DF Malan and the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism. Lindie Koorts
in Montagu’s large parsonage – which used to echo whenever its lone occupant dropped something[64] – Malan received the support system he had been longing for. His relief must have been immense. The size of his 1 500-member congregation had never ceased to overwhelm him, and his interests stretched beyond the borders of Montagu’s district. His church council recognised this and was constantly engaged in searching for an assistant minister to lighten his load – but such efforts were not always successful. Malan continued to crisscross the extensive district on his horse cart – alone on the solitary plains or among the rocky outcrops of the Karoo – in order to conduct services for the most far-flung members of his scattered flock.[65] He liked these services, as he could stand among the people instead of preaching from the dizzying heights of the pulpit. The informality of the setting meant that he could greet each person by hand, and he did not have to preach in the formal language that the church demanded. He could preach in a language that the simple people understood, the language of plain evangelical truths, such as sin and grace, repentance and faith, forgiveness and redemption. And, moreover, he could preach in the language of his heart, Afrikaans.[66]
Now he found that he did not return from his journeys to an empty house; there were people with whom he could share the anecdotes from his visits. It was from one of these visits that Malan returned with another new companion that was to be at his side for the next seventeen years: a Collie puppy named Comet – after Halley’s Comet which could be seen in the night sky at the time. Comet shared Malan’s bed (and sometimes even his pillow), as well as the milk and biscuits that his sisters left at his bedside to sustain him through his late nights. Comet followed Malan wherever he went – which could be rather problematic. On Sunday mornings he hid as soon as the first church bells began to ring. He would then sneak in during the service. Sometimes he would quietly lie down by Malan’s sisters’ feet, and on other occasions sit in front of the pulpit, staring up at Malan as he preached. ‘His master’s voice,’ the sisters would whisper to each other. Comet’s decision to climb into the pulpit one day ended this endearing display of canine devotion. Thereafter, he had to be locked away early on Sunday mornings, before the bells could give him any forewarning.[67]
Malan never presumed to be a father to his sisters, but it was inevitable that he would occupy an authoritative role. He took a great deal of interest in their education and, along with their mother, kept a watchful eye on what they read. He never prescribed or forbade, but every now and then he would ask, ‘Are you reading an English or a Dutch book?’ or ‘When was the last time you read a Dutch story?’[68]
Malan’s sisters, in turn, became familiar with their older brother’s extraordinary powers of concentration. Their play seldom disturbed him while he was at work, and he hardly noticed three-year-old Stinie as she roamed around his study and even rode on the back of his chair while he wrote his sermons. But this gift was accompanied by intense absent-mindedness. If Malan was late for dinner his food was kept warm, and one of his sisters would be appointed to sit with him in order to ensure that he remembered to eat. He could become lost in thought and forget about the presence of his meal.[69] Visitors noted his eating habits with fascination – especially the manner in which he perforated his beloved hard-boiled egg with the tip of his knife, instead of decapitating it, as was the custom.[70]
Malan regularly received illustrious visitors, such as the Stellenbosch seminary’s professors Marais, Moorrees and De Vos, as well as other prominent clergymen.[71] In 1911, his church council managed to find him an assistant preacher, the young Dr E.E. van Rooyen, who would later be appointed to the Stellenbosch seminary in 1920. Like Malan, Van Rooyen was quiet and studious and, like Malan, he had graduated from a Dutch university – the Free University of Amsterdam – with a philosophical topic: Hume’s scepticism. When Professor J.W. Pont, who had known both men during their respective times of study in the Netherlands, heard that they lived under the same roof, he wondered aloud: ‘What would they have been silent about!’[72] On Mondays, the family would picnic in the veld, and Malan himself found it comical that Van Rooyen would slip away in order to study.[73] Van Rooyen was also an advocate for the use of Afrikaans as opposed to English and Dutch, and would later participate in the translation of the Bible into Afrikaans.[74] In spite of this common interest, the two men were on opposite sides of the theological spectrum. In later years, Van Rooyen would be among those who persecuted Johannes du Plessis for practising Higher Criticism.[75]
Van Rooyen represented a leaning in the DRC’s theology towards Abraham Kuyper’s Neo-Calvinism, while Malan was a liberal theologian – precisely the type that Van Rooyen and his allies wanted to exorcise. Malan, as one of the last South African theological students to have graduated from the University of Utrecht – which was considered a liberal institution – and the protégé of one of Kuyper’s main theological opponents, practised a theology that was similar to that of Du Plessis, who was a renowned theologian and who would later become a professor at the Stellenbosch seminary. Like Du Plessis, Malan practised Higher Criticism and was sympathetic towards the theory of evolution, believing that some biblical events, such as the story of Jonah, were symbolic and did not actually take place. These theological practices brought charges of heresy upon Du Plessis that were driven by graduates from Kuyper’s Free University of Amsterdam, as well as those from Princeton, which also taught a fundamentalist approach to the Scriptures and rejected the distinction between sanctifying knowledge and those passages that were purely historical.[76]
During Malan’s years in the church, Du Plessis organised theological symposiums that were considered controversial by the DRC’s rank and file. Malan took part in at least two of these symposiums – one of which was held in Montagu.[77] In a paper that he delivered on Higher Criticism, Valeton’s influence was indisputable. Malan was also an Ethical theologian who believed that the history of Israel’s religion was God’s means of revealing truth to his followers. Malan asserted that not all tales in the Bible were historically true – the tale of Jonah was an allegory, for instance, in which the fish symbolised the Assyrian mother and Jonah represented Israel, swallowed by the larger power because it had been unfaithful to its calling. As far as Malan was concerned, there was an important distinction between fact and truth: the story of Jonah, like Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, might not have been factual, but it was spiritually true. Malan could see no reason why the Holy Spirit would not have made use of tools such as allegories, legends and myths to convey religious and moral truths – and why the fact that such tales were not literally true diminished their value as part of God’s revelation. He believed that they formed an important part of the study of theology, which had to change along with the times – especially as new methods and new truths were presented by contemporary scholarship. If not, theology was at risk of becoming a field that was merely of antiquarian interest. Therefore, according to Malan, Higher Criticism – which was a product of the field of literary criticism – made an important contribution to the study of the Old Testament.[78]
In spite of these assertions, the sermons that Malan presented to his congregation did not contain such exposés, even though his congregants initially complained that his sermons went over their heads.[79] His surviving sermons were more of a moral nature, although they certainly did not lack clarity and argument. One, in particular, drew much attention and approval. In September 1910, Malan delivered a sermon entitled ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ The title of the sermon was taken from God’s question to Cain, who had just murdered his younger brother Abel, to which Cain had famously replied, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Malan, himself the son of a wine farmer, was deeply concerned about the exceptionally high levels of alcoholism he observed in the wine-producing district of Montagu – especially among its coloured community. The Swartland, where he had grown up, was also known for its wines, but he believed that the farmers there took care to ensure that excesses did not take place. He soon identified the culprit when he noted – with growing alarm – that as the number of local canteens serving alcohol increased, so too did the number of incidents reported to the local police. He saw a correlation between the availability of alcohol and its adverse effects. He placed the blame for the situation squarely on those who signed the necessary petitions that lobbied the municipality to open new canteens, rather than on the individuals who were addicted to alcohol. Since these petitioners were necessarily white, and those who suffered from alcoholism were mostly coloured, Malan also recognised a racial dimension to the problem:
If