Calvinism and South African women : a short historical overview

Abstract

For the past three-and-a-half centuries, Christian women in South Africa have chosen for pietistic expressions of their faith, even when their teachers or husbands were committed to dogmatic Calvinism. This article traces the history of female piety in South Africa from its Calvinist introduction by Maria Quevellerius, the wife of Jan van Riebeeck. It tells the history of women in South Africa, both black and white, who were exposed to the sin-soul-salvation model of belief imposed upon them by missionaries, and who read pietistic literature from countries abroad. Three types of female piety are evident in South Africa today: firstly in black women healers; secondly in women attending the Worthy Women conferences where they openly assume subordinate roles vis-à-vis their husbands; and thirdly in women who accept the decision by the 2009 Synod of the ultra-Calvinist Reformed Churches in South Africa not to allow women to become elders or pastors. This article examines the historically relevant question of the influence of Calvinism on these three forms of female piety, and seeks reasons for the apparent absence of Calvinist loyalties amongst South African women. While Calvinism regulates the fate of (especially white) women in South Africa as regards their formal recognition as elders and pastors, women themselves seem to feel comfortable within the worship patterns of pietism and revivalism which, in the final instance, are as sexist as was local Calvinism.