War and "racial feeling" in the writings of an Afrikaner missionary

Abstract

This article considers the themes of war, Christian missionary work, and nationalism and the ways in which they could be demonstrated to interact in the life of an Afrikaner Dutch Reformed missionary, the Rev. JA Retief. Retief lived through and actively participated in the Anglo-Boer War, the First World War, and experienced the rise of Afrikaner Nationalism which led to the National Party’s apartheid victory in 1948. Retief is a somewhat anomalous case-study due to the fact that he spent most of this period as a missionary in Nyasaland (Malawi). However, he wrote extensively on the above themes, especially missionary work and nationalism, and this article indicates that he came to champion a rather open-ended conception of nationalism, a notion that was most certainly inspired by his experiences on the mission field where he was intimately involved in the founding of an ecumenical indige-nous church, the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian.