The impact of apartheid on the educational endeavours of two missionary agencies

Abstract

Numerous studies have shown how apartheid and the struggle against it influenced a range of Christian denominations and missionary agencies in South Africa, but these investigations have tended to ignore smaller denominations and missions. This article focuses on two of these denominations and missions: the Norwegian Mission Covenant and the Scandinavian Alliance Mission of North America (after 1949 called The Evangelical Alliance Mission). Both were historically rooted in the premillennial revivalism of the Swedish-American evangelist Fredrik Franson. Their missionary workers reacted in various ways to the pressures that increased social engineering along racial lines put on their work among black South Africans. The Bantu Education Act of 1953 removed one of the pillars of their outreach programme – education. Some of their missionaries vigorously criticised apartheid, while others assumed a more passive attitude. This article also discusses the role of their eschatology and the rural/urban emphasis in their ministries in influencing their responses to apartheid.