How wonderful it is, how pleasant, for God's people to live together in harmony! (Psalm 13:1)

The South African Council of Churches began, as did its predecessor the Christian Council, with high hopes for a united voice to proclaim common Christian standards for South Africa.

Although prosaic in many ways, the minutes of the 1968 meeting indicate a gathering filled with quiet energy and commitment to united Christian action. There were plans to approach government ministers, statements on national issues, and a decision to challenge the Churches through a widely distributed theological statement on apartheid called "A message to the People of South Africa."

Bishop Bumett speaks of his personal priorities at that time in terms of working together with a united witness and common voice on most, if not all, issues.

"If we are going to be effective in the body of Christ, we are not going to get anywhere unless we unite. That was my view. To get the Churches to work together, not necessarily to unite together.

"To be in good relationship with one another and moving forward as much as we could to produce a Church in South Africa where you would expect to be accepted whether you are black or white, and whether you are Anglican, Methodist, Congregational, or whatever you are. If the world can't see the Church agreeing then it becomes a very dubious kind of institution."

The united stand that he believed was necessary if the Church was to turn the country from the path of inevitable destructive confrontation did not take place in terms great enough to save Bill Burnett from deep disappointment. "My main motivation," he says, "was the horror of apartheid. If the Church had come to South Africa united then apartheid could not have happened. It was a result of the disunity of the Churches that gave the opportunity to keep apartheid going."

Bishop Burnett was not the first to express concern for unity, or disappointment in it not happening.

When the Christian Council began its work in 1936 the need for a united voice was expressed by its President, Ds William Nicol. He spoke of the "Native Bills" debated in parliament during the previous decade and of the government's request to the Churches for comment. "With what results? There was no unanimity and the advice tendered by different Churches, and especially by different individuals from those Churches, was so mutually destructive that it could not have had much influence on the final decisions taken this year."

Nicol went on to suggest that the Churches might very well "try to out-manoeuvre each other" in the area of "Native education" and pleaded for co-operation for the sake of "the Natives, the Government, and the Kingdom of God."

He obviously had high hopes of the new CCSA. "What a glorious opportunity this Council is going to give us of delivering a united testimony on behalf of Christendom in South Africa!" It was an opportunity that was not picked up by the CCSA. Nicol's own withdrawal, and that of his Church, the DRC, only four years later certainly put paid to any possibility of Afrikaner/English Church co-operation to deliver any "united testimony on behalf of Christendom."

Twenty years later a rather reluctant President of the CCSA, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Geoffrey Clayton, said much the same in criticism of the Christian Council. He expressed disappointment, amongst others, in the failure "to try to bring the Christian conscience into some sort of united expression." He went on to say, "If we could speak with one voice we should carry enormous weight."

United Action

That same call for united action, for a communal voice, is one that has been echoed by a succession of Presidents of the SACC.

The first elected President of the SACC, Archbishop Selby Taylor of Cape Town, raised the issue just one year after the establishment of the SACC when at the 1969 National Conference he said, "As long as Churches remain outside the SACC, the Churches ecumenical witness will continue to be imperfect." He went on to appeal especially to the Dutch Reformed Church to consider membership because "until we begin to share our experiences and our insights, the Christian witness to our country will be partial and incomplete. "

Ten years later the then President, the Rev S.P.E. (Sam) Buti, appealed again for a united Christian voice in South Africa. Speaking about the divisions within the Church that hindered a united witness he says, "(Churches) are so obsessed with discussions and debates about secular identities, that of tribe or volk or race, that they refuse to face up to their true identity, namely to see themselves as the people of God and therefore to move out into the situation of our country..."

The words have greater significance when you realise that the Rev Sam Buti was, and remains, a leading minister of the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk in Afrika, the so called black "daughter Church" of the DRC. At the same time, however, he did not call especially, as many of his predecessors had done, for the Dutch Reformed Church to join in the fellowship of the Council but for all white Christians to be united with black Christians in one common force for righteousness in South Africa.

"Step out of your self-made prison of fear, of selfishly clinging to power and privilege and say NO to these false securities and step out to meet, to touch, to challenge and to embrace your black brother as a brother in Christ …." The Rev Sam Buti noted the division and the "growing polarisation" within the Dutch Reformed Churches with sadness but he did not proceed, as some had done before him, to make DRC membership of ways deny." One of the ways this denial manifests itself, he went on to say, was in the "practising of a personal religion which refuses to face the challenge of transforming society in accordance with Christ's demands."

Real Division

This was the real division that made the possibility of a united Christian witness against apartheid so difficult to achieve. The number of Churches named in the membership list was one thing, the number of practising Christians, of both member and non-member Churches who refused to see the challenge of the gospel to change the apartheid society was another.

"Lets face it, " says Methodist Bishop Peter Storey who preceded the Rev Sam Buti as President of SACC, "every Church had its prophets, every Church had its reactionaries, and every Church had its majority who were neither one nor the other."

Bishop Storey then goes on to say that an important role of the SACC in relation to the Churches was to provide a "focus for encouragement and strength" of one another. He mentions especially those who were in Church leadership positions and had a reactionary constituency who could, through the SACC, find new energy and vitality for the task of standing for those things known to be true to the gospel in the apartheid situation.

All the General Secretaries of the SACC speak well of the support received by Church leaders. Whenever they were called upon to discuss and debate issues, to give support in times of crisis, to speak out on behalf of the Council and its activities, they were willing to do so, often at cost to themselves within their own constituencies.

