Johannes du Plessis (1868–1935) was a South African theologian and Protestant missionary. Du Plessis is perhaps most remembered for helping lead an interracial coalition to push for reforms to empower black South Africans and lessen government discrimination in the early 1920s, such as by limiting the

pass laws In South Africa, pass laws were a form of internal passport system designed to segregate the population, manage urbanization and allocate migrant labor. Also known as the natives' law, pass laws severely limited the movements of not only black ...

.A New Spiritual Force Missionaries And Social Activism
/ref> He was ordained by the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa, although relations between him and the DRC declined in his later life over his liberal and modernist theological views, culminating in an accusation of heresy and his dismissal as professor at the

University of Stellenbosch Stellenbosch University ( af, Universiteit Stellenbosch) is a public research university situated in Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Stellenbosch is the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest extant ...

. Du Plessis helped found the

South African Institute of Race Relations Established in 1929,http://www.sairr.org.za/profile/ the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) is a research and policy organisation in South Africa. The institute is "one of the oldest liberal institutions in the country". The in ...

, a liberal research organization, in 1929.

Biography

Johannes du Plessis attended seminary in the

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

and later the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

in Scotland, graduating with a doctorate in theology. In 1894, du Plessis was ordained a minister in the

Dutch Reformed Church The Dutch Reformed Church (, abbreviated NHK) was the largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands from the onset of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until 1930. It was the original denomination of the Dutch Royal Family and ...

(DRC); he would become general secretary for Mission in 1903. He traveled working as a missionary across sub-Saharan Africa as part of his duties. In 1913, he was appointed professor of Christian mission (and later, of New Testament) at the University of Stellenbosch.Johannes Du Plessis, 1868 to 1935
Gerald H. Anderson: Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1998 Du Plessis urged white South Africans to govern blacks in a "Christian manner." He defended the DRC as a non-racist church, but conceded that it had fallen short of its mission. He helped align both paternalist whites who wanted something short of total white dominion, educated blacks, and international missionaries to attempt to reform the

, establish the right of black workers to strike, and to allow tradesmen to compete against white workers fairly and openly. Like many of the period, du Plessis still accepted some of the tenets of the era, such as disapproving of mixed-race marriages; he believed that blacks should be treated fairly, but not necessarily to the degree of accepting "

miscegenation Miscegenation ( ) is the interbreeding of people who are considered to be members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms ''miscere'' ("to mix") and ''genus'' ("race") ...

".Sacralisation and the colonial-indigenous encounter in Southern African Christian history: The memory and legacy of Johannes du Plessis as case study
/ref> This social justice work did not particularly aggravate the DRC of the 1920s. However, du Plessis's work with international Christian missionaries had given him an

ecumenical Ecumenism (), also spelled oecumenism, is the concept and principle that Christians who belong to different Christian denominations should work together to develop closer relationships among their churches and promote Christian unity. The adjec ...

bent, and he did not believe certain passages of the Bible should be taken "literally", particularly

creation according to Genesis The Genesis creation narrative is the creation myth A creation myth (or cosmogonic myth) is a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it., "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the univer ...

and the Old Testament. Du Plessis instead favored

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

, a controversial belief at the time. Du Plessis was accused of heresy, and dismissed from his position as professor of theology at Stellenbosch in 1930. The heresy charges were disputed in the Cape Town Supreme Court and much to the consternation of the church, the court agreed that the biblical chapter of Genesis is not literally true. He thereafter filed for wrongful dismissal and won again. He was reluctantly re-instated as professor at the seminary, but put on permanent administrative leave, to prevent him from teaching and distressing the seminarians with his scientific views. These heresy charges distracted the minister from his other work, and what would later become

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

began to set in South Africa's government in the 1930s, which would reverse many of his earlier successes. Johannes Du Plessis died in 1935. After his death, a life sized statue of Johannes was erected in the town of Stellenbosch and positioned a hundred meters down the road facing the seminary gate. The granite statue oxidized turning it pink and the statue became known as 'Pink Pete'. Over the years, his statue was repeatedly vandalized with paint, but being made of extremely hard rock, it survived intact. The seminary eventually buried the hatchet and his statue was moved to the seminary grounds fifty years later, in an event attended by his daughter.

Works

* A thousand miles in the heart of Africa; a record of a visit to the mission-field of the Boer Church in Central Africa. Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier, Edinburgh 1905 * A history of Christian missions in South Africa. Longmans, Green and Co., London, New York tc.1911 * Thrice through the dark continent. a record of journeyings across Africa during the years 1913-1916. Longmans, Green and Co., London 1917 * Een toer door Afrika. (in Afrikaans) S.A. Association for the Advancement of Science, Kapstadt 1917 * The Life of Andrew Murray of South Africa. Marshall, London 1919 * The Evangelisation of Pagan Africa: A History of Christian Missions to the Pagan Tribes of Central Africa. J. C. Juta, Kapstadt und Johannesburg 1930 * Die Kerksaak tussen Prof. J. du Plessis en die Ned. Geref. Kerk in Suid-Afrika. (in Afrikaans) Kaapstad, 27 February 1930 till 1931.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Du Plessis, Johannes 1868 births 1935 deaths Afrikaner people Members of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) South African Calvinist and Reformed theologians South African Protestant missionaries Stellenbosch University alumni Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Academic staff of Stellenbosch University 20th-century Calvinist and Reformed theologians Dutch Reformed Church missionaries Protestant missionaries in South Africa