I Have Come a Long Way. John W. de Gruchy
Among them was a free family pass to Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and membership to the golf club. I relished these, despite my nonconformist conscience.
Stockbridge was full of notable personalities, both past and present. The painter Norman Rockwell was one of the town’s most celebrated citizens, and our family doctor, while there, was depicted in one of Rockwell’s most famous paintings. Then there was Daniel Chester French, who carved the nineteen-foot-high marble figure of President Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. The Austin Riggs psychiatric centre, established by Erik Erikson whose book on identity and the life-cycle I had read in Chicago, was a short walk from the manse, close to the iconic Red Lion Inn in the centre of town. And the distinguished theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, along with his wife, Ursula, and son, Christopher, were all members of the Stockbridge congregation. I visited Reinnie (as his students at Union Theological Seminary knew him) several times. Although he was recovering from a stroke, we had lively discussions about South Africa, apartheid and the Civil Rights Movement.
After concluding our enchanted stay in Stockbridge, we drove south to Georgia, to visit Koinonia Farm, a multi-racial Christian community. We went all the way in a borrowed VW Beetle, staying en route in Washington DC with a Mennonite scholar, Paul Peachey, and his family. When we eventually arrived at the farm, well known for its pecan nuts, we found out that it had been attacked by the Ku Klux Klan the week before. My recollection is that a burnt-out cross was still standing near the gate. This was the Deep South about which we had heard so much. Racism in Chicago’s South Side was real; here it was raw.
The second day we were there, I went to the bank in Americus, the nearest town, to cash a cheque. The teller, immediately suspicious when I opened my mouth, refused my request because, she said, the cheque was from a bank in Massachusetts. I asked to see the bank manager, who told me that he had noted my car’s Yankee number plates, so what was I doing down south and why did I not speak like “one of them northerners”?
I explained that I was visiting and came from South Africa.
“Okay,” he replied. “You people know how to treat N. . . . .s, so we’ll give you the cash.”
I took the money and fled, cowardly reasoning that that was not the time to take a stand.
Back at the farm, we gathered each evening in the kitchen with those who had remained after the Klan’s attack. After the meal, Clarence Jordan, the leader of the community and a New Testament scholar, would read from the Cotton Patch New Testament he was busy translating at the time. The Jordans visited us years later when we lived in Johannesburg, and told us about their new initiative called Habitat for Humanity. Sadly, Clarence died shortly after his visit, but I suspect not before he had encouraged Habitat for Humanity to consider working in South Africa at some time in the future.
The time came for us to return to South Africa and the Sea View Church. It had been a good year, but we were ready to go home. By this time, it was cheaper to fly than travel by sea, so late in August we boarded a new Pan Am Boeing 707 from New York to London. Isobel and Stephen then went on to Johannesburg, while I made a detour of several weeks visiting Paris, the WCC and Calvin sites in Geneva, the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, and the Taizé Community near Cluny in France. Taizé made a lasting impression on me, as it did on Steve many years later, for it was there that he decided to go into the ministry. Having lugged my suitcases up from the train station in this seemingly isolated rural community, I arrived at the monastery door and rang the bell.
A Dutch monk bade me welcome, sat me under a nearby tree and asked, “Why have you come here?”
“I was interested to see the place,” was all I could think of saying in reply.
“That’s not good enough!” he replied. “You shall go on a five-day silent retreat, and I shall be your leader. You will worship with the community three times a day. I shall give you some reading for reflection. And on the fourth day you will make your confession. There is no talking over meals.” With that he led me to my room.
A week later, suitably chastened by that monastic experience, I arrived in Rome, eager to visit St. Peter’s Basilica for the first time. But the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) was in session and St. Peter’s was closed to visitors. Despite that, I fell in love with the city and, casting a few coins into the Trevi Fountain, vowed to return.
It was time to end my year of travelling abroad, but I don’t think I fully grasped how different a person I was now from the one I had been just a year before.
6
A Confessing Church?
It should be clear to anyone who is familiar with the developments of the church situation in the Third German Reich … that there are more and more parallels between Nazi Germany and present-day South Africa … If you think about all these signs, then it is clear that the time has arrived for a Confessing Church in South Africa.
(Beyers Naudé)11
While still in Chicago, I had a phone call from a visiting South African who introduced himself as Beyers Naudé. His name rang bells. I had briefly met him in Johannesburg once before, and knew him as the DRC minister who had become an outspoken critic of apartheid and the government. On the phone, he told me that he had established an ecumenical institute, one of whose tasks was to provide support for South African theological students with WCC scholarships. After enquiring how I was doing, he invited me to visit him upon my return to South Africa.
Naudé had been a committed member of the Afrikaner Broederbond – the secret society in the vanguard of Afrikaner nationalism – and was destined for high office. At the time of Sharpeville – an event which deeply shocked him – he was a senior minister in his church and a leading figure at the Cottesloe Consultation convened by the WCC in response to the massacre. The subsequent failure of his church to honour the decisions of Cottesloe angered him. This led to his resolve to establish the Christian Institute (CI), even though it meant losing his status in his church. As a former student of Professor Keet in Stellenbosch, Naudé was inspired by the church struggle in Germany, especially the legacy of Bonhoeffer, and would often write about the need for a “Confessing Church” in South Africa in the CI journal, Pro Veritate.
Soon after my arrival in Johannesburg from Rome, I visited the CI’s offices and met Naudé again. He was in his forties, a graceful person interested in what I had done in Chicago (not everyone back home was), and what I was planning to do in my future ministry. I mentioned that I was hoping to take my studies in Bonhoeffer further, and to become involved in the ecumenical struggle against apartheid. He invited me to join the CI, which I did, and to keep in touch. He also asked me to write some articles for Pro Veritate based on my dissertation. I subsequently did this, too.
A few days later Isobel, Stephen and I returned to Durban and were warmly welcomed back into the Sea View congregation. I had kept my promise to return. But what awaited us as we settled back into the manse and returned to the daily routine of ministry? I had much more clarity on how to resume my ministry, although I was aware that the challenge facing me was not going to be easy if I followed path I had set out in my dissertation. There was no denying that we had been changed by our year abroad, and South Africa had become a different country in our absence.
The ANC and the Pan Africanist Party (PAC) had been banned, and in June 1964 Nelson Mandela was found guilty of treason and imprisoned for life. The armed struggle had begun, and most of the ANC and PAC leaders were either in prison or in exile. The significance of this change dawned on me with considerable force when, soon after returning to Durban, I was invited to dinner at the home of one of our American Congregational missionaries, Bob Bergfalk. There I met the newly arrived US consul and two black lawyers, both of whom were members of the ANC. Soon the discussion turned to the armed struggle, and eventually to the question: Will the US government support the armed struggle? The consul’s answer was evasive, but clearly negative.
As I drove home that night through the peaceful streets of Durban’s white suburbia, I knew that we were all in for a rough time. How could I convey this to my congregation? How could I help them overcome the racial prejudices and anxieties that I had described in my dissertation? More broadly, how