Afrikaner Calvinism - Doppers

Doppers

In the South African Dutch Reformed Church in Transvaal, the more conservative party (known as Doppers) were opposed to singing some hymns in church. They asked the Afgescheiden Gereformeerde Kerk in the Netherland to provide them with a minister. The Rev. Dirk Postma came from Zwolle to the South African Republic in 1858, and was accepted as a minister of the Hervormde Kerk, but on learning that he and his congregation could be required to sing hymns (rather than the Psalms only), he and the Doppers, numbering about 300 adults, among whom was the later President Paul Kruger, broke away from the state church to form the Gereformeerde Kerk in Rustenburg in February 1859. There were thus now three Dutch Reformed Churches in South Africa — the Afrikaner Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk (the Cape Synod), the Boer Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk, which was the State Church of the South African Republic, and the Boer Gereformeerde Kerk, the smallest of the three, led by Rev. Postma.

The originally contemptuous name, Dopper, may come from the Dutch domp (wick-snuffers) for their opposition to candles and other innovations in worship, perhaps representing their contempt for the Enlightenment; or, Dopper may originate from Dutch dop (and thus drinkers), perhaps on account of their strong opposition to small, individual communion cups.

The separatism of the Doppers, expressed in the severity of their doctrine, the austere puritanism of their worship, and even in their distinctive dress and speech, set them in stark contrast to European influence. Nevertheless, the Doppers were symbolic of resistance to all things English in South Africa, and despite their small size and distinctiveness they were culturally sophisticated and disproportionately influential during and after the Great Trek. It was the Dopper church that established Potchefstroom University. It was within this denomination that Paul Kruger arose.

The new Boer states which arose after the Great Trek needed a comprehensive philosophy upon which to organize a genuinely Boer society. Voortrekker 'Uncle' Paul Kruger, first president of the South African Republic upon its reacquired independence after the brief British annexation, adopted the Calvinstic principles in its political form, and formulated the Boer cultural mandate based on the Afrikaner Calvinist conviction that the South Africans had a special calling from God, not unlike the people of Israel in the Bible. The Doppers waged an intellectual war against outlander culture which was flooding into the South African Republic through the mass settlements of foreign squatters lured by gold and diamonds. To the Afrikaner mind, the British represented imperialism, viciousness, outlander oppression, covetousness, envy, and unbelief. When the Anglo-Boer war broke out, Paul Kruger's idealized version of Afrikaner history forged the Afrikaners into a united and formidable force. The Afrikaner's Boer War experience, including the death of 29 000 woman and children in concentration camps, and the wholesale destruction of homesteads, reinforced their laager mentality, so as to preserve themselves and their way of life against the British Empire.