Seventh-day Adventist world leaders have called on the church in South Africa to complete the work of racial integration throughout all its administrative structures.
Seventh-day Adventist world leaders have called on the church in South Africa to complete the work of racial integration throughout all its administrative structures. In a unanimous vote April 18, the more than 250 members of the world church executive committee affirmed that Adventists must build a spiritual unity that transcends differences of race or culture.
Adventist Church president Pastor Jan Paulsen introduced the subject to the committee by recalling his first visit to South Africa when he was “confronted with the stark realities of the apartheid doctrine.” Paulsen explained that the structure of the Adventist Church in South Africa had inevitably been influenced by the values that characterized the rest of South African society during apartheid. The result was duplicate levels of church administration, and in the Cape area, triple levels—“black,” “colored,” and “white.”
In 1991 the church’s executive committee meeting in Perth, Australia, voted a document calling on the church in South Africa to integrate its structure, and gave a two-year time frame for this to take place. Since the Perth resolution was passed, the two South African unions have merged, along with conferences in the Natal area and two conferences in the Cape area. “The sad reality is that not all conferences have integrated,” said Paulsen, “and I say this with some pain and distress.”
“The mindset that permeated society during this time is one that Christendom has long recognized we cannot subscribe to,” he said. “The continuation of this is an affront both to the public, but much more fundamentally to the spiritual and moral values of our church.”
Paulsen emphasized the need to build and maintain “one spiritual family” within the Adventist Church. “We need to help our leaders [in South Africa] do this without being torn apart as a world church,” said Paulsen, adding that General Conference leaders have recently held consultations with a number of conference administrators in South Africa. He asked the executive committee to “restate and reiterate the Perth statement,” and to urge the remaining non-integrated conferences to unify. A unified structure will “best express the oneness that is the spirit of our church, our family,” said Paulsen.
Baraka Muganda, youth director of the world church and former administrator in eastern Africa, supported the committee’s action, but cautioned that the subject was “a delicate matter” in which there would be no quick and easy breakthroughs. Ted Wilson, a vice president of the world church, explained that the world church cannot force the South African conferences to comply, but can only make “spiritual appeals.”
V. Wakaba, president of the church in South Africa, commented on the resolution, saying: “For me, it is a welcome appeal. The [committee’s] action reflects the latest appeal from the church’s highest leadership to move toward a unity, and follows many years of labor with church members in South Africa.”
The recommendation approved by the committee emphasizes that “we are all equal in Christ.” It records the concern of the world church executive committee that the 1991 resolution to integrate the church in South Africa has not yet been fully carried out, and it calls on church members, pastors, and administrators in South Africa to take immediate steps to rectify the situation.