But each General Secretary also speaks of disappointment with the Churches' practical response to some of the calls made through the SACC.

Bill Burnett speaks of this in relation to the "Message to the People of South Africa", a theological document that called for discussion and soul searching on the issue of Christian faith and witness in South Africa under an apartheid regime.

"We thought the Church wouid rally to the occasion, " he says, "but the Church was cowed at that time by fear of what the Government might do. They all with one consent began to look at it and say, 'that's quite good,' but they did not take it up in a strong evangelical way. It was a great disappointment to those who produced it at a certain cost to themselves. We really thought it would rock the boat. But the impact ... was very disappointing."

Hesitancy Of The Churches

This disappointment with the Churches' practical relationship to the SACC was also voiced by both Mr John Rees, Secretary from 1970 to 1977, and Bishop Desmond Tutu, Secretary from 1978 to 1984. They both speak of the hesitancy of the Churches in their relationship to and support of the SACC.

"It was and will remain a strange dichotomy of the Council," says John Rees, "that the Churches wanted to be involved and they also wanted to be at arms length so that when it is convenient for them they wanted to be able to distance themselves from it."

Archbishop Tutu says that there was an ambivalence which meant that "if successful, (they were) ready to acknowledge us and if unsuccessful able to distance themselves."

The same kind of comment was made by Ds Beyers Naude, who was Secretary from 1984 to 1967. "What did worry me", he says, "was that so many of the resolutions adopted by the National Conference or the (SACC) Executive were passed on to the Churches. Then I watched carefully how tardy or over cautious or even how fearful the member Churches were to pick up the issues and implement them. "

"Standing For The Truth"

As an example, Dr Naude mentions the Standing for the Truth Campaign "where we felt that if the member Churches had understood more fully they would have supported the programme much more. "

He also tells of the Council's request for pastoral care for political prisoners and their families. Ds Naude says that no matter how much he pleaded for "these our brothers and sisters and their need for pastoral care" the call would be acted upon only by a few ministers and congregations. "I discovered that many of them were afraid because they realised that if they were seen by the security police to identify themselves publicly too much with the family of a political prisoner or somone who had gone underground that this could lead to action against them."

Although expresslng understanding of the reasons why this matter was not taken up much more fully by the local Churches and Church minlsters. especially in rural areas and small towns, Dr Naude added that, "It was a major concern that we did not succeed at that point in time in adequately conveying to those who were the victims of the whole system of oppression how we held them not only in our prayers but in a practical concern for their well being."

These former General Secretaries are expressing in general terms and through specific examples, what seems to be a conventional view of the relationship between the SACC and it's member Churches. Bishop Peter Storry agrees that there is much to this conventional view. He speaks of Churches which "on the one hand resented the SACC when it made waves among particularly the white membership, and thanked God for it when they could claim to be part of the SACC. When they could say to people overseas, for instance, this is what we are doing, look at the SACC."

Bishop Storey goes on to look further at this relationship of the Churches to and within the SACC. "I think that the SACC provided encouragement to those within the Churches who were seeking to resist apartheid. Without that encouragement, without that strengthening, without that forum where you could find like minds we would have been lost.

"For me the reality of it was that the witness against apartheid by the Church was a minority witness. The witness against injustice and for the Kingdom historically has always been a minority witness. Within the established Churches a vast majority really played no role or even a negative role. It was that minority, I think, that was encouraged by the SACC and that was a crucial role.

"I think the SACC provided a focus."

A focus of unity, of collective thought and common action.

This is at the heart of the SACC. It could never hope to bring into one mind all the diverse theological and doctrinal groupings. It could never create one common active expression of the care of the Church for the oppressed. But it did bring together, and allow expresion in vocal and practical terms, the Churches' involvement in national affairs including confrontation with the apartheid regime And it did create many pockets of united action to express the deep concern of the Churches for the oppressed and marginalised.

Bishop Storey again. "There was always something of an uncomfortable relationship, but it was a relationship, a very real one. One that they (the Churches) could not escape from but it was never comfortable. That is the essence of a prophetic relationship. The prophets in the Bible were in relationship with their people and their people did not like what they herd from them but they could not break the marriage. They could not break the relationship. It is the same between the SACC and the Churches and there it has been a positive thing.

"To me it has never been a negative thing. I would want to say that we must not exaggerate the difficulties and disappointments of that relationship. When the chips were down, not once did the leaders of the Churches leave the SACC in the lurch. Every time they came to the party and they stood with the SACC. That must never be forgotten. "

It will not be forgotten. No matter how disappointed those within the structure of the SACC may have been wlth the Churches from time to time, the Churches, through their own appointed leaders, never once let the Council go or let it down. Essentially when challenged. that fellowship, that pleasant fellowship where, as the psalmist says, "God's people live together in harmony, " is evident in the story of the SACC.

New Attitudes

The "uncomfortable relationship" mentioned by Bishop Storey was evident whenever the SACC spoke out on major national issues in a manner that challenged the people, especially of the constituent Churches, to new attitudes and activities.

Although Bishop Burnett himself was deeply disappointed by the Churches' response to the call made by the Council and to the lack of close unity among those Churches, there is no doubt that the Council quickly became a voice from which there was no real escape for any who would call themselves Christian in South Africa.

"A Message to the People of South Africa" published very soon after the 1968 establishment of the SACC was one such occasion.