Apartheid’s political doctrine was generalized from a theological principle of separate churches

Evidence

Originally referring to the self-governance and self-determination of the separate – or separately conceived – churches that were supposed to minister to these differentiated national communities, the doctrine of apartheid quickly came to be generalized across the entire polity. The separateness of a theological community committed to developing the authenticity of “one’s own” came to ground the political theology of separate development. The spirit of self-determining national differentiation fueled the power of political segregation ordered by and in the overriding interests of whites. The pernicious legal order and political practices identified as apartheid were in the first instance anchored in this belief structure, the set of convictions (to use Thomas Blom Hansen’s useful term), I am marking by its political theology. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1515 (#expands, via linked claim)

The Church – in particular the Dutch Reformed Church (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk) – played a defining role in apartheid’s articulation, elaboration, and rationalization in the century’s first half. The skeletal sociolegal structure of the state that would become apartheid, as I have suggested, was already stitched in place by the British and various administrations from 1910 to 1948: restrictive and increasingly eroded Native reserves set apart, Pass Laws, job color bars, segregated schools and delimited educational opportunities for those not white, divided recreational facilities and racially restrictive public accommodations, discrete voters rolls and differentiated political representation. That said, however, apartheid – as a term and as an idea, as a structure and as a set of practices, as an ideal and aspiration, as dream and nightmare, in short, as political theology – was projected as coherent conception from the Church, from God’s projected word, down. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1506 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Apartheid’s ideology rested on God-ordained separate-but-equal racial development — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1507; Apartheid’s segregation doctrine was generalized from church self-governance to the whole polity. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1515; Academic intellectuals guided the theological framework that formalized apartheid — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1542 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Apartheid originated as a church self-governance doctrine generalized across the whole polity #expands (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1515
• Apartheid’s legal structure predates its theological rationale, which the Church supplied #complicates (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1506