who are associated with the General Council’ (The Weekly Evangel, 19 May 1917:8, as quoted in Shuman 1996:78). Shuman (1996:78) correctly perceives that what is more remarkable about each of these views is that they are a subtle representation of the very sort of establishmentarian Christianity that Pentecostalism’s restorationist heritage led it to repudiate. Rather than seeing the state as being an agency of the world whose purposes were ultimately at odds with those of the kingdom of God, as did the restorationists of old, this more established way of thinking tended to view and evaluate the state as an agent whose power could be employed in the service of the kingdom of God. The implication is that the state is at the very least the necessary establisher and protector of a cluster of personal and institutional freedoms which are necessary for the good of the church.

The church through the ages succumbed to the temptation toward accommodation, a tendency that occurred in even the most radically anti-establishment churches. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is found in the evolution of ethics as a discrete discourse with little attachment to specific theological convictions. All people, including the unregenerated, simply ‘know’ right from wrong as a function of their being human. ‘The realm of the social is accordingly the one where the dynamics of accommodation and the tendencies to sell out are the strongest, as the church lives at the interface with the world of unbelief, its powers and pressures’ (Yoder 1984:37). The church’s legitimation of war reversed the view of Christians on the morality of violence in the public realm and represented a significant departure from the primitive Church’s normative practices. Now the privileged place of the enemy was rejected as the test of whether one loves one’s neighbour. The cross and the life of Jesus Christ as the way of dealing with conflict was rejected as a norm and civil government was assigned a role in carrying out God’s will that is quite incompatible with the fruit of the progressive relativisation of kingship that characterised Judaism (Yoder 1984:75). That the church accepted church violence is almost certainly related to the fact that during the time of this acceptance the church had gradually come to enjoy a place of privilege in the Roman Empire. When the leader of a government becomes Christian, Yoder (1984:82) argues, the assumption tends to be that in order to continue being a sovereign, he needs to continue to act as the (non-Christian) sovereign ‘naturally’ acts, thereby creating some tension with what the later prophets and Jesus taught about domination, wealth, and violence. This ‘Constantinian accommodation’ had its origins not in newly developed theological positions, but in the perceived need to create a space for the church to occupy a position of relative power and mutual affirmation with regard to the civil authorities. Ironically this is the same factor that caused most of the Pentecostals in the 1940s to change their stance about war and violence, in order to be accepted by the community and government.

The fourth-century church experienced several significant theological shifts, in the first place toward a new ecclesiology and a new eschatology (Yoder 1984:82). In the New Testament church, prior to its being accepted as the state religion of Rome, the Christian community was an empirical entity, a visible, confessing gathering whose members were subject to active opposition by the state with some members paying the highest price for their faith. With the establishment of Christianity, however, this situation was reversed. There were suddenly various good reasons to be a member of the church, and it became necessary to postulate the existence of an ‘invisible’ church, operating within the confines of the larger ‘visible’ one and limiting the ‘church’ to those who remained faithful disciples of Christ. The second of these theological transitions was a changed view of history and the way changes within history were regarded. Now the established powers of civil government became the main bearers of the historical movement. A fact of history is that a church enjoying a position of favour with the government tends to adopt that government’s ‘eulogistic’ view of history whereby it is assumed that one reads history from the perspective of the winners. When the relative power of the existing regime increases, it is seen by the established church as a sign of God’s blessing. Ultimate standards of right and wrong are determined by what a ruler chooses. Yoder (1984:142) then argues that American patriotism remains highly religious.⁶ For nearly two centuries, in fact, the language of American public discourse was not only religious, not only Christian, but specifically Protestant. Moral identification of church with nation remains despite institutional separation.⁷

In the early Pentecostal movement, the adoption of the resolution on pacifism began not with a statement about the evils of war but about the urgent mission of the fellowship to reach the world with the gospel before the imminent second coming of Christ. From its very inception, the Pentecostal movement has been a movement characterised by evangelism, studiously avoiding any principles or actions which would thwart it in its great eschatological purpose to reach all nations with the gospel of Pentecost.

In contrast stands democracy as the essential notion underlying the founding of modern states and also the fundamental principle of Christianity, based on the assumption of approximate equality as the foundation, as advocated by Rauschenbusch (1991:247). The problem is that in many instances states had departed from the democratic ideals upon which ...