The disturbing fact about apartheid is that it was a doctrine that claimed biblical warrant. Within a predominantly Christian country it was rigorously applied to a whole society and backed up by highly qualified university faculties of theology, hermeneutical studies and ethics. These were churches faithful [in] prayer, self-examination, breaking of bread and the reading of scripture.Referencing Richard Burridge's Imitating Jesus - An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics, David Runcorn queries how these Reformed churches, after expressing deep penitence for apartheid, could return to confident "reaffirmations of the centrality of scripture and a renewed resolve to obey and proclaim it more faithfully." How could they ever again be confident about what Scripture says? "They thought they were ‘in line’ with the word of God before, didn’t they?"
As a Reformed Catholic, my first response is that the experience of the Afrikaaners Dutch Reformed Church offers a warning against novel readings which serve to justify a particular lifestyle. The danger of Scripture simply becoming "a mirror reflecting a community's self-deceptions back to itself" is greater when a community fails to listen to how the church as a whole reads Scripture. Minority readings can be correct but the burden of proof is on those who read against tradition. The Dutch Reformed Church can have greater confidence today because it has returned to a reading of Scripture which can command a wide consensus.
Richard Burridge's emphasis is somewhat different although not necessarily contradictory to this. He urges that we need an inclusive, diverse, interpretive community in which opposing viewpoints are heard so that distortions are avoided by those in power or control. I do not disagree with this, even if instinctively I may grant a greater role to experts. Our various experiences raise new questions and challenges which must not be suppressed but we still have a responsibility to distinguish between more and less plausible readings. A good knowledge of alternative readings is certainly a great help in "becoming aware of the presuppositions, prejudices and assumptions that limit my responses to what I read."
Unanswered remains the question whether racist readings in favour of slavery and apartheid can be shown to be invalid on the grounds of standard exegesis or whether we have to grant racists that their exegesis in and of itself was as sound as that of their opponents. I must withhold judgement, as I am insufficiently familiar with the arguments. Judging by reviews rather than first-hand knowledge of his work, Richard Burridge seems to be impressed by the quality of racist exegesis.
Burridge surfaces four “biblical” ways the subject of apartheid was approached (and he offers specific examples of how the Bible was used): 1) Obeying rules and prescriptive commands, 2) Looking for principles and universal values, 3) Following examples and paradigms, and 4) Embracing an overall symbolic worldview. Those who believed apartheid to be “biblical” used the Bible in these ways to offer support for their views. The irony is this: those who opposed apartheid used the Bible in these identical ways to show that apartheid was very “unbiblical.” Both sides claimed to be “biblical,” yet had opposite views of apartheid! This is reminiscent of the ante-bellum slavery debates in the United States which led eventually to the Civil War. (John Frye, Imitating Jesus: Part 7 - Apartheid is (Un)'Biblical')Apparently this is not only a matter of surface similarities in the structure of arguments, the racist exegesis is of sufficient quality to call into question any appeal to Scripture along similar lines. Richard Burridge seems to be unable to judge many racist readings as invalid without appeal specifically to the Gospel. In other words, it seems that sound exgesis of the relevant texts from Genesis or Revelation will not be sufficient to show the wrongness of racist readings. David Runcorn in a similar way seems to suggest that the harm done by these readings is the only way to show that the readings are wrong - exegesis of the texts alone won't help us.
In sum, while probably most "conserving evangelicals" (David Runcorn's term) would assume that the difference between racist and anti-apartheid readings is (also) the difference between good and bad exegesis, the challenge put out by David Runcorn and, it seems, Richard Burridge is that the standards of sound exegesis are insufficient to discriminate against racist readings.
There are of course those who believe that the Bible is “patriarchal, racist, imperialist, and homophobic” and that we must read against the grain of the text. But by and large, it seems to me, the only people persuaded by the pro-apartheid readings of the Dutch Reformed Afrikaaners Church were those in favour of apartheid. Or did the anti-apartheid movement include a significant proportion of people who believed that the Bible is pro-apartheid (and wrong to be so)?
The final quotation is from Cathy Thompson, “Scripture as Normative Source in Theology,” in The Once and Future Scriptures: Exploring the Role of the Bible in the Contemporary Church, ed. Gregory C. Jenks (Salem, OR: Polerbridge, 2013), 33.